Great Work Slots

[Moonshadow101]

The way that Great Works are distributed in-game doesn't really line up with historical realities, imo. Great Work-level construction is most often undertaken by large states with a huge well of resources to draw upon, and they tend to build them in their capitals, not spread them around in different places. The one-work-per-county limit is a constraint that makes some sense in a gamey sort of way but fails to represent how these things actually get built.

My suggestion is thus:

1. Every Province has 3 Great Work "slots."
2. Only the first slot is always active. The other two are only active if the province is currently the capital of an non-nomadic empire-level title. If this is no longer the case, these two slots (and the works they contain) become inactive again.

This system would allow Rome, for instance, to contain both the Apostolic Palace in its first slot and a ruined Coliseum in the second. An Empire that takes over Rome and moves its capital there would unlock the Coliseum's slot and have the opportunity to restore it.

Similarly, the Theodosian Walls could be removed from their currently awkward position as a castle building and become the Great Work they were clearly meant to be. Constantinople could have both the Walls and the Hagia Sophia active at game start, but if a lesser state takes over the province one of them would cease to be maintained.

 

[Almaron]

Another option; create a special type of wonder that can only be built via event; "Great City", for places like Rome, Constantinople, Venice, etc that have multiple sites that could all be considered Great Works in their own right. It'd take a HUGELY long time to build, and the upgrades would all be stylised versions of the Great Works that can normally be built...and to prevent it from being overpowered, restrict it to the capital and limit one per realm, only buildable once you've reached a certain level of power or wealth or something.

 

[Tryvenyal]

Alternatively, let the number of holdings - and how developed they are - decide if the county supports 0,1,2 or freaking 3 great works. Where only very developed counties can have 2 or 3.
I don't think "empire capital" should be a stated requirement but it should be close to impossible to reach at least 3 in another way than beeing a long term empire capital.