This would be the simplest change, and also make influence worth charging at. But who am I to have an opinion different to others

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I personally dislike World Wonders - if I want to spend enough effort, there is no reason whatsoever that I cannot recreate what some other person/group/nation did, regardless of whether or not it is worth the effort. Moreover, one of them -  the Treasury Vault (Economics technology) - is a bit ridiculous as a World Wonder. Why? Two reasons. One, it's capable of accounting for a significant fraction of my income if I have a large gildar reserve and relatively few towns. And two, why is it that I, the one who began construction on a Treasury Vault first, am the only one in the world who can make a safe place to keep all of my gold? I can understand a one-per-faction limitation on a Treasury Vault, but a one-per-world? Do all of the other Sovereigns keep sacks of gildar under their beds, or beneath loose floorboards in the palace? Is my Treasury Vault where every Sovereign keeps their gold (do they trust me to let them have their gold back in times of war)?

The reason wonders of the world are not copied all around the world is not because someone already built it, but rather because the effort required to build a copy of the wonder is great enough that whatever benefits are accrued from having it are not worth the effort, which is actually pretty close to being the case for some of the wonders in the game (e.g., Ereog's Tower if I already have a fair number of air shards). Things like the Merchantcross Bazaar are, in my opinion, always worthwhile, but it is reasonable to have some reward for focusing on one research path or another. It is also somewhat reasonable to me that the Merchantcross Bazaar is one-of-a-kind in that the first one built should be the one that most 'merchants' (the invisible people who bring gildar to your faction) in the game would theoretically already know of it and have established some form of trade route to it, and might not want to risk trying to trade in an entirely new area.

The Great Mill, on the other hand, is much more situational - I only really want to build it somewhere with high materials (and hopefully high grain) to take full advantage of its benefits, or only build it if I really need the boost to production because all of my cities are stuck with really low amounts of materials. The Great Mill is also an example of something I should be able to copy if someone else builds it first, because it is something that all factions in the game have the technology base to make possible. If it were accessible only through a technology that is randomly available, or is only available to the first faction to research it, then I might understand it being limited better.

I also think that the current World Wonders are generally available too early in the Technology Tree - getting most of them doesn't represent my dedication to developing a powerful economy or manufacturing base, it represents me getting the basic city upgrades that are almost essential to making my cities actually do anything. The Great Mill is available in the same technology as workshops, if I remember correctly, and the Merchantcross Bazaar in the same technology as markets. Either there should be similar Wonders of the World further up the technology tree (ones that actually make sense, not the Treasury Vault), or they themselves should probably move further up the Technology Tree. The Great Mill especially might make more sense with the technology that gives you mills (at least in my mind).

I think that you may have missed my point. I also don't mind that World Wonders exist. What I mind is that many of the Wonders currently in the game are things that anyone would copy if they really gave the benefits associated with the wonder. A mill which is very efficient at processing food and materials? Of course I will copy it. A vault to keep my gold in, which also gives me income based on my total wealth? I'll copy that, too. A tower that acts as an air shard? Only if I 1) have an air mage of some level, 2) have or am likely to have good air spells (i.e., I'm not focusing that air mage as a fighter or governor, but rather as a spell caster), and 3) actually need more air shards.

If you'll notice, most 'wonders' in the real world are things that are either neat to look at or took a lot of effort to build. Most of them serve little or no functional purpose, so there is little motivation to copy it. Any that do serve a purpose are either hard to copy because they need certain geographic features to work (i.e., very large dams or canals) or have aspects related to their construction which are closely guarded secrets (i.e., certain types of machinery, although that usually gets stolen/copied/reinvented/made obsolete within 100 years of development), or are very expensive (i.e., certain types of research lab such as the Large Hadron Collider, International Space Station, etc).

I agree that the mechanic of 'holding' on to a wonder by keeping it in the build queue should be revised - I see no reason why the fact that I'm building something should keep someone else from trying to build the same thing (unless, of course, we add a "Stop building that or I will invade!" diplomacy option). I just disagree with making Wonders out of things that everyone should be able to make. Wonders which give a city +5 happiness or grant some faction prestige or generate some influence each turn or act as a shard of some type or another are fine with me - these are the more abstract resources in the game and are things which I don't necessarily see as something that would be worth the effort of copying. A treasure vault that increases my treasury by 1% per turn? That is worth the effort to copy, because 1% of my treasury can be equivalent to the income of several cities, depending on my choices in developing my nation and how much of a treasury I actually have. A mill that makes everything in the city produce more efficiently? I'll copy that since I always want my factory city to spit out troops/buildings as fast as possible. A tower that gives me 1 prestige and an air shard, and takes 30 turns to build in my highest production city? I'll pass, there are usually easier ways to gain prestige and air shards, and by the time there aren't I don't really need the benefits anyways.

The biggest problem I have with the current wonders is that they are not things that are 'nice to have, but I don't really need them', they are things that are significantly better than anything else I can come up with for the rest of the game. +25% food and production to a city off of a second tier technology? There isn't anything else in the game that can match that for a single city. Increase your income by 1% of your treasury? I've had games where that is the only reason my income is positive. To make this one worse, though - it probably goes to the person who has the largest empire since they have the most cities and thus produce the most research, which means that they more rapidly finish the resources, and since they invested in researching out to Economics in the Civilization tree they probably also have the highest base income, and thus need the extra money least. If Economics made it so that you gained 1% interest on your treasury and the Treasury Vault added another 1%, I would be less bothered, but still very confused as to why only one person in the world can built a vault in which to keep money.

Essentially the current Wonders of the World are mostly bonus buildings that provide a benefit that anyone would like to take. There isn't any real reason why, having the same technology as the group that build one of the Wonders, I would not attempt to build one. If on the other hand there was an actual downside to the wonders (that Great Mill, it processes the food and materials really well, but everyone in the city is fat, lazy, and hates doing research, plus it costs a King's ransom to keep the thing running!) there would be a legitimate reason for me to consider not building one or copying the existing structure. This is in some ways the case with Ereog's Tower - I get an air shard and some prestige, but if I don't really need an air shard then I'm not that interested in occupying my city's build queue for 50 turns building it, and I'm not going to rush-build one to avoid the production time because it costs an arm and a leg. Moreover, one or two prestige probably doesn't matter to me by the time I can build Ereog's Tower, so that benefit I don't mind missing out on. The Merchantcross Bazaar I can understand from the perspective of "well, there aren't that many merchants willing to risk wandering the wilds, and they've already found a good place to sell their wares, so building one myself won't do me any good."

Wonders which grant small bonuses to prestige (for the time in the game that you can get the wonder), or which act like a shard or two, or which grant a growth bonus in a city - these are the types of wonder that I can justify why I might not bother copying them. A wonder which acts like a great factory? Unless it meant a war I'm not willing or able to fight, I'm certainly going to try to copy it. And overt wars over the theft of technology are relatively rare, so I would be justified in not expecting a military backlash for copying it. Losing a bit of my standing with the original builder would be normal, but a war involving armies? Not that likely.

@joeball123

The Great Library held the world's knowledge. It could have easily been copied...who wouldn't want all that beneficial knowledge? But it wasn't....

I think that's what Stardock is trying to get across. They're 'inventing' these buildings to BE wonders, and by that essence something that cannot be copied because of it's incredible uniqueness.

I'll agree with Rishkith in that Stardock isn't pulling off that effect very well. More flavor needs to be added to make these wonders wonderful.

I see it differently. Wonders are not so much works of engineering as they are groups of people with the old knowledge. By developing your empire you can attract them to settle in one of your cities. But you must expend some diplomatic capital and reconstruct the buildings of old. It is not so much the building as it is the people. The reason you must compete is because there is only a small number of these people that have survived the Cataclysm. 

That is my personal lore, but it is more interesting than just the same old Civ crap. The nice thing is that we can add a ton of wonders, but I want to shape mine as special guilds or castes of people that you attract by demonstrating the progress of your civilization. 

Amen, brotha.

Update: No dev response yet about this, but they are probably working on packaging our new beta version.

The cool thing that happens in my mod, now that I have tested it, is that spending 100 of your influence has a negative effect on relations. Losing 100 Influence can take all of your relations down a point or two, possibly leading to war. So if you are relying on diplomatic power to prevent war, you are better off letting your rival build the wonders. He will then lose a ton of Influence and you will have even better relations. It's a clever cost so that a nation with lots of wonder power will be disliked for building them. Influence is a powerful thing.

I dont really like the idea of wonders in this game unless it happens to be some non-buildable thing that you uncover, perhaps in one of the wastelands/wild lands.  If something along those lines happened it could possibly boost the function of the wild lands as well.  The races are all researching lost ideas, and finding some of the greater lost treasures in a wild land might be more fun than building it.

I really do like the 1 per faction type of buildings though. some more distinction for the races could be found in this area.

Devs, can you put this in?