GAME CONCEPTS

Wonders

Wonders are the great works of the game: one-off constructions with powerful effects, built by a city like a building but standing on the map like a tile improvement. Each one exists once in the world, so every wonder is a race.

The race

  • Every civilization that knows a wonder's technology can start it, and the first city to finish keeps it.
  • When someone else completes a wonder you are building, your construction is lost and it leaves every one of your queues. Your builders salvage 50% of the production you had put in as gold and 20% as Public Works.
  • A wonder lost when it was more than 50% built may also yield an artifact: a common one past 50%, up to epic from 75%, and rare to legendary past 90%. The older the wonder, the lower the best it can give: an early wonder never pays out a legendary.
  • The scoreboard counts each civilization's wonders; a rival's tech pace is the best warning that a race is on.
  • Some wonders also need a building in the city first; the wonder's page names it.

Placing a wonder

  • A wonder that stands on the map is placed when you pick it from the build list: click a tile the city can work. A red tint means the tile will not do; the tooltip says why.
  • It takes the whole tile: one of your own improvements standing there is demolished, and the Public Works spent on it are gone. A tile being terraformed cannot take a wonder.
  • Rubble never blocks: a pillaged improvement, or a wonder somebody else finished first, is cleared away when a new wonder or improvement is built over it.
  • Wonders that are not physical are queued straight into the city, like a building.

What a wonder does

  • Its effects work like a building's, and many reach every city in the empire or the tiles around the wonder itself. Each wonder's page lists them.
  • Every wonder adds a little Culture to the city that built it, on top of its own effect.
  • A wonder standing on the map yields from its tile as an improvement would: work the tile and the city collects them. Each wonder's page lists its tile yields.

All wonders