One topic in the recent PCGamer interview was wonders. The question arose whether special building projects would be more like wonders in Civilization, or more like megaprojects in Dwarf Fortress. My question is, why not both? The way I see it, they are two very different beasts that can coexist in the same game. If you don't have enough development time for both, save one for an expansion/dlc. In my opinion the smart move is to go with DF-style megaprojects first and wonders later. In part because I suspect that megaprojects done well is more exciting in a creative way, in part because megaprojects require that the game be designed with construction and engineering freedom in mind, while also giving plenty of opportunities to make use of this freedom. Implementing this later on could be difficult. Implementing wonders later should be easy on the other hand, with most of the development time being taken up by artist work. Wonders by definition are also special which sounds like it would be easier to balance in a mature game. Without having a better idea of the underlying engineering and construction possibilities in CE I can't really comment much on how I would envision megaprojects, other than that it involves machinery in series, powered machinery, machinery with input and output materials and hand-made production chains (similar to Factorio but less complex), and various means to control all of it via levers/triggers/signal inverters etc. Wonders are much simpler and I envision them as follows (drawing inspiration from civ): - Either an enhanced version of a regular type of building or something completely unique. For example, the wonder "Great Steamworks" would perform the same function as the regular building "steamworks" but with 5x increased productivity. The "Great Botanical Garden" on the other hand could be unique in its function, by doing something poetry or naturalist related that is unobtainable in other ways. - Wonders would also influence the type or "quality" of immigrants that arrive. Artistic wonders would attract more or better poets, industrial wonders more or better engineers, military wonders commanders, and so on. Perhaps even have a great monument to the queen herself that attracts the higher classes or something like that. - Wonders are limited to a certain number per colony, perhaps one or two. This keeps them special and they become a way of customizing the colony. - Wonders are unlocked via the homeland. Somebody (the queen herself, some government body, society or wealthy individual, etc) will every now and then send a letter to the colony with an offer. If the player accepts, he gets the blueprints for the wonder. If he declines, then eventually another wonder will be offered.
As far as I could tell from the video, the reason mostly came down to "Do we have the resources/time to do both well?" Because the unfortunate reality is, when you're making a game, it takes time and resources to do things, especially to do things and then debug them enough that your game doesn't look like a piece of junk; and those aren't unlimited, especially if you're working with a limited team and a (somewhat vague at this point, but it's not like they can wait ten years for release either) deadline.
personally I'm hoping for mega-projects, as the OP points out wonders can be added easily, mega-projects require certain elements of game design from the ground level. My reasoning mainly boils down to fact that there are more people who will play the game than there are creators, by many orders of magnitude. As a creator it's literally impossible to be more creative than all the people who are going to play your creation, it follows that working to create tools for further creation will almost always yield more spectacular results than any singular creation of your own. For object demonstrations, look at dwarf fortress, or minecraft, or eve online, the most impressive sandcastles are always generated by the biggest sandbox (go figure). From a business perspective, I'd say that going with creative tools is probably the best option too, those tools will keep people interested in your game for a far greater amount of time than more mundane content. That interest can be parlayed into ongoing sales of DLC or other sorts of micro-transactions to hold on to the cash flow that will keep development on the title alive, Anno 2070 provides some good examples of how to do this.
