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A Wonder of the World is a unique city improvement in Civilization II, representing monumental architecture, social and cultural achievements, and/or scientific and technological innovation. A Wonder's benefit can range from local effects for its host city, a bonus throughout the controlling civilization, and/or a permanent effect to all players. Certain Wonders are rendered obsolete by technological advance, while others will continue to function for as long as their host city exists.
Civilization II features a total of 28 Wonders, organized into groups of 7 roughly corresponding to their historical period of advent. Each Wonder a civ controls contributes 20 points to its game score; scenarios may also use Wonders for objective scoring. The Wonder screen (hotkey: F7) from the World menu lists all completed Wonders in the game.
Overview[]
Each Wonder has a prerequisite advance and production cost.[note 1] Only a single instance of a Wonder can be built during the game; whichever civilization controls a Wonder's host city gains access to its benefits.[note 2]
A Wonder's benefit may be local to its host city, empire-wide, or global to all players. Wonders can be grouped into several informal categories based on their purpose and effects:
- Growth: Food storage and improvements;
- Industry: Production yield and improvements;
- Commerce: Trade yield and efficiency;
- Science: Science production, improvements, and free advances;
- Happiness: Citizen happiness and improvements;
- Diplomacy: Diplomatic and Espionage bonuses;
- Military: Unit veterancy, movement, upgrades, and production options, and defensive improvements;
- Government: Government options and mitigation of anarchy;
- Spaceship: Cartography and the Space Race.
Construction[]
Wonders require considerably more 
Shields than standard improvements, and can take several dozen turns to complete. The player receives messages when rival civs begin, change, or cancel a Wonder's construction, providing a rough gauge of the state of competition. computer-controlled players may refuse to trade an advance if it enables a Wonder they are currently building.
When a rival city is one turn away from completing construction, the player receives a message that the Wonder is "nearly completed". If no action is taken, the Wonder will be completed on the civ's next turn. However, the human player can "claim" completion in their own city by disbanding units and/or buying the shields needed to fill the production box: this overrides normal city production updates for AI civs, and the player will complete the Wonder on their next turn.
AI civs immediately update their production orders if beaten to a Wonder, independent of the turn's normal order of action. In the case of "nearly completed" Wonders, this means production may shift to an alternative Wonder of similar or lesser cost that will then be completed during the regular update phase.
A city constructing a Wonder enables an additional interaction to incoming trade units, "Help build WONDER", that translates the unit's entire Shield value into the Wonder's production progress. This is more efficient than manually disbanding units, which will only supply half their Shield value.
Obsolescence[]
Certain Wonders are subject to obsolescence, with their effects immediately terminating once the appropriate advance is discovered. Obsolete Wonders can still be built, and are denoted with an asterisk (*) in the city production list; they will still contribute to the controlling civ's score.
Lost Wonders[]
Wonders are immune to sabotage and are never destroyed when the host city is captured. However, if the city itself is destroyed, the Wonder is deemed "lost", and its effects nullified. The Apollo Program and Manhattan Project are unique, providing permanent effect for the rest of the game even if the Wonders are later lost.
Strategy[]
Construction of a Wonder is a considerable investment of a city's time and resources. Wonders with city-specific effects may be desired in cities with limited local production; ensuring timely completion may entail strategizing supply convoys from trade units and/or disbanding spare military units to help reduce the treasury cost if rush-buying becomes necessary.
Wonders are rendered obsolete once any civilization acquires the nullifying advance. This means a player may strategize to undermine a rival by focusing their research to render a rival's Wonders inert: for instance, a civ owning the Great Wall that has not built City Walls in its cities discretely will be made vulnerable by Metallurgy.
At Chieftain difficulty, computer-controlled players will not begin constructing a Wonder unless the human player possesses its requisite advance. In scenarios that utilize divergent tech trees, this may mean faction-exclusive Wonders will never be built.
Modding[]
Wonders are listed in the @IMPROVE section of Rules.txt, beginning after the line for Capitalization. Their order and effects are hard-coded, but their name, cost, upkeep, and prerequisite advance can be edited. Wonder obsolescence is defined in the @ENDWONDER section. Icons are located in the upper right-hand grid of ICONS.GIF/BMP.
Test of Time also uses higher-resolution 72x40px icons, located in Improvements.bmp. Optional large Civilopedia images (242x195px) can be included as discrete files named in order of the improvement's definition in Rules.txt (40imp.bmp for the Pyramids, 41imp.bmp for the Hanging Gardens, etc.).
With the Cheat Menu enabled, a fourth button is added to the city build menu, "Cheat!", that instantly constructs the selected item. The "Edit City" menu includes an option to clear all Wonders from the city, unflagging their completion status and allowing them to be rebuilt. Lost Wonders can only be re-enabled by hex editing.
Era listing in the Wonder screen is hard-coded, as are "The" prefixes for specific Wonders.[note 3] The era headers can be customized under the @WONDERS section of Game.txt.
Notes[]
- ↑ Wonders can have a maintenance cost, but this is not used in standard rules; see the Modding section for details.
- ↑ With one exception: Darwin's Voyage only provides its bonus to the original constructor; subsequent captures do not provide free advances.
- ↑ Specifically, the Pyramids, Hanging Gardens, Colossus, Lighthouse, Great Library, Oracle, Great Wall, Statue of Liberty, and Eiffel Tower.
See also[]
- Wonder in other games
| Civilization II Wonders [edit] | |
|---|---|
| Ancient World | |
| Renaissance | |
| Industrial Revolution | |
| Modern World | |
| Civilization II [edit] |
|---|
| Conflicts in Civilization • Fantastic Worlds • Test of Time† |
| Lists |
| Concepts |
| Miscellaneous |
| † Standalone remake with different graphics, units, etc. |