World wonders, useless but helpful

Did anybody think about the idea of some monument like Worldwonders like the pyramids?

They should be included because if you assume that the most aware beings will have some kind of religion they would also try to build monuments to worship them. They would need alot of production to finish but they would give you a bonus (not like in civilisation but mor realistic). They would make your nation look more powerful and other nations are then less likely to attack you. Or something like a huge lighthouse (Alexandria) would imrove trade income. And aswell as a general happiness bonus in everything that belongs to that nation and supress the happiness in other nations.

The problem is how do you define a world wonder and how do they get desiged? Maybe it should just be something like a Temple that is very big?

int main ()
{
If (this idea already exsists)
cout<<"Im sorry for the disturbance";
else
cout<<"Yeah, this is my kind of humor";
}

The wonders thing isn't such a bad idea- but it might not have the effect you thought of. It's all the more likely that nations want to attack those with the wonders, simply because they want them as their own.

Yeah, the wonders are a double-edged sword. While it gains you respect and shows you as wealthy and powerful, making some want to have good relations with you, it also makes others want to attack you to gain your wealth and power.

It would depend on the nations religion
and how about special parts for these monuments?

and obviously this came from the civilization revolution so ¿how about barbarians?

Wonders don't have to be based on religion. It could be a personification of the nation's ruler, something aesthetically nice (a giant work of art, or something like the Hanging Gardens), or something entirely practical (like the Lighthouse of Alexandria). It will be any TO tagged with the "Wonder" tag, and it's size and material used will result in how impressed the other nations will be.

Hmmm... I don't think we really need to have a "Wonder" tag. Surely it will be easy enough to program in something that understands what "big" is relative to all the other buildings in the world. Obviously a nation with one or lots of huge buildings will be more revered for their production ability. This would send a message to others. Namely "Look at what i can do, better not Belgium with me!"

Me might just count how much resources have your nation invested in creating TOs. Doesn't have to be buildings, could be weapons, any TOs, really. It will be much easier to determine it this way.

Commander Keen wrote:

Me might just count how much resources have your nation invested in creating TOs. Doesn't have to be buildings, could be weapons, any TOs, really. It will be much easier to determine it this way.

Good idea.

So if i invest huge amounts of resources to build something it gets a "World wonder bonus". Seems logical. The other nations on my planet would probably be extremely supressed by my "Huge Strategic Bomber Fleet" as a world wonder. Mwuhahahhaha

Then it would be logical to give it a different bonus depending what kind of TO it is. Huge monument(pyramids) is +happiness, trade but more agressive neigbors. Huge army (atomic submarine fleet) +/- happiness depending on state form, less agressive neigbors. (this would also automaticaly simulate war deterence like in the cold war) And a huge trade or production building and so on would give the logical bonus...

That just made me realise that Monuments havent been covered yet, depending on the religion and stateform they have a huge impact on the ideoligy and Happiness of a nation. A monument wouldnt have to be a obilisk or something but in a dikatorship it would probably be something like propaganda(best implementable form would just be a statue of a single "person" in the species). I think i read something about being able to build temples (not sure :/), it would probably be best to just throw them into the monuents section as well as they serve the same purpose.

Hmmm... Don't know if that's really necessary, defining the effects. I think maybe we should just add a mechanic that makes citizens happier with the amount of "reverence" other nations habour towards you. And obviously producing Belgium tons of stuff will make you more likely to be revered.

So, if included, I see this going one of three ways. Either we deal with inherent worth, and have the Star of India Diamond, and the the world's first nuke as a wonder...

OR

We deal with expense, and Apollo Thirteen, world's first nuke, and the Pyramids count as wonders,

OR

We just deal with size, with the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China being wonders.

Personally, I don't care. The term is incredibly arbitrary anyways. I don't see why we need to catagorize some TOs as super-extra special and some as not. People will abuse it all the same, making Nations fight over the fabled Palace of Phallus.

Tenebrarum wrote:

I don't see why we need to catagorize some TOs as super-extra special and some as not. People will abuse it all the same, making Nations fight over the fabled Palace of Phallus.

That's why I wanted to only count total expense and make the reverence based on that. Building wonders is a huge expense, so it would get you quite some reverence. You could also spend that resources on millions of weapons, a gigantic trading fleet, entertainment for citizens, wich would all give you the same reverence, and be practical at the same time. Wonders would probably only be good for "Look at this gigantic temple! I have named it The temple of Commander Keen!"

^^ Pointed at for truth. Basically, the point of world wonders is for your nation to show off, so anything that isn't specifically necessary for your nation could qualify. Any uses of the items could be recreational (Hanging gardens of Babylon) Spiritual (Parthenon, Pyramids et. Al) or actually functional (lighthouse of Alexandria, great wall of china, library of Alexandria,) or pretty much anything else you could think of, so long as it took way more work and material than is strictly necessary for the same item. Of course, part of the "wonder" is usually due to propaganda...

It's kind of a nebulous concept, but I think we should distinguish here. Counting expense is good for TO's to a point, but it obviously cost more for the Pharohs to build the pyramids (In terms of money, time, manpower) in ancient Egypt than it would today. Perhaps some scaling as to how hard it was to make given the technology at hand?

Quote :

It's kind of a nebulous concept, but I think we should distinguish here. Counting expense is good for TO's to a point, but it obviously cost more for the Pharohs to build the pyramids (In terms of money, time, manpower) in ancient Egypt than it would today. Perhaps some scaling as to how hard it was to make given the technology at hand?

Well if we stick to the expence defining wonders idea (which i perfer myself over the aternatives unti now because of its simplicity)

then we could just

1) compare the expences of the most expensive buildings on the world. The most expensive (3?) in a certian period of time or civilisation level are just defined wonders.

2) When something has just become expensive enough in compare to the "superduper wonder define expence level" which is a predfined variable (example 5000 production cost) x the total production bonus though technology (example 570%). When tech causes you to build 5,7 times as fast a project has to be 5,7 times as big as 5000 to be defined as a wonder. So everything that costed more then 28500 to build is a world wonder (in this number example).

3) Somebody has a better idea.

I still don't see why we need them.

Tenebrarum wrote:

I still don't see why we need them.

We don't particularly need them, but it could really help boost your trade and bring in allies if you built them for your nation.

Im not sure if we need them either but if we have time on the scedule to implement it into the game we should.

BastianKraft wrote:

Im not sure if we need them either but if we have time on the scedule to implement it into the game we should.

We have no planned release date, we can take however long we need... All we really have to decide is whether to do the vital stuff first, then patch in the smaller things later, or do it all as we go along (we're currently going with the first option). Either way, everything will be done eventually, unless it turns out to be impossible, too demanding of the computer, or a bad idea.

Personally, Rex, I'd rather just chuck them in with propaganda and not worry about it until we start nitpicking at civ again. But then again, I'm poking around trying to scratch together biomes.

Everybody else: I'm not against the idea, but how would they boost trade and bring in allies? That's what we need to figure out if they're wanted. And please don't say "The programmers will take care of it," because poor Roadkill has enough on his plate. And Bashi is apperently metaphysical these days.

For example, my idea is that construction of something defined as a "wonder" will nudge the sliders (As outlined by Alaska about a year ago - they're on the wiki somewhere, go have a look) of surrounding nations closer to your own configuration a little bit. (Similar to the already discussed propaganda concept.) Basically, they'll act and think more like you. This is in addition to preforming whatever purpose, if any, they were originally built for. (i.e. Tactical defense [great wall of china], aid shipping/commerce [lighthouse of alexandria], Religious gathering place [Parthenon], Toumbs [Pyramids, Taj Mahal])

Basically it's a subset of propaganda, and the effects will wear away over time. Especially if it's the Collossus of Rhodes and falls into the sea at the first earthquake.

According to this system, if something just doesn't qualify as a wonder, it has no bonus at all. It either has it all, or has nothing. Also, wonders that get these bonuses even though they don't actually do anything towards getting that bonus sometimes. We have to be careful about this. I don't want to see Thrive has turned into Rise Of Nations (good game for strategy, but not realism) by the time I get back. Hope you all like my cool signature of absence.

That is all.

As of now, we are, officially, away.
(Even though I'm technically going away tomorrow)

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

-snip-

I don't remember ever saying that, but i've said a lot of things i suppose...

Anyways, i am somewhat agreeing with Calli, but also with UTeen. We need to come up with some kind of equation that decides what is a wonder and how much people care. Also having a wonder should have a direct effect on the power of your propaganda, both at home and abroad. This way, you can have a number of wonders, but if you aren't talking them up, no one will care.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

-snip-

I don't remember ever saying that, but i've said a lot of things i suppose...

Anyways, i am somewhat agreeing with Calli, but also with UTeen. We need to come up with some kind of equation that decides what is a wonder and how much people care. Also having a wonder should have a direct effect on the power of your propaganda, both at home and abroad. This way, you can have a number of wonders, but if you aren't talking them up, no one will care.

So we need to define a wonder along a few factors? These factors would be something like
-government cost
-effect on propaganda
-effects on relations with foreign countries

Also, do wonders have to be single structures? Could they be something else, such as entire cities, government programs, perhaps useful structures like dams or bridges? This goes back to defining wonders. I think, as said before, that the best way to define them is by cost. that way, EVERYTHING that the government pays for would garner some small amount of respect, and "wonders" aren't defined by set terms, they are just things that gain a lot of respect for your government. Then we can define national "respect" by a simple equation.

r=c*t

Where

r is respect
c is cost
t t is time that the money was spent over (the pyramids cost decades to build)

~sciocont wrote:

So we need to define a wonder along a few factors? These factors would be something like
-government cost
-effect on propaganda
-effects on relations with foreign countries

Also, do wonders have to be single structures? Could they be something else, such as entire cities, government programs, perhaps useful structures like dams or bridges? This goes back to defining wonders. I think, as said before, that the best way to define them is by cost. that way, EVERYTHING that the government pays for would garner some small amount of respect, and "wonders" aren't defined by set terms, they are just things that gain a lot of respect for your government. Then we can define national "respect" by a simple equation.

r=c*t

Where

r is respect
c is cost
t t is time that the money was spent over (the pyramids cost decades to build)

Brilliant! Respect solves everything.

Quote :

Brilliant! Respect solves everything.

It solves all the problems we have discussed until now. But now we have new problems, how does respect influence the KIs exactly. And the smaller problem, how does the player see respect in the game.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

-snip-

I don't remember ever saying that, but i've said a lot of things i suppose...

Anyways, i am somewhat agreeing with Calli, but also with UTeen. We need to come up with some kind of equation that decides what is a wonder and how much people care. Also having a wonder should have a direct effect on the power of your propaganda, both at home and abroad. This way, you can have a number of wonders, but if you aren't talking them up, no one will care.

No, that was just about the actual concept of sliders, not about anything I want to apply them to. You went to great pains to get the concept of sliders through my head and how they affect nation mode's balance of power in all their wiki-official glory.

Thrive_Wiki wrote:

To easily view and change the 'Balance of Power' in the player's nation, this heading will be represented by graphical sliders, each with a value between 0 and 100. The sum of all the sliders will always be equal to 100. The sliders are: 'Leaders' 'Legislation' and 'People'. Obviously, each slider has different effects on the amount of control the player has over their nation, the happiness and order of their SCs, and how much the People Traits of the respective power groups have an effect on the nation. The higher the Leaders Slider, the more direct control the player has over their nation.