~A Wonder is something that IS BUILT, not accomplished or funded. It should be
something that was considered a great feat at the time it was done. But saying that, the
Great Wall was a great feat too.

~There should not be nearly as many Wonders as there was in CivII.

~Wonders should generally benefit education, health, trade, happiness, science, military
morale, military training and such.

~It should never eliminate the need for certain city improvement within each city.

~There should be a medium between city improvement and Wonders. Something maybe
called civ improvements. These should cost money(and plenty of it, not production.
Something each civ can build only one of.

~Example from civII: Each civ must fund the Manhatten project(or something like it) before producing Nuclear weopons. Anyone should be able to produce a Great Wall across their countryside. Each civ should be able to fund a trip arould the world--Darwins Voyage.
And if there is some sort of space exporation, each civ needs to fund the Apollo
program(or something like it) to benefit from it. And just this week China announce they
were sending a man into space.

~Wonders and “Civ improvements” that have to do with the ocean(Lighthouse, Darwins
Voyage, Mgellans Expedition) would have to be built in providences that have access to
the ocean.

~There should be more “Civ improvements” than Wonders.

~Once you’ve started building a Wonder you cannot change it to another. If you do you
lose all production. (You think that once all but the top ten rows of the pyramids were
done you could have the colossus build the next year?)

~You can, however, halt the production for a certain number of turns without penlty. If you have half the pyramids done and decide to halt it because the city is threatend, you still have half the pyramids done when you comeback, right? After the time period is up(you should be warned too) you lose all production. And the Wonder is now availible to all other civs(who have the tech of course.)

~This idea should apply to city improvements too. Except you wont have a time limit to
continue production. If I have half a library done and decide to build a University, I build the University from scratch, and finish the library from where I left it. I do realize that a lot of this maybe done by the AI, but I still had to say it.

~This would eliminate the cheats of building a Wonder just to get the prodction to build
another Wonder of a tech the civ knows nothing of.

~I dont consider any of the Wonders from CTP to be actual Wonders and dont think any
should be. However, some could be possible be “Civ improvements.”

I'd sure like to hear some feedback(praise or critize) on this.
Daniel

I'd like to give it new life first summarizing what I've found about wonders in clash forums. It's not much, though:

1. Clash team is not sure yet about including wonders.
2. Wonders shouldn't be as much as in civ2
3. Ws should be buildings and not projects/achievments like Leo's.
4. They may have an effect on national pride, happiness and trade.
5. Clash economic model works not with particular buildings, but with "an infrastructure" level.
6. The player should be able to customize wonder's effects rather than choosing a wonder with some predefined effect.
7. Some players like wonders from world history to be explicitly included, while others prefer "abstract" wonders.
8. Construction of wonders could be halted in order to solve present problems and then continue building them without losing what has been already made.
9. Changing wonders while being built seems ugly and non-realistic.
10. Manurein in his social model gives us his view on wonders:

The idea is to allow the ruler to build " special " structures, that are mainly real buildings (no " Cure for Cancer " wonder), that are not forecasted by the game but rather shaped by the player, and that effects on different models of Clash depending on the type of structure that is built ; in no way, a wonder is unique.
Actually, a wonder is an architectural structure that building is decided by the ruler (and the economic model), and that is a really special construction. It takes extra resources to be built, but one it is built it appears on the map, and it gives advantages to its owner. There may be many kinds of wonders. For example, it may be a great temple. The size of the temple is decided by the ruler (and thus the extra resources it requires, eventually the time it takes to be built). Once it is built, the people will enjoy it, giving more power to the RC, giving more faith to the people. Also, the province that holds it will see its rate for purpose of migration increase. Over time, the effect of a wonder may lower (when the people are less influenced by religion, the great temple will be of less importance) ; also, a wonder may have economic effects, such as favoring tourism in this province. There may also be another effect : if there is a tech called " archeology ", then an ancient wonder that has no more effect could be rediscovered and generate trade in modern times, through tourism. [...]

That's all I've found about Ws. My own opinion goes in the next post.

Thanks for taking this on

I would contest the point about how wonders Must be buildings. Any Achievement should do IMO. Manhattan Project and Cure for Cancer are Excellent choices in my view.

I think wonders should not have their results through Magic like Leo's in Civ2. Or, as you say be disproportionately powerful If only one civ could have 'em.

My proposal for WW:
In mark's econ model the people as well as the ruler invest in some areas like agriculture. Suppose your civ has spent some great amount of $ in one of these areas. If a certain (high) limit has been reached, you earn a world wonder and it's specific to the area. So, if a lot of money have been spent on temples, you earn the oracle, FE. At that moment, the city or province where it has been "built" gains a bonus for inmigration (at the migration model) and a bonus for religous happiness (social model). The trade bonus comes (or eventually will come) alone since migration will bring it and happiness could be related to people's productivity. Notice that earning a wonder may be seeked by the ruler just spending lots of money in the area. Notice too that this method helps modeling the effect of stopping wonder construction for the moment and continue it later since no waste of $ takes place at each area. Also, there's no need of wonder being a real historic one and this can be left as an option to some players. Also, wonders are no longer unique. A religious wonder may exist in a civ, but other can do the same. Notice as well that ruler's choice of area to invest in is in fact a choice of what kind of wonder you want and the type of effects it'll bring.
It'd be necessary to include an investment area such as "city beautification" where wonders like HG can exist. On the other side, some areas won't never lead to a wonder, like "fishing".

The main problem I see in the above proposal is that the normal expendeture on each area will make every province have a wonder, eventually. To solve this, it'd be maybe useful to check "investment surplus", like "how much is needed and how much is spent".

My proposal for WW:
In mark's econ model the people as well as the ruler invest in some areas like agriculture. Suppose your civ has spent some great amount of $ in one of these areas. If a certain (high) limit has been reached, you earn a world wonder and it's specific to the area. So, if a lot of money have been spent on temples, you earn the oracle, FE. At that moment, the city or province where it has been "built" gains a bonus for inmigration (at the migration model) and a bonus for religous happiness (social model). The trade bonus comes (or eventually will come) alone since migration will bring it and happiness could be related to people's productivity. Notice that earning a wonder may be seeked by the ruler just spending lots of money in the area. Notice too that this method helps modeling the effect of stopping wonder construction for the moment and continue it later since no waste of $ takes place at each area. Also, there's no need of wonder being a real historic one and this can be left as an option to some players. Also, wonders are no longer unique. A religious wonder may exist in a civ, but other can do the same. Notice as well that ruler's choice of area to invest in is in fact a choice of what kind of wonder you want and the type of effects it'll bring.
It'd be necessary to include an investment area such as "city beautification" where wonders like HG can exist. On the other side, some areas won't never lead to a wonder, like "fishing".

The main problem I see in the above proposal is that the normal expendeture on each area will make every province have a wonder, eventually. To solve this, it'd be maybe useful to check "investment surplus", like "how much is needed and how much is spent".

You can see that OLD wonders discussion if you go to the web site, follow Forums - Old Forum and scroll about 1/2 way down the page. The discussion is part of the thread "Victory Conditions?"

We Need Factors to give Clash that Just ONE More Turn draw. I think this idea if well-done can be a Big one of these.

LGJ:

These 2(Man. Project and Apollo Prog.), and others which are of no significants right now, should be in another class. Something each civ can build only one of.

You can have a seperate group of achievements listed out for each civ to achieve. These would not be neccessary for the civ too build, but act as an enhancer to a specific field of the game.

And as for earning wonders, that sounds OK to me. But it sounds like it may get too cluttered or overused. Too many repeats possibly. unless you put limits on them or something.

About mark's remark, I agree that one good thing about wonders is that they put the player in a position where he/she must compete, which is the main goal of the game. Wonders look like an important feature in the game regardless of implementation or their role in reproducing history.

So, wonders really are just extreme cases of city improvements. In those cases, bonuses are real big.

Im not saying that a nation would never abtain the benefits, but rather would need to test for themself. Or just buy it from Russia!! And acts of espionage would help them along.

The mistake in CivII was that the moment the MP was done, everyone could build nukes. Thats what Im getting at.

The same would apply for the Apollo program. The benefits of doing it oneself outweigh the benefits of learning from others. Otherwise, China wouldnt be sending a man in space.

On MP (Manhattan Project) and Apollo being plain techs.

What characterizes these in my mind as wonders rather than techs is:

1. These are massive Engineering Projects, just like the pyramids. As such they require a huge and Dedicated physical infrastructure. Their cost exceeds normal research activities by factors of about 10-100. The dedicated infrastructure is not like normal factories, its not really flexible enough to make other things like cars also (esp for MP). So although the Cost of MP would decrease with advances (and come down dramatically once Someone has done it) its still an enterprise that's somewhat intependent of the normal infrastructure of the civ. If a civ wants to build its own nukes it needs to make Large investments like these. (I think everyone should be able to build either wonder)

2. They are Enormous Leaps in Human Progress (some might question that on MP). Its like going from no gunpowder to 1900s rifles all in one step. We want the player to FEEL that. An ordinary tech just doesn't cut it IMO.

Neat discussion. I see two distinct concepts here that might perhaps be better off if treated as seperate topics . . .

1) A 'physical' wonder of the world. Perhaps, like in SimCity, 'great' building projects could be benefit a locale/city (tourism, research, prestige, etc). Many, many cities currently have such 'wonders' (the Astrodome, the Empire State building, Disneyland, M.I.T., etc).

About pyramids and MP/AP being huge engineering projects, it's true, but I guess we're losing the main point here. Someone at the civ2 wonder forum proposed the "US road network" as a modern wonder. This too is a massive eng. project, took lots of money to complete and is REAL big. But, do you consider it a wonder? I must disagree. Spending is necessary for a wonder and a wonder is in itself a big project, but it must be a "wonder", something you look at and feel proud of, and impresses you. It also goes beyond culture or beliefs, you get just breathless staring at the pyramids no matter if you're chinese, canadian or whatever (can we say the same about the US road net?). The MP is not only unknown to most of people, it also generates hate. Many people would prefer this project never be developed. It's not a wonder.
Maybe the Apollo Program is a tech that one may consider a wonder since it's beyond americans and make human beings proud of their capabilities. It also gives hope for us to explore the stars, an old dream. Techs, however, don't convince me as wonders for I like wonders to be geo-specific buildings, located at cities giving bonuses at those places, but I'm willing to accept such things as the Apollo Program.

My point is that the MP and Apollo program cost mega bucks and I can only hope you can accurately portray this in Clash. --weather or not you call them wonders or not.

If you're temporarily back from the dead, Make Sure your life insurance is paid up!
Good to Cya again...

All:

Well, guys I'm going to bow out of this discussion 'cause I've made my points and have a demo to put out!

One thing I do think should be in there that hasn't been discussed is "natural wonders." These wouldn't be as all important as other wonders but at the same time wouldn't cost any resources to build. Also so no one would fight over them easily they could be hidden until someone "discovers" it and decides whether or not to promote it.

These are the 7 natural wonders of our world:
Northen Lights
Grand Canyon
Paricutin Volcano
Harbor of Rio de Janeiro
Victoria Falls
Mount Everest
Great Barrier Reef

Another listing that goes beyond the number 7 can be found at http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/other.html
Heres the original seven wonders of the ancient world:
The Pyramids of Egypt
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Walls of Babylon (This was also sometimes reffered as a wonder)
Statue of Zeus (Jupiter) at Olympia
Temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Colossus at Rhodes
Pharos of Alexandria

Here's Civ2's list:
Ancient:
The Pyramids
The Hanging Gardens
The Great Library
The Great Lighthouse
The Oracle
The Great Wall

Medevil:
King Richard's Crusade
Marco Polo's Embassy
Michelangelo's Chapel
Copernicus' Observatory
Magellan's Expedition
-One more i can't remember-

Industrial:
Leonardo's Workshop
J. S. Bach's Cathedral
Isaac Newton's College
Adam Smith's Trading Company
Darwin's Voyage
Statue of Liberty
Eiffel Tower

Modern:
Women's Suffrage
Hoover Dam
Manhattan Project
United Nations
Apollo Program
SETI Program
Cure for Cancer

List of lost Ancient, Modern and Natural Wonders at http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/other.html

The list could very well include any great feat of engineering and the first would be considered the initial "wonder" allowing more to exist. (Only the first contributes to civ score, or maybe the remainder count as 1/2)

I can't recall what the dollar figure for construction was, but I do know that the entire Federal budget in that period was on the order of $750 million; adjusting for inflation that's less than 1% of the current one. That should help your perspective in terms of the resources available at the time.

The Chinese would have settled for a goods transfer canal rather than a through passage. It would've been no more significant than the Erie Canal; no small matter, but no WOW either.

Fifty years earlier the same non-transit compromise would be sought, except that a RR would be the efficient goods transfer solution.

1) They are definitely one of the "fun" parts of Civ2, so it's a good idea to include something similar in Clash.

2) As is true with everything else we are doing, let's not copy the concept but rather improve upon it.

3) You're mention of "Natural Wonders" is a nice idea, and definitely meets the spirit of item 2.

4) A long time ago, someone (Dominique?) suggested the use of "Masterpieces". These would represent some of the Great Works of Art created by individuals down through the ages. Not monumental art such as the Mausoleum or Parthenon, but small items such as statues, paintings, and tapestries. What distinguishes Masterpieces from other Wonders is that they are a) Portable and b) they can be "lost" or destroyed. So when your civ conquers another, you have the opportunity to loot their masterpieces. Likewise, there is always the chance they could be lost or destroyed in the fighting.

Another thing you must consider about wonder destruction is the actual feasibility and desire to remove it. Take the Great Wall of China for instance, the desire to remove it was there (at least for the mongols), but if you destroyed it, what the Hell where you going to do with all that stone? Because all throughout history people didn't destroy without taking something away (the stone in my example), what would really be the point?

So What you really need is a very sophisticated system to simulate the importance of wonders. Yes they may generate money, but nobody cares to destroy them, unless (like the Great Wall) they offer some sort of strategical advantage. So the Colossus, while splinded, would not generally require destruction, where as the Great Wall would.

here are some comments on the wonder issue:

Many of the wonders in civ and civ2 weren't really wonders IMO. You could build them like any other improvement and they sometimes had unbalanced effects.

• The completion of every wonder should result in general benefits like improving national pride and gaining international prestige (also envy). A wonder would also affect tourism in a province.
  Large projects like the construction of wonders also have effects during build time. Many laborours, engineers, scientists, artisans etc. are probably needed for such a project, so there could be a decrease in unemployment. Undesired side effects on the civ's economy like lack of employees could also occur.

• What are wonders? IMO it is not desireable to have a premade list of wonders. The Egyptians didn't build the pyramids because they were on the list of wonders of the world! There are many reasons why a ruler/government decides to build a wonder: religious reasons, megalomania, large scale improvements of infrastructure, impress foreigners, ...
  But how to achieve these goals?
  If you want to show the power of your god(s) to the rest of the world you might want to build a huge temple/church/mosque/synagogue. It would be great if the player may decide how big and beautiful (i.e. how expansive) his/her wonder will be. There should be minimum conditions in terms of costs and also the possibility for other players to surpass an existing wonder.

• Suggestions for wonder categories:
  tombs (mausolea, pyramids, ...); only ancient
  temples and statues (depending on religion); only ancient and medieval
  infrastructure (lighthouses, excellent road and rail networks?, large dams, large walls, canals?, bridges?, ...); no temporal restrictions
  city beautifications (palaces, colossus, hanging gardens, skyscrapers?, ...); no temporal restrictions
  research (MP?, Space Program, Human Genome Project, large particle accelerators (sorry that's only a rough translation I fear; do you know what I mean?), ...);no temporal restrictions

• Miscellaneous:
  Why isn't there King Richards Crusade, Women's suffrage, .... The crusades were one of the darkest periods of Christianity. I strongly object to considering the slaughtering of people as a wonder like in civ2 with King Richard's Crusade. Some might think the same about MP. Women's suffrage isn't a wonder but a matter of course. It could be handled in the social model.
  

Your also fogetting other means of distruction. Collusus was destroyed because of an earthquake. Many of the wonders were destroyed when the city was ransacked, but the entire city might not be destroyed.

Wonders may not mean the same thing to diffrent cultures. Is it possible that when ransacked or occupied, wonders be destroyed because it woundnt benefit the new owners. This would apply to religous building mostly --i guess. Natural decay and natural disasters was the No1 cause though.

I never could understand that when i built the lighthouse in an inland city it benefited ocean movement. And that why it was built directly on the coast in real life. Natural erosion caused the lighthouse to naturally sink into the ocean. Now historians believe they found the base of it in shallow waters of the coast.

There are many was wonders are destroyed, and I hope you can accuratlly portray this.

And for all my other feeling on wonders read the first post in this thread.

history lesson on

From the number of contemporary references to the library it certainly did exist and it probably contained the vast majority of mediteranean written works at its peak. There were no less than four seperate destructions of the library. (It involved several large buildings.) The first was a flood and only a small number of original works was lost. The second was a fire that destroyed at least one of the buildings (it was a large destroy part of the city sort of fire.) The third was a attack from a christian sect that attacked and destroyed one of the buildings, possibly one containing books of magic. The final destruction was after the Jihad over ran the city. The commander asked the caliph what to do with the library. The answer was "If the books support the Koran they are superfalous if they oppose the Koran they are blasphemous." There fore the library was destroyed.

history lesson off

The pick of the ideas from the Civ3 threads on wonders are as follows -

Natural wonders - Naturally occurring wonders that have a mostly tourism value.

Works of man - Artistic works of man, happiness and trade effects.

"First" Improvement - The first of each improvement is renowned as the first and has a double or 50% bonus on its normal effect. (The old "yeah they may have a temple but they are just copying ours" effect.)

"Greatest" Improvement - For each improvement you have the option of making the basic improvement or the greatest of its type. The greatest has a double effect and costs more. It lasts until someone else builds a greatest of the same improvement. The cost is 50% more than the previos greatest. After being superseeded they still give a +1 trade/tourism/happiness benefit.

Standard Wonder - The normal civ2 style wonders.

Social advances - These are the cultural advances that are in the civ 2 wonders list. These include all the things normally considered concepts. eg. Suffrage, etc.

These are some of the ideas that have already been kicked around there. I like most of them especially the "first" and "greatest".

This is really the only thing that won't work so far that I've seen proposed and considered a good idea by many people.