Overview
A Rising Tide wonder tierlist. No BS.
About this Guide
Wonders are not only great examples on how the future could look for us as humans, they can also have a huge impact on how you’re playing in Rising Tide! To fully interpret the tierlist, you’ll propably need to understand how and especially WHY I ranked certain wonders in a tier, but first let me define what those tiers actually mean:
Tier 1 would be universally awesome. They provide the most utility, are easy to research, quickly built and provide great value. These are propably the best wonders one could get.
Tier 2 are above average, meaning that they are propably a bit trickier to acquire but the bonus they provide is worth the investment.
Tier 3 wonders are usually okay. They’re either a niché pick, are hard to tech or provide a mediocre bang for buck value.
Tier 4 wonders shouldn’t be worth your time, have terrible placing on the techweb or the boni are outright bad.
I recommend pressing CTRL + F and searching for the wonder you’re looking for, if you’re not intrested in reading the whole guide!
Tier 1
Dimension Folding Complex
All units recieve +2 Sight.
Information is the key to success in Civlization. Knowing where great spots for a city are, what kind of composition your enemies army is made of are just two of the many tactical possibilities that this wonder provides. Sadly, this needs to be assembled via the artifact system.
Machine-Assisted Free Will
Science cost of Leaf Techs reduced by 20%
This is simply too good to ignore. Requires a bit of luck through the artifact system though. It should still be your #1 priority when combining artifacts, that’s how usefull this thing is.
Master Control
Free Maintenance and +1 movement for Worker Units.
Easy to research and build while providing lot’s of utility and it’s saving you money. Master Control is just wonderful (no pun intended).
Panopticon
All Military Units receive +1 Sight. +5 Orbital Strike Range.
The hybrid between Dimension Folding Complex and Stellar Codex. Comes into the game earlier (or reliably earlier) and helps you scout the map.
Resurrection Device
Benefits from positive Health Levels increased by 50%.
Health problems should be abundant once you reach the midgame and while this wonder is in the outer ring of the techweb, it still provides great value foryour whole empire.
Tier 2
Benthic Auger
+2 Production from Coast terrain worked by this city. Aquatic Only.
This wonder alone can kickstart a city to get like +20 production, which is AWESOME. It’s also relatively cheap.
Crawler
+25% Production for Buildings and Wonders.
GREAT synergy with the industry virtue-tree (especially standardized architecture). Also makes you sh*t more wonders in the city the crawler is built in.
Drone Sphere
Worker actions and Explorer Expedition are completed 50% faster.
Faster expeditions means denying your enemy ressources quicker and you’ll need to build less workers. Great value overall.
Euphoric Strand
+1 Science from Coast terrain worked by this city. Aquatic Only.
Once again a wonder for aquatic cities. Fills the same spot as Benthic Auger, just for science this time.
Guo Pu Yaloan
Culture cost for new Virtues reduced by a percentage equal to this city’s Population. Aquatic Only.
This can easily safe you a lot of time, easy to acquire and it’s progressively scaling to become even better.
Marcov Eclipse
Military Units fight at full strength even when damaged.
Pretty self explanatory. If you wanna go for a domination victory, you better pick this up. Also helps you defend against enemies, aliens etc.
As the author of the Civ V Nation tierlist said about Japan (the same bonus as this wonder):
“If you want to play civ like you play call of duty, look no further.”
Nanothermite
Ranged, Air, and City Strike attacks are 25% stronger.
Just to get that straight: Your cities’ ranged attacks will be stronger, your air units will be stronger, your artillery will be stronger, your submarines will be stronger AND your rangers will be stronger. Overall great value for one wonder. I’d actually rank this in tier 1 if it wouldn’t be in the same tech as the exodus gate, so Purity players get this one for “free”.
Tesselation Foundry
Military Units complete 20% faster
Planetwide 20% production boost for military units. Really great for Supremacy players, cause of all that mad synergy bonus for making your units hold hands.
Quantum Politics
Increases Virtue acquisition by 15%
Guo Pu Yaloan with a flat percentage buff instead of a scaling one. Both fill the same roll though.
Tier 3
Akkorokamui
Unhealth from Population reduced by 50% in this City. Aquatic Only.
With health becoming an increasingly easy to acquire ressource, this is at best a mediocre building. It’d actually become intresting if the bonus would count for all aquatic cities, and even then only for ~25 turns.
Cynosure
Gain 1 Science for every 3 Population in this City.
Prime example for a wonder you put in your capital. If you’re not playing supremacy, this propably isn’t worth the time to research it though.
Ectogenesis Pod
Gain 1 Food for every 4 Population in this City.
Propably the most underwhelming wonder in this tier. It’s the prime candidate for the “nice to have, easy to ignore”-Award I just made up.
Gene Vault
All new Cities start with a free Worker Unit.
Propably the wonder that got hit the hardest by the nerf hammer. Now it’s saving you time to relocate workers to the freshly founded city, so the outpost can stand on it’s own feet sooner.
Holon Chamber
Gain Science income equal to 10% of global Energy income.
This one really hurts, because it could be the poster child of THE best wonder ever, if it wasn’t in such a terrible location in the tech web. If you want to tech EVERYTHING the Holon Chamber is really awesome though.
Human Hive
City immune to Covert Operations.
This wonder truly shins if you play a multiplayer round against ARC, otherwise it’s only an average wonder you can put into your capital to prevent the AI siphoning energy or whatever they do…
Memetwork
Affinity Level requirements for Units, Buildings, and Wonders are reduced by 1.
Would be awesome if affinity wasn’t so easy to come by. Niché application for the hybrid units.
Precog Project
Military Units can achieve two additional levels of Veterancy.
Once again: Nice to have but it propably won’t be a game changer in 99% of the cases.
Promethean
City no longer produces Unhealth.
As with every health related wonder, it’s not really worth your time because health is easy to come by. Limited application with a manufactury spammed city.
Relativistic Data Bank
-1 Intrigue per turn in all Cities
Like the Human Hive, it’s a lot better in multiplayer rounds. Still negates most of the damage covert agents can do to your cities.
Xenomalleum
+5 Petroleum, Titanium, and Geothermal resources.
All of these ressources are easy to come by. Besides that, the wonder is on the outter ring of the techweb, so it’s propably easier to simply pop a new city if you desperately crave these ressources. Still has a niché role for a run with very few cities/only one city.
Tier 4
Abyssal Mirror
Orbital Units launched from this city may overlap the coverage area of other Orbital Units by 1 tile.
Meh. Orbital Units are just terrible. Even though this is propably the best Satellite related wonder, it’s still not worth your time.
Ansible
Affinity XP is gained 25% faster
Great bonus, but it’s WAY too late into the game to make a difference. Easily ignorable.
Archimedes Lever
Enemy units within 2 tiles of this City suffer 10 attrition damage each turn.
Little to no practical use. It’s an active defense that doesn’t actively prevent your enemy from moving. In a best-case scenario, i can see this used with a ring of units around the city you built your mindflower/exodus gate/emancipation gate in. But even then 10 damage is next to nothing.
Armasail
City suffers 50% less damage from ranged attacks.
I think the problem with the Armasail is that it doesn’t scale well with already existing defensive buildings. It’s relatively easy to get all of them teched, built and applies to every city you own, not just one. With that out of the way, having defense against ranged attacks isn’t actually that bad. But there’s still better, cheaper and more reliable options.
Bytegeist
Virtue Tier Synergy bonus requirements are reduced by 1.
Just to get that straight: Bytegeist is terrible. The synergy boni are generally speaking not worth pursuing and IF you’re really going for lots and lots of culture there are better options to amass culture and by that take ALL the virtues to max out the bonuses you get. Also, to get a full synergy bonus you’d still need to drop 14 virtues into one tree. It’s terrible. Don’t take it, like ever. Fo’ real.
Daedalus Ladder
+10% Food, Science, Production, Energy and Culture in this City.
Daedalus Ladder wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t in a terrible location of the techweb. It costs almost the same as your affinity victory condition (Exodus-/Emancipationgate or Mindflower) and gives you a 10% boost to all yields. Which at that point of time stops losing relevance, because you could’ve built your victory condition. Simply said, the location ruins the fun.
Deep Memory
Gain 1 Culture for every 3 Population in this City
The culture cousin of the Cynosure. Thing is, you’ll need lots of research to gather all those affinity points from techs to win the game. You don’t need all the virtues to do that. Also with a 24 population city you’re looking at 8 culture. Get a Holomatrix instead.
Dimension Folding Complex
Cities generate -50% Unhealth from population.
At this point I’m repeating myself: Everything that boosts health on wonders is stupid. Move along.
Faraday Gyre
Energy Maintenance for buildings and improvements reduced by 50% in this city
If you’re having trouble amassing boatloads of energy, you’re propably doing it wrong. Even though cheap as f*ck, is not worth the turns it requires.
Mass Driver
+1 Range and +25% Strength for this City.
I guess this would be good if the bonus would apply to all cities, one city puts it in the same spot as the Archimedes Lever. Also take into consideration, that you can simply stack defensive buildings in every city and they’ll also be crazy fortresses that can hardly be stomped.
New Terran Myth
+2 Culture from International and Station Trade Routes
Directing your trade routes to your own cities is way better than giving your enemies a lot of science for free. And 2 CPT isn’t good at all at the gamestage the New Terran Myth comes into play.
Quantum Computer
Free Maintenance and +50% duration for Orbital Units.
Orbital Units are bad. Energy is not a problem. Enough reason to skip this wonder.
Stellar Codex
+8 Orbital Coverage
I’m repeating myself: Orbital Units are still bad, I haven’t changed my mind since the Quantum Computer.
Tectonic Anvil
+5 Production from Canyon
I can’t even imagine how sh*tty this wonder is. Canyons only yield 2 PPT, with the most expensive wonder in the game they now give 7 instead. So let’s be liberal with this example and say that you have waited ~200 rounds until you got bored enough to actually build this thing. You purposefully blocked yourself for 200 turns to turn a crappy tile into a less crappy one. Now you have 3 canyon tiles that can be worked. They’d need to be used for ~90 turns to actually pay for the Tectonic Anvil. This is the worst. Don’t even dare building this.
Take note that titanium yields +5 PPT for simply putting a mine onto the tile.
Xenodrome
Provides a small positive influence to Alien opinion each turn, and negative Alien opinion recovers twice as quickly.
Who cares? 100 rounds into the game you can commit genocide against every alien on the planet without even caring. Pop down the ultrasonicfence, get the immunity for trade routes and you wouldn’t even notice.
Xenonova
Penalties from negative Unhealth Levels reduced by 50%.
Perfect last words for this guide: You’ll have enough health. You’d literally have to annex three nations at once to get into negative health.