Nah. Adopt DE's straggler trees/groves. You'll never lack space for anything then.    Seeing them once every 200 games seems a bit too novel, don't you think? Better to make them super expensive, but useful in a standard match. Make them super expensive and they unlock a 4th phase with super techs. You can win a match in phase III, but in a team stalemate situation or who knows, a strategy could develop where one boosts to phase IV with the Wonder to help overwhelm their opponent. Maybe see them every other game or every 3rd game. Make a dramatic show of it by having the UI notify the other players when a Wonder has started construction (maybe even flare its position on the minimap). 

I also liked the idea you posted awhile ago about it housing super strong techs like eco super boost, military super boost, and pop boost     everyone did but some random person no one had heard of before or since. It didn’t matter, @Nescio was just awful and forced his awful vision for the game forward and lost many players in the process. I honestly don’t think the game has recovered since, which is a real shame because the game had just expanded a bunch during covid 

Boo. In a23 there was a real decision between going for WTF, wonder (for extra pop), or champs. That’s is an objectively better setup that what exists now, which is only a choice between champs and WTF  Novelty is also silly. You could say that about any unit, building, and/or tech 

What dangers might this dense forest of ancient Japan hide?

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Hi all, proud to present the result of another project I made a retopology to reduce the polycount 29k tris ->7k tris. I wasn't entirely happy with the old diffuse so I baked a new one and added some details to it. The faces are difficult to paint as you can see lol. The ivory could be slightly brigther now that I see it. Mod's attached and here are some before/after pictures: athena.zip