Wonder of the World

The 28 Wonders of Civilization II:

Wonders of Antiquity Wonders of the Middle Ages Wonders of the Industrial Age
  • Colossus
  • Great Library
  • Great Wall
  • Hanging Gardens
  • Lighthouse
  • Oracle
  • Pyramids
  • Copernicus' Observatory
  • Darwin's Voyage
  • Isaac Newton's College
  • J.S. Bach's Cathedral
  • Magellan's Expedition
  • Michelangelo's Chapel
  • Shakespeare's Theatre
  • Apollo Program
  • Cure for Cancer
  • Hoover Dam
  • Manhattan Project
  • SETI Program
  • Women's Suffrage
  • United Nations


The Wonders of the World are a competitive concept in Civilization. Only one contending civilization may build each Wonder; once built, if a Wonder is destroyed by war, they may not be rebuilt. However, if one civilization conquers a city that owns the Wonder, managing not to destroy the Wonder in the process, the conquering civilization is now in possession of the Wonder and reaps the concomitant benefits.

Wonders serve a few roles in the game. They affect the outcomes of various top ten lists of various historians that flash on the screen periodically during the game. They affect the ranking of cities in the Top Five Cities of the World contest; in the words of Civilization, they add “glory that accrues to your civilization.” Really what this boils down to is points towards your final score. (Note that the civilizations that compete against you do not accrue points, and they do not have places in the Civilization Hall of Fame). Finally, Wonders have benefits that the possessing city may reap. The benefit may be as simple as making the temples in your cities more effective, to something as grand as automatically establishing embassies with all rival civilizations, and requiring them to offer peace treaties with you.

There are some drawbacks to the Wonders, however. They take a long time to build, requiring on average almost double the amount of work units that the most labor-intensive improvements to a city (for example a manufacturing plant) require. Most civilizations desire to build them, and will race you to the completion of them (a notable exception includes the Zulu tribe, which in my gaming experience hardly ever bothers to build Wonders; another racist element to the game's design).

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