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Hi all,

I’ll be posting the dev diary on behalf of @Braindrift today, who’s taking us through the details of the Great Wonder construction feature which comes in the Heirs of Alexander pack!

Great Wonders
The Heirs of Alexander content pack will include a design-tool which allows you to assemble and construct your own Great Wonders. The tool gives you a 3D view of your construction, and once the building is completed, your creation will be represented on the world map.

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The Great Wonder construction tool window

You have 3 different categories of constructions to choose from; pyramids, towers and buildings. Each category has their own set of modules, like bottom, middle, top for towers, that can be interchanged and combined within each category to create the shape you’re going for.

The Great Wonder design window is reached from the building tab in the territory view, once there is a Wonder under construction, or completed, a fourth tab will appear that displays relevant information about your creation.

Materials
Each module has a material, the default is stone, which is considered to always be used as the main building component for a construction. Other examples are silver, ivory and marble, in total there’s 9 different materials which each affect the look on the module they’re applied to. To be able to use a material, you need to import its related trade-goods to the province in which you build the Great Wonder. If you for example have set one of the modules to be covered in silver, you need to import Precious Metals to the province. If you ever lose an import route, the progression of the construction will be halted until you’ve set up a new route for the required goods.

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Model and material variations for some towers - Edit: More variations and categories at the bottom of this post

Effects and Prestige
Your Wonder can have up to three effects, which are basically powerful modifiers, some with unique aspects that can’t be found anywhere else in the game. Some effects can only be used by unlocking the corresponding invention in the technology trees, while others are accessible to all. Each effect has four tiers, and the construction's prestige value is what decides what tier you can choose from. The fourth and final tier can’t be reached during the design phase, instead the Wonder has to age for some centuries, until it has accumulated enough prestige to be upgraded with the top tier effects. This means that the simple stone tower you built in the beginning of your journey can grow and become as powerful as the pompous gold abomination your neighbor saved up money for, but couldn’t complete until late game. Of course, this puts the burden on you to protect your cultural treasure, as prestigious constructions become highly attractive to conquer.

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Effect selection window

Costs, construction time and construction leader
The construction of a Great Wonder will be a massive undertaking to complete, even for large and advanced civilizations. There’s always an upfront cost in money from the treasury, which will be decided by category, materials and what effects you assign. The same factors affect the amount of work that needs to be done, but the final construction time is based on the number of slaves, tribesmen and freemen you have available in the province which the construction is built in.

Construction time is further affected by assigning a construction leader. Similar to military and naval leaders, there’s a significant dent in efficiency without a leader assigned, the construction speed being decreased by 25% without one. The governing stat for construction leaders is Finesse, which will speed up the construction by 5% per point.

We’ve also expanded on the character traits to make them relevant when choosing your construction leader, giving them effects such as improved slave efficiency from the Harsh trait, or some added construction prestige value from the Polymath trait.

There will also be a Political Influence cost, related to what modifiers you add to your construction. More powerful modifiers cost more PI. Upgrading or changing modifiers will also be related to a PI cost.

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The envy of your neighbors

Ancient Great Wonders
As a part of the Marius update, we’ve also brushed up the good ol’ Ancient Wonders such as Stonehenge, Colossus of Rhodes and Lighthouse of Alexandria. Each of them now have one of the tier 4 effects that you can use for your own constructions, making them both valuable assets to keep within your domain, and attractive targets for conquest. There’s also a number of events connected to the wonders, giving them some story and an additional management aspect.

/Braindrift

Edit: On popular demand, some more samples on what you can build.

Buildings
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Pyramids
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Can we get to see some kinds of buildings you can build? Because so far we've almost exclusively seen towers (I think 1 or 2 different ones) which personally I don't really think off when I think of ancient wonders. There's the Pharos, and the rest is mostly statues, tombs, temples, libraries, etc.

And well, to be honest. Those tower's aren't really selling the DLC to me - at all.
 
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Your Wonder can have up to three effects, which are basically powerful modifiers, some with unique aspects that can’t be found anywhere else in the game.

Each of them now have one of the tier 4 effects that you can use for your own constructions, making them both valuable assets to keep within your domain, and attractive targets for conquest.

(1) Have the preset monuments only one effect, or only one tier 4 effect?
(2) Can we assign them more effects if we own them?
(3) Can any monument, whether or not build by the player, have more than one tier 4 effect?
 
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I just feel sad that so much development time went into this wonders thing, when instead it could have gone to other even simpler stuff like models or maybe unique units.
Very excited for 2.0, absolute zero for great wonders.
 
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@Arheo

Will the AI be able to build those wonders? I already imagin to see those towers all over the world...

In the end: nice to have but also not really the selling point for me especially the towers. I would be more interested in Grand Temples etc. A grand Jupiter temple or a new Pantheonstyle thing would be much more interesting. I am also curious why Pyramids are a catergory. Maybe because they already exist und you have them in? Do we really have the ability to built pyramids? Strange, since there are no real Egyptians around at the time that practice that.
 
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Looks great! Except for this Great Wonder, which kinda just looks like a glorified silo or garden decoration :D I think it needs more things in the background to give a sense of how big it is! I'm imagining that lone tree as a tiny little thuja shrub!

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Will it not be too easy to "spam" great wonders to stack the effects of them to obscene levels?
I think it's implied they are really a luxury item with the myriad of costs.

I think it's a nice change to add more customization and a little 'game within the game'. Essential to have? No. Adds value, sure.

My question is, could we have the option to turn these off from the main menu to have a gameplay without them? I want the dlc, but don't want to always play with the wonders in the game for each gameplay.

Also cool that we can use trade goods for something like this...if only other buildings had these (papyrus for libraries for example)
 
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Why do you want dev time wasted on something with zero impact on gameplay?
I meant i rather have other simpler stuff like unit models than the GW because i dislike GW so much. Obviously i prefer dev time for gameplay, but we already got that with 2.0 so why say it? Also the team that develop the GW is not the main team so i would guess they can't develop stuff that affects gameplay since that is arheo's team job.
 
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I just feel sad that so much development time went into this wonders thing, when instead it could have gone to other even simpler stuff like models or maybe unique units.
Very excited for 2.0, absolute zero for great wonders.
I don't agree, this GW system feels more fun than ck2s
 
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There’s always an upfront cost in money from the treasury, which will be decided by category, materials and what modifiers you assign.

Nice to see that the chosen material matters for cost and build time, though i really hope they can be made to matter in more ways as well, like for some of these wonder-related events.

I have high expectations regarding events in 2.0 overall, but most importantly for the wonder-related events.

... the concept of wonder-specific presiege that grows over time as a requirement for upgrading seems good, and the potential for interactions between this, construction leaders and interactions between characters and families through schemes and events is huge. Its probably something content designers can flesh out more over time, but im hoping there's some good stuff in there already..!
 
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Will it not be too easy to "spam" great wonders to stack the effects of them to obscene levels?
The effects on the wonders are not stackable, if you've used an effect on one of your wonders, it won't be possible to choose the same effect again.

(1) Have the preset monuments only one effect, or only one tier 4 effect?
(2) Can we assign them more effects if we own them?
(3) Can any monument, whether or not build by the player, have more than one tier 4 effect?
1. The pre-existing monuments have 1 effect on tier 4
2. No - this is static, if you want a monument with more than 1 effect, you need to build it on your own
3. Yes - Monuments built by the player can have up to 3 effects, each of these effects can reach tier 4.

Will the AI be able to build those wonders? I already imagin to see those towers all over the world...
The AI will build their own wonders, for you to admire.. or conquer.. after all, why should your neighbour have that big shiny pyramid, they don't deserve it and it would look waaaay better in your nation.
 
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