I had mistakenly thought that wonders count as a landmark playing a game yesterday. They don’t.
In a 2v2 game, playing as Abbasid (always at risk of being landmark sniped), and thought we would try a wonder victory. We were ‘winning’ by score by a good margin. However, in the final moments (~2-minutes left on the countdown clock), the opponent brought mass trebs and took down the Abassid’s only two landmarks, and I was eliminated. No biggie. The Wonder was fully intact and safely tucked away behind my teammate’s base, and he had a substantial army remaining. However, what I found was that if I am eliminated, the Wonder clock stops for my ally as well.
I recognize the loss was on me, but I wonder if this was intentional or whether this should be tweaked. What do you think?
Should Wonders be counted as a landmark?
In a team game, should the Wonder clock stop if the player that builds it is eliminated?
Conversely, in a team game, if one player is eliminated and the remaining teammate wins, does the eliminated player also win?
I’m ambivalent either way. If wonders count as a landmark, that may make Wonders too easy of a win. Flip side, Wonder victory has an unintentional weakness because you don’t just have to defend the Wonder, you have to defend the Wonder + that wonder-building player’s landmark.
If you die, you lose. If Wonders are landmarks, you don’t have the option to kill all the players landmarks if the Wonder is too well defended. Don’t think this should change. However, I’d say that for Abassyd, every new tc built should be a landmark, maybe up to a maximum of 3 or something. Just because only have two landmarks, usually right next to eachother is a very shite weakness.
Wonders exist to break stalemates/speed up the conclusion of a game. Sacred sites counter wonders with a lower timer.
If you have either win condition activated, it means the opponent must bring the fight to you. I think these win conditions are doing their job properly.
If you are unable to defend your base you should lose, especially because you just spent 12k on a wonder. I don’t think the wonder should become a desperation victory condition where it gets hid in the corner behind millions of walls hoping that you survive long enough.
Players need to be more careful with their landmarks and if some strategies become too strong to snipe them, I am sure this will get balanced.
Edit: Changing a wonder to a landmark, would also mean you can just abandon your base and remove any ability for the opponent to force you to react in response and greatly alter the dynamic of the primary win condition. You need to defend your base and your team must help you or you are out. Teamwork is much more important this way.
I’m essentially of this opinion as well. The reason is the “correct” way to super defend wonder in team games is just place a landmark in with the wonder, then stone wall to infinity. problem solved.
The only civ that can reliably do this is china due to having spare landmarks.
While I don’t think it’s too terrible, as it gives an out for the opponents, I essentially thought wonders were landmarks till I was sniped one game, which I genuinely was surprised by. it means other non-china civs have to predict it and potentially place a key landmark in the back just so they can build a wonder and not worry about their front (except mongols). It’s a strange thing to have to consider, when the most wondrous landmarky thing your civ has built is the wonder. And there is a counter already in place - sacred sites.
I don’t think that the ‘walling wonder abandoning base’ thing if wonder becomes a landmark, that some people describe here is a valid problem in a game where we have mongols that can pack landmarks and hide.
The problem with making a wonder a landmark is that it may have to work like normal landmarks you can repair with wood if destroyed. Depends how landmarks are coded.
Yeah, this was my experience too, as you would naturally think a wonder is considered a landmark - maybe in the context of sight-seeing, evidently not necessarily as an Age of Empires mechanic.
Now that I know how these win conditions interact, it’s not a big deal. These win mechanics do highlight some weaknesses for some civs. For example, not all Wonder victories are created equal: Abbasids would need to defend the Wonder and their main base, whereas China can build another landmark near the Wonder and the Mongols can just move their landmarks. Conversely, the Mongols can not build walls to defend their Wonders.