Ever destroy wonders?

[James the Red]

Do you always keep them when you capture them, or do you go for the instant loot?

Any roleplay involved that you follow?

[Kull]

Do you always keep them when you capture them, or do you go for the instant loot?

Any roleplay involved that you follow?

Actually, you can't destroy them. All uniques are levels in four different "hinterland_road" buildings, and by definition the hinterland buildings can't be destroyed. Other examples include roads and farms.

Edit: One thing you'll see with the next release are a number of "wonders" that start off damaged, and you'll have to repair them in order to gain the benefits. Previously that was only true of the Makedonian Royal Tombs, but now there are others (and the damage level isn't necessarily 100%)

[Imperial Pudding Head]

Actually, you can't destroy them. All uniques are levels in four different "hinterland_road" buildings, and by definition the hinterland buildings can't be destroyed. Other examples include roads and farms.

Edit: One thing you'll see with the next release are a number of "wonders" that start off damaged, and you'll have to repair them in order to gain the benefits. Previously that was only true of the Makedonian Royal Tombs, but now there are others (and the damage level isn't necessarily 100%)

This is really nice, I always find it odd that out of all the uniques only the mines and royal tombs of makedonia are damaged, I thought Alexander did a pretty good job of trashing places like persepolis and ekbatana.

But I'm still wondering why are the uniques destruction proof kull? How am I going to reenact destroying and salting carthage as rome if I can't destroy the temples and port there?!
Not to mention the rp potential of making them destructible, like tearing down the collosus of rhodes as makedonia. There's also the fact that during this period burning and looting historical monuments were a thing, whether for financial reasons or simply because the winning side really hates the opposition

[Kull]

This is really nice, I always find it odd that out of all the uniques only the mines and royal tombs of makedonia are damaged, I thought Alexander did a pretty good job of trashing places like persepolis and ekbatana.

But I'm still wondering why are the uniques destruction proof kull? How am I going to reenact destroying and salting carthage as rome if I can't destroy the temples and port there?!
Not to mention the rp potential of making them destructible, like tearing down the collosus of rhodes as makedonia. There's also the fact that during this period burning and looting historical monuments were a thing, whether for financial reasons or simply because the winning side really hates the opposition

This goes wayyyy back to the original design philosophy, but I seem to recall that one of the major reasons was this: "The human player can destroy Wonders and generate large amounts of cash, but the AI will never use that feature, so it's an exploit". The other factor, much more dear to my heart, is that we only use 4 buildings for ALL the Wonders. That means 9 levels each and potentially 7 structure-types (one per culture) at each level, so theoretically we can have 252 completely "unique" buildings in just these four structure trees. And we're already at 150 or so.

BUT. Building-types at each level must share the same cost. So if we were to make these destroyable, the next issue is you have to align all seven structures at each level to ensure it's appropriate that they all have the same destroy-for-cash value. It's an extra degree of complexity that was NOT part of the original design process. Complicating things further, you can't just randomly move structures from one building or level to another. What sets each structure apart at each level, is the ability to assign bonuses based on "hidden resources". So you have to make sure that culture-specific structures at each level don't rely on the same HRs (or else you'd give extra bonuses to the wrong buildings.

So even if we wanted to make some destructible (keeping in mind that some never could be, such as Border Trade resources or the Silk Road), you'd have to deconstruct a delicately balanced system and then figure out how to put it all back together again without messing other things up. And that doesn't even begin to address the issue of "well, which ones *should* be destroyable and how much would they be worth?"

Who knows, if the team ever wanted to revisit the matter, you could probably start off with a new destroyable building tree and then migrate over a select group of wonders, but I wouldn't hold my breath on this!

[Imperial Pudding Head]

This goes wayyyy back to the original design philosophy, but I seem to recall that one of the major reasons was this: "The human player can destroy Wonders and generate large amounts of cash, but the AI will never use that feature, so it's an exploit". The other factor, much more dear to my heart, is that we only use 4 buildings for ALL the Wonders. That means 9 levels each and potentially 7 structure-types (one per culture) at each level, so theoretically we can have 252 completely "unique" buildings in just these four structure trees. And we're already at 150 or so.

BUT. Building-types at each level must share the same cost. So if we were to make these destroyable, the next issue is you have to align all seven structures at each level to ensure it's appropriate that they all have the same destroy-for-cash value. It's an extra degree of complexity that was NOT part of the original design process. Complicating things further, you can't just randomly move structures from one building or level to another. What sets each structure apart at each level, is the ability to assign bonuses based on "hidden resources". So you have to make sure that culture-specific structures at each level don't rely on the same HRs (or else you'd give extra bonuses to the wrong buildings.

So even if we wanted to make some destructible (keeping in mind that some never could be, such as Border Trade resources or the Silk Road), you'd have to deconstruct a delicately balanced system and then figure out how to put it all back together again without messing other things up. And that doesn't even begin to address the issue of "well, which ones *should* be destroyable and how much would they be worth?"

Who knows, if the team ever wanted to revisit the matter, you could probably start off with a new destroyable building tree and then migrate over a select group of wonders, but I wouldn't hold my breath on this!

Riiight... I completely forgot about the underlying buildings system. Never thought that's actually how you guys handled the wonders. It makes sense now
Welp, Now that I think of it it's not really worth it to turn the building system inside out for a small rp-related change, not to mention the bugs. I guess I'll just have to pretend to destroy the wonders while playing through the game

[Kull]

Riiight... I completely forgot about the underlying buildings system. Never thought that's actually how you guys handled the wonders. It makes sense now
Welp, Now that I think of it it's not really worth it to turn the building system inside out for a small rp-related change, not to mention the bugs. I guess I'll just have to pretend to destroy the wonders while playing through the game

No, it was a good question. And there's nothing written in stone that says it couldn't be revisited at some point, although it would require a 5th building dedicated entirely to destroyable wonders (that's the only way to do this without risk of screwing up the existing system). Pretty far down the priority list, though.

[Dooz]

Riiight... I completely forgot about the underlying buildings system. Never thought that's actually how you guys handled the wonders. It makes sense now
Welp, Now that I think of it it's not really worth it to turn the building system inside out for a small rp-related change, not to mention the bugs. I guess I'll just have to pretend to destroy the wonders while playing through the game

Maybe there are console commands for removing buildings to help facilitate the RP?