Wonder related questions

[Suddhodana]

What are the correct powers of the wonders?

I ask because neither the Celtic or the Norse increases fish-farm output (unless it's only the output by the villagers, and not by my hand) and they seem to be switched.

In addition, some other questions:

1 How long should it take to get an artefact? It takes me ages. And sometimes it never happens. On Land 2, I had a rock in the 2nd village (The Indian one) and the rock glowed, but no icon showed up over it. This was after about 10 nights of dancing with around 15-20 people dancing around it.

2 How do you know it's fully charged?

3 Also, what is the point of the Storm Miracle? Just "Shock and Awe?" Because it doesn't help trees grow.

4 What does it mean when my village becomes "disillusioned?"

5 Can you teach your creature to feed/fill the wood and food for the store by himself without leashing? Mine never seems to do it (I have the Zebra.).

6 Same for the worship site?

7 How do you increase your maximum amount of stored mana from prayers? I know you can increase it with sacrifices, but with praying it hits a certain limit. I think it's population, is that true?

8 Is there a list of what actions/miracles are considered evil and what is not? Beacuse I've heard Storm is considered evil, even though the first level of it does no damage and only rains.

 

[Okapidragon]

Ah, a treasure trove of questions I have the answers to.  :laugh2

The wonders I remember are:
Celtic: Storm, water miracles.
Norse: Food, wood and water.
Japanese: Heal miracles, and DOES decrease desires, though I might be imagining it; Too many variables.
Aztec: All destructive miracles (megablast increase and extreme, fireball, and lightning).
Indian: Increases speed of the people and strength of lightning and I think storm; I think it is supposed to increase birth rate, but I observed no change.
Greek: Wolves and birds.
Egyptian: Birds.
All wonders make majour additions to influence, making it so if you use my strategy in Land 2, which is to spam-build wonders, which also increase impressiveness, making each subsequent one bigger (and easier to build, since it makes you produce more wood), you can reach Lethys's temple before you take even a single other village. Proceed to burn down his temple, knowing that this will make you evil and destroy some villages.

(Protip: If you use the slow-motion and pause settings, and collect bird miracles from the dispenser starting as soon as you get them, you can spam birds over Lethys' villages, converting them all at one time and then quickly burn his temple with fireballs from one of the villages (don't remember which), and win the land without losing your creature.  :woot )

1: It depends on impressiveness. To see how much belief you have in a village you own, hover over the village center. Birds, heal increases, and all kinds of miracles except wolves are decent for gaining belief, just try not to destroy the village, or they will rebuild instead of dancing. By the end of Land 2, I typically have at least 8000 belief, though sometimes the maximum, 9500 (OVER 9000!!!), in my Norse starter village, and about fifteen artifacts. (Protip: throw all the dud singing stones through the vortex in Land 1... AND THROW THE ACTIVE ONES TOO. Right next to the vortex is an active singing stone on the side of the mountain. Every time it disappears into the vortex, a new one appears. These are great artifacts: Easy to see from high above, unbreakable, and easily arranged in a ring around a scaffold spot.)

2: When one is fully charged it gets the symbol. After that, instead of gaining strength, it gains duration--It will stay fully charged for longer when used to convert a village. But it doesn't make wonders any bigger, or give any more belief, and they do not deplete when used for wonders. (Protip: Indian wonder makes people worship and dance faster, too. :: )

3: Yep. Shock and awe. It doesn't put fires out, either. But the increase will set things on fire with lightning. This is useful if you want to attack something with lightning that is far out of your influence with lightning, as you can control the direction of the cloud using aftertouch. Extreme makes an effing huge tornado, which I enjoy using to rip up entire villages. I actually prefer it to the visually boring megablast extreme.

4: It means they are unhappy with you. If you get that message, you are probably a good god at the moment and your village has high desires or its belief is dropping from lack of attention. It means people are going Atheist. If people are converting to another god, it will say another god is attacking your village.

5: Yes. He needs to know:
-How to use the village store. Leash him to the village store or to a person that is using the village store with the Leash of Learning, or just let him wander around town if he is an ape creature (the zebra and horse might work too, they are pretty intelligent).
-To cast the miracle at the village store. Wear the leash of learning and cast the miracles into the store. Never cast them on the ground, because he need to know that they belong in the store.

6: No. I have never managed to teach a creature to feed worshipers. He will watch them and learn to dance though. 

7: I believe it is population-based. I don't pay much attention to it anymore, as lately my strategy uses so many miracles and eternal shields and the such and my population rises so quickly that it never really hits the limit. In empire-builder maps, after you get going you seem to both get worship points faster and hit the limit less often, so I think the cap is based on population.

8: Storm is considered evil because it scares people.
Birds: passive/neutral (only impressive).
Wolves: aggressive and neutral (idk, I guess if the wolves do the damage you don't take the blame. It gets no belief points, though). (Protip: Only one use for these. Make a couple of big Greek wonders and cast a few wolf miracles on an enemy town. Everyone will die, and you will have no drop in alignment. Follow it by putting one missionary in the town, wait ten seconds for them to change clothes, and the town is yours! Remember to repopulate it.)
Lightning: Aggressive, Variable. (if you kill predators (wolves, lions, etcetera, and yes, this includes wolves you produce, it increases your alignment, neutral if you use it on nothing, evil otherwise).
Fireball: Aggressive, variable (neutral if used on ground or trees, evil if used on buildings or people).
Megablast: Aggressive, variable (if it doesn't hit anything, it is neutral).
Storm: Aggressive, evil (the only one that is always evil; I guess technically if it doesn't come in range of anything it might be neutral).
Heal: Passive, good.
Food: Passive, good.
Water: Passive, variable (it can be neutral if used on bare ground or wild trees).
Wood: Passive, good.
Shield: Passive, neutral.
All creature miracles: Creature, neutral.

The definitions of the miracles are passive, aggressive and creature, but I included the alignment impact they seem to have. Wolves is technically passive, but I consider it aggressive. In Kilroy's Training Ground and all the other maps that use the plot with every single miracle dispenser these are divided into three sections for easy identification. Passive miracles as a rule are never evil, though they can be put to evil use (bouncing rocks off of a physical shield for greater accuracy, anyone? Or blocking an enemy god from putting out fires in your village), aggressive miracles can go either way but are usually used for evil, and creature miracles are neutral, even the aggressive and loving creature miracles.


Hope all that helped!   

 

[Suddhodana]

1 About the Norse/Celtic Wonders, it says on the Norse one (although I think they might be switched) that it increases fish-farm yield. Is this true?

2 Also, the Celtic wonder ONLY increases Storm, not Water (Norse does that, which I think only makes it longer duration in your hand) so what's the point of the Celtic one other than impressiveness?

Also: As for teaching him how to fill the Store, I did that. He knows HOW to, because I've seen him do it. However it doesn't do it on his own accord unless leashed. Is there a way to get him to do it by himself without leashing or me prodding him?

.edit.

So wonders powers stack? Okay, that's nice to know. I know that you can increase their size with additonal impressiveness/belief, correct? Same goes for circles of artefacts, no?

Artefacts depend on impressiveness, belief, or population? If it's the first, where do I find that statistic?

And as to your second answer, you can use half-way charged artefacts then to persuade a village to your side?

Also, is there a decent way to produce some wood? Same goes for food, in the 3rd land, I have a major problem producing enough food for my first village. They consistantly want food. I know they do usually, but it's more like 85%+ desire rather than the usual 20%~...

Argh, I keep thinking of more questions. I apologize! Is there a way to make a different wonder? Say if you capture an Indian village, can you make THEIR wonder?

Also, thanks for all the answers!

 

[AppleApe]

All the wonder related stuff is from the strategy guide.
Aztec Wonder: 
increases the power of aggressive miracle such as Mega Blasts & maybe the storm miracle, each village also worships harder.
Celtic Wonder: 
Increases the power of resource miracles such as food & wood.
Egyptian Wonder: 
Reduces the amount of damage your creature takes.  Reduces the prayer power cost of the teleport
miracles.  Also, increases the power of the winged creature miracle.
Greek Wonder: 
Increases the power of pack of animals miracle. Increases the birth-rate in allied villages.
Indian Wonder: 
Increases the power of the lighting miracle and increases the speed at which villagers can move  (you'll see some results out of this one).
Japanese Wonder: 
Increases the power of heal miracles and reduces the appetite for food in villages.
Norse Wonder: 
Increases the yield from fish farms and increases the strength of weather miracles.  Also, reduces the wood cost of all buildings.
Tibetan Wonder: 
Decreases the desires of all the people in the tribe.  Also, increases the power of shield miracles.
To build a wonder in another village you just have to make a work shop in village that then produce 7 scaffolds. If you take 7 norse scaffolds to another village it will end up as a norse wonder.
Oh you need 3 scaffolds to make a work shop.
I think that covers your first questions in both posts. 
As for artifacts, if you want them fully charged you have keep it one village and DON'T pick it up. 
The same goes for your creature.  As for telling the difference between a fully charged one and one thats not, the one that is fully charged will have your symbol above it and it will only have your symbol if it is in its created village.
The storm miracle is more than shock and awe.  At least in my experience it was worthless for tree
watering, but can slowly water/grow fields and can be powered up twice.  The increase adds lightning
to it.  An extreme adds a tornado to the rain and lightning.
No offense, Okapidragon, in my experience with the game your creature is able to help villages on his own.  It just might take him a while before he wants to do it, and alignment might be a factor to, but if you just want to see him do it then try casting the creature compassion miracle on him.
If you cant find a one shot on land 2 then try this map:
http://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=156
Hmm...
Evil miracles - well, every aggressive miracle can be used in a nice or good way.  For instance, the mega blast miracle can be used to destroy some hungry wolves, and the pack of wolves the same way.
They could eat some attacking leopards, but if you want a list of  "if your good no
touch miracles" then here it is:
Mega Blast and increase and extreme...
Lightning and increase and extreme...
Fire Ball and increase and extreme...
And Pack of Wolves.
Everything else, except for storm increase and extreme, is neutral and good.
As for actions, the bad are throwing rocks at houses and buildings, throwing people and killing animals
for no reason, it is also bad to freeze  and then torture a creature, everything else is basic or good.
I think that about answers your questions in both posts.             
     
                                 

 

[Sier]

I didn't bother reading the whole topic. I just wanted to post to let you know I've studied the wonders to an extent, and wrote up an entire section for them on my failed site. I'll post what I have in this topic in a bit, if I remember... :suspect

Basically, the information in-game and in most guides is just plain wrong on what the wonders actually do. Some of them seem to be switched out, some of them changed entirely, some of them don't even have a clear function.

 

[Okapidragon]

Yeah, AppleApe, the manual is wrong. It says the same thing as in-game. It would seem the reason is that they took out and moved a lot of features at the last minute, as can be seen in the difference between the Tip of the Day screenshots and the actual game, and didn't correct the manual and in-game help.  I can't really say just how I feel about Lionhead; They make my favourite games, but they are also kinda a bunch of incredibly retarded children that tend to mess everything up and leave a patina of bugs and incompletion on everything that they touch. Or maybe we can just blame it all on Molyneaux.

Anyway, @Suddhona:
1: No wonder increases fish-farm or farm yield as far as I know. If it does, it only does so by making the rate of production, not the maximum quantity, higher. But I don't think it does. Like I said, they took a lot of things out and changed a lot of things.

2: Huh. Thought it increased Water too. Well, storm is useful--If you are an evil/aggressive god. Sending a super-impressive, super-destructive Storm Increase or Extreme over an enemy village is completely devastating, and doesn't require a large influence ring, since you can guide the storm to go that way on its own. But Wonders increase your influence ring and your impressiveness by a LOT, which is useful no matter what. Anyway, I guess there aren't really any powered-up storm miracles in Land 3, so it is a moot point outside of skirmish. ??? But you always have Norse wonders where you need them.

Yep. Wonders stack. When I play Land 2, by the end I am making about 80000-160000 food and well over 100000 wood per miracle, which is more than enough to last me through Land 3 if I cast it twenty times or so each into the vortex--A lot of it disappears or goes in the water, but there is still an absurd amount when I go through.

Artifacts charge faster if you have more people that believe in you more. Impressiveness is not a built-up stat like the others, it is a measure of how much belief an action gets you--So a fully-charged artifact, birds miracle or extreme miracle has very high impressiveness, a rock or tree being thrown is very low. The artifact grows impressive more quickly with more belief and people in your village, and also if your people are happy.

Yeah. They won't last as long or necessarily be as impressive as fully-charged artifacts, but I use them in skirmish games all the time where the enemy god(s) move quickly.

I used to have resource troubles in Land 3 too. No worries. There are a few ways around this:
-In Land 2, build a crap-tonne of wonders at belief intervals of 500-1000, so that each is substantially bigger than the last, and build as many as you can when you hit maximum belief. When the vortex opens (wait to open it the second time, if you don't use "special methods" to take all the villages before Lethys can react), cast food and wood into it. This also has you covered in Land 2. Note that scaffolds rarely survive the vortex for some reason, the bigger they are the less likely they are to survive, so don't bother with those.
-In Land 1, your village will be pretty much self-sufficient. If they need food or wood, get it from the forest, fields or fish farms; DO NOT use the various horses, lambs, cows or pigs. Put every single animal into the vortex. All together they are ~150000 food.
-Do the same in Land 2; Anything from the original herds you sent over should be put in the vortex (use bookmarks and some patience), and any animals you can find in the land; There is a HUGE herd of horses in a field near the lake in the middle, wink wink nudge nudge. Just don't send any wolves, lions, etcetera through, or they will eat the others, as well as your people. All of these together are so much food I don't know how much it is.
-Always have obsessive hording syndrome. In Land 4, keep whatever was left in Land 3 (you should still have a substantial amount of livestock, use it, though your resources from earlier will likely be nearly used up, as the Land 3 people seem to be hungrier than elsewhere), and then QUICKLY, before the first actual rain of fireballs comes and starts burning your hard-won prizes, do the first Simon-Says bell tower puzzle to destroy the stone causing the fireballs. Proceed to build as many Norse wonders as you can, as big as you can, using whatever you can find in ways of wood, while you do the rest of the land. At the end, put whatever is left of your livestock and as many food and wood miracles as you have the patience to cast into the vortex (always remember that the best source of wood for building wonders after your first Norse wonder is the powered-up wood miracle).
-Lastly, always remember: If you send ten million food through the vortex in the form of miracles or stacks of grain, you'll have 100000 when you go to the next land, because so much gets lost, but if you send 200 cattle through you will have 200 cattle when you go through, maybe minus one or two, all of which will have the same food value as before. It is always better to transport resources as cattle and trees than as piles of resources.

Lastly, if you caprture a village with a wonder the wonder becomes yours, taking the benefits away from the enemy and giving them to you, and you can build from the workshop of any town you have the wonder of that town. If a town doesn't have a workshop, lay down a size-three scaffolds from your workshop and they will build one. If you take a seven-scaffold Wonder scaffold to a different town, say from an Indian town to a Celtic town (again, wink wink nudge nudge) it will still be the original kind of wonder, so, in this case, an Indian wonder in a Celtic village, but it will be as big as the belief in the town in which it is built warrants, not the original town. So if you have a Greek town with 8124 belief and a Norse town with 2418, and you want to build a Norse wonder, make the scaffold in the Norse workshop but build the wonder on Greek land so you get a bigger wonder with more benefits.

Feel free to ask more, I love answering 'em.  :laugh2

 

[AppleApe]

I wasn't saying the guide was right, fact is I haven't had results (aside from influence change) from any wonder aside from the Indian one which makes people move very fast.
The reason I relayed information to this topic was because I thought that to get results from it you had to build several wonders (like more than 4).  :rolleyes  :suspect
I agree, I do like answering these questions even if a quarter of my data base is wrong...  :laugh2
So keep em' coming Suddhodana! 

P.S So there is a way to have your creature at the start of land 3?               

 

[Okapidragon]

Nope, can't have your creature at the start of Land 3. But you can get rid of Lethys and still have your creature to, say, take care of villages while you transport things or turn into a zebra or impress the last few villages while you transport things on Land 2. When you go to Land 3, your creature is automatically chained up.

The easiest way to do it is using the Cache's Pack cheats, but it is possible without them.

Also, only one wonder is required. Most wonders just make your miracles more powerful; For example, if you have a food miracle and a  Norse wonder built, then when you use food it will say "NORSE POWER" in a big deep tribal-male voice (though sometime it is a very esoteric young English woman voice with an echo applied) and the words NORSE POWER NORSE POWER NORSE POWER in bright red will spiral down to your hand and rotate it in a ring, and the output of the miracle will be much larger--It goes from I think a bit over a thousand to about twice that with one smallish wonder. More wonders just make it more effective.

 

[AppleApe]

Rats (no big deal).
But, I thought I had an easy way out of land 3 (with retaining good or neutral alignment). 

 

[Gremxula]

AppleApe... If  you have just a single artifact ,  the run through time for L3 is about an hour, without it will take longer.
A Brief guide to the land as I play it.....
Help the  first village with extra wood  a much as you can for about 5-10m. the miracle at the base of the waterfall can help lots.
Use your  Artifact in the nearest Jap field as soon as you can reach it.
Expand the Jap village. this will give you access to the poison mushrooms on the  Guru's  mountain and  the  invincible guy( he has his own influence).
This takes a bit of practice but  it  will only take about 2m next time...
From the standard view throw the mushroom  N toward the enemy main village.
Now throw the  Guy past and to the left or west of the  mushroom .  He will then put his influence so you can throw again.
Repeat until you can place the mushroom in the main enemy village.
Do the same with a TC scaffold but place as near as you can to the enemy Temple.
Thats about 75% there without any "evil"

 

[AppleApe]

I forgot about that guy that can't die.
That might be my easy way out of land 3.
Thanks Gremxula! 

 

[Okapidragon]

You can get the guy before you get the first village...

And if you do the first village last, Lethys won't retaliate. Granted, that's kind of exploiting issues in the game, but I say it is simply clever.

 

[AppleApe]

Agreed. 

 

[Sier]

I forgot to post the article yesterday... And now I can't find it. :blues:

Oh well. I'm sure it's already been discussed before. The Japanese wonder increases Offensive Miracle Power, not the Aztec, for example. Norse increases the power of food and wood miracles, and some others, maybe even water if I remember correctly. Since those basic miracles are usually the most useful, I find Norse to be the best wonder.

And more on that Japanese wonder: Okay, it supposedly increases offensive power with your miracles... But how? I mean, what does it do, exactly? Lightning is still mostly for looks or killing things, fireballs for steady damage that's cheap and easy to use, and megablast for ultimate destruction. The wonder doesn't seem to change things any.

 

[Suddhodana]

Well as far as what I've seen (I've only tested 2 Wonders) this is what the Norse/Celtic do:

Norse: Powered up Food/Wood/Water miracles. Other than that, I don't know. It doesn't increase fish farm YIELD, but as someone mentioned, it may increase the speed at which it fills. I didn't test this.

Celtic: JUST STORM. That is IT. I'm not sure past that because I didn't test it a bunch. I personally think Storm is useless unless you're evil because it STILL gives evil points for using it at level 1 even. Bah!

 

[Okapidragon]

The Japanese wonder increases Offensive Miracle Power, not the Aztec, for example.

Uh, you sure about that?  ???  Because I have pretty distinct memory of each of those doing just what the signs said they would; You build a massive Japanese wonder or two, cast Heal Miracle Increase a few times towards the center, It says, "JAPANESE POWA" and the entire island gets healed, resulting also in a swift way to win skirmish games.

But no, though it say, "AZTEC POWA" or "INDIAN POWA" when you use the offensive miracles, they don't actually seem to change much... I've always assumed they increase the duration. :suspect

Incidentally, for those that didn't know, lightning miracle has a similar glitch to the food and wood miracle glitches that were fixed in the first patch, only it was never fixed: If you tap the miracle repeatedly, it produces INSANE amounts of destructive power, and if you are careful and tap it once or twice above each house or group of people, you can destroy (or convert) an entire village with one or two basic lightning miracles.  :woot

 

[AppleApe]

You might want to try building an Indian wonder but if you can't swing n' grab people very fast you may not want to build this wonder (it makes people move super fast).
Another thing you might try is getting some artifacts in the  previous land (they stay artifacts even when put through the vortex).  :woot
The Storm Miracle, hmm...why did Lion Head have to make villagers scared of a little drizzle, I mean, when it rains/drizzles here, I go in and grab an umbrella, go back out or I just stay in.
I don't run, I know they hadn't invented umbrellas yet but literally go back to your abode. :rolleyes
Oh did you get your creature to help villages on his own yet?  ???            

 

[GallopRider]

I'm familiar with the lightning "cheat".  I used it for my campaign of evil.  Just tap away, my good people.  Or rather, evil players...

They might not have had umbrellas, but certainly the wee little villagers are familiar with the concepts of hats.  Where are their hats?  I wear a hat out in the rain.  No umbrella needed!

Honestly, I never saw a difference between miracles with and miracles without Wonders.  :rolleyes

 

[Okapidragon]

Then you didn't build enough wonders.

Kratzean (Patrick Selter) has one map, called WunderWelt or something like that, that has hundreds of wonders (takes a little bit to load) and some miracle dispensers, see if you can find it and give it a shot. It really gives you the feeling that you are actually a god with a creed.  But for sandbox empire-builders I make for myself I always make twenty super-huge Norse wonders far off the side of the map in the same coordinates, and add a food dispenser and a wood dispenser, a workshop, and about twenty people. You only need to cast each miracle like twice for a good size village (three for wood, in the store and in the workshop) and then every few minutes once you hit the >2000 population mark.

 

[AppleApe]

Sadly none of Patrick's maps seem to work on my computer.
I put the .lnd file in the landscape's folder and the text in the Data/Scripts/Play/Grounds folder, and the game crashes!  :cry
Oh! I just thought of something brilliant! If google sketch could export as
a .lnd file I could create my maps easily!  :woot
Oh that reminds me - how do I run a .exe?