Need help deciding on a Great Wonder

[Solitus]

Started as the count of Sakya in 1066, going for the Sakya Trisen achievement, maybe the "Survive till end one as well."

My capitol is Lhasa, which is mountainous and has two cities and two temples. I cannot decide which wonder to build.

Great Underground City for the extra taxes?
Royal Palace for the Retinue boost?
Great Walls?
Grand Fortress?

I almost have the empire of Tibet. I beseech thee great hive mind; I don't know which to build!

[whlightnin]

Grand Fortress is, IMO, the best all-around, since you can get both military bonuses and some personal bonuses.

[Solitus]

I could see Grand Fortress on a 769 Norse Germanic run; and you use the armory to churn out cheap quality 2 artifacts to equip your commanders.

[xalo-nacho]

if your religion or culture allows you to raid choose grand fortress. if no, the Great Underground City. In both cases you get more money.
The Palace is useful too, for intrigue and diplomacy, but i preffer the great garden for that, it increases your stats.

[Solitus]

Originally posted by xalo-nacho:

if your religion or culture allows you to raid choose grand fortress. if no, the Great Underground City. In both cases you get more money.
The Palace is useful too, for intrigue and diplomacy, but i preffer the great garden for that, it increases your stats.

What is the synergy between raiding and the grand fortress?

[Malus]

Depends on which dlcs you have. And depends on if you prefer harder to siege capital over larger armies. I would probably go for great walls at my capital for better protection against sieges.

Assuming you have all of them, i would probably build walls around my capital to make it harder to siege. Everywhere else i would build wonders that increase my income

Using royal Palace just for retinue points is a waste, as they are kinda useless. The only good thing it provides other wonders don't is 3% morale, but if you wanted to increase the strength of your units i would suggest getting horse statue instead or grand amphitheaters.

Great walls somewhat outshine grand fortress on most fronts, troops provided, siege defense and taxes.

Underground city is good for increasing your income in landlocked provinces, just make sure it provides more money than it costs on maintenance or give it so some random nomad.

[flicking]

The thing about most of the wonder buildings is that they only affect the local county. So unless you're relatively small and "building tall" the more useful stuff are things that affect your ruler, rather than your holding. If you do build on domain lands and they are an important part of your strategy, building one "retinue" gets some extra troops, and watchtowers improve your levy size enough to be worthwhile. If your capitol gets attacked a lot, maybe some of the other defensive stuff is nice.

If you build a wonder to stage 2 and fully build out its features you will often get an extra holding on the land. This is a pretty good reason to actually build to stage 2 even if you are only excited about a few options it provides.

My favorite wonders, period

Mausoleum - the funeral you can give for your predecessor can help a lot with transitions and you get the event even if you have barely started construction. The unmarked graves (+10% to plot power) are excellent and they have a number of things you can build that help with dynasty or children opinion.

University - each stage lets you build 2 wings that each add +1 to a skill. Build to at least stage 3

Here are some of my favorite wonder things:

Any wonder: Anything that improves dynasty opinion (murals, statues etc). You get a -20 for title claimants and if you have a few wonders with these features you can cancel that out quite a bit.

Lighthouse: Great Banners (+5% morale armies), Private chambers (extra fertility+private conversation). The treasure vault is an ok 3rd choice.

Great Port: The one that adds to siege speed and galleys. The rest are meh.

Gardens: three things that add +5 to plot power, +5 to plot defense and +5 to both. If you are hermetic society the herbs and fountain of youth are also good. Something that adds to fertility, plus if you want to keep building there are fun things all the way to stage 4 that are unique.

Underground City: Dungeons add to plot defense I think. A good complement to the mausoleum. Torture chamber adds +10% to cruel, and cruel vassals aren't uncommon.

Palace: Trap door helps arrest, bedchamber for fertility, sex appeal+private conversation, lots of things that add prestige, dueling room helps personal combat, sex appeal. Palaces are fun.

Church: +5% to city opinion, +5% to temple opinion, big cross +2% to same religion, maybe torture chamber for +10% cruel opinion. YMMV with other stuff and non-catholic religions but the temples and such are ok wonders, usually worth building to Level 2

[Solitus]

Interesting, thank you all for your input. I must need to play on a higher difficulty (currently playing on normal) because I have never had my capital sieged; or had issues with plot power/defense. Completely control capital duchy, make biggest army, win.

Ironically, I finished my Sakya Trisen run before I could build a great wonder, and in my White Hun run I built a harbor on a silk road port (because that much is obvious).

The wonders seem good, but I would rather spend the gold on Mercs to win wars to get more land. The Great Walls upgrading all walls in the holding is great, does it apply to new holdings that are built after the walls?

Retinue are bad if you have bad cultural retinue; but being able to field a standing army of 10k to have standing next to an enemy border when you declare war and don't have to raise your army and then march them for months to your enemies border is SUPER useful. Hell, even having the light skirmish retinue for nothing other than "I'm bigger than you, don't think about starting factions" is useful.

[flicking]

Wonders are a lot more useful in a long game than a short one, and built earlier rather than later.

That said, if you can get it built and still have a few centuries to play, the large number of small bonuses you get can be pretty helpful making your late game empires really stable. Between Wonders, artifact and bloodline accumulation you can accumulate a LOT of strange little bonuses that add up. Add tech to that and making some effort to smooth out culture/religion across your realms and you can have an idiot infant inherit and still have no real issues you don't cause yourself.