While playing some recent games, I became curious about whether or not it mattered if I concentrated all of my Great People Point production in one city or not. Assume that you have a finite number of points you can generate across your empire, you can either focus all of them (specialists and wonders) in one city, or across a few cities (say your three best cities).

If the points required to generate a Great Person were constant (always 100), this would not be an issue. In the long run, the points would always generate the same number of great leaders. However, the points required is not constant. Each Great Person costs 100 more Great People points to generate than the last.

As I'm sure we've all seen, cities with a single specialist (+3 GPP/turn) steadily accumulate points, however the capital may be generating many Great People in the meantime, and thus raising the bar, faster than the smaller city can catch up. Basically, any city that cannot produce 100 Great People Points in the time it takes for the biggest cities to generate another Great Person will never produce one.

So I built a simple simulator, so I could explore the dynamics. These are the assumptions/parameters I used:
- Three cities, with a finite number of Great People Points distributed across them. For simplicity, I chose 30 Great People Points to distribute.
- I defined a parameter, d, which describes the distribution of those points. Basically, its the ratio of the the points in one city to the others.

For example:
If d = 1, the cities have 10, 10, 10.
If d = 2, the cities have 15, 7.5, 7.5.
If d = 3, the cities have 18, 6, 6.
If d = 10, the cities have 25, 2.5, 2.5.
As d approaches infinity, the cities have 30, 0, 0.
If d is larger, you have one city that has much more Great People Points production than the other cities.

If d = 0.5, the cities have 6, 12, 12.
If d = 0.1, the cities have 1.428, 14.28, 14.28.
As d approaches 0, the cities have 0, 15, 15.
If d is smaller, you have one city that has fewer Great People Points than the other cities.

- I ran the simulation and measured the number of turns required to generate 20 Great People, and then normalized the data about d = 1.

Here is the result:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Distribution.jpg
Please note the use of a logarithmic x-axis, and the y-axis is zoomed in. Lower is better, as this denotes fewer turns required to generate the same number of Great People.

Some observations to make:
- No distribution of Great People Points can help you or harm you by more than about 8%.
- The sporadic behavior is caused by cases where cities are unable to "catch-up" to the increasing point total required to generate a Great Person.
- At around d < 0.2, the city with less Great People points is never able to generate a Great Person, as the required total number of points increases faster than the city can accumulate points. Thus, beyond this point, it is better to use those Great People Points to speed up the other cities.
- At round d > 10, the same thing happens in reverse. The other two cities are now never able to generate a Great Person since the primary city is outpacing them and moving the required total faster than they can generate points. At this point, it is better to focus on the one city.
- Both extremes approach asymptotic limits
- There is a dangerous break-point near d = 10 where the primary city gains one more Great People Point and now the required total points is outpacing the other cities, reducing Civ-wide Great People production by 16%.

This case assumed that there were no boosts to Great People Point production. Most boosts are empire-wide (Parthenon, Philosophical, Pacificist), and thus the d value is unchanged (all numbers get bigger, but the ratios stay the same, you have 60 points to distribute instead of 30).

However, the National Epic boosts Great People Points by 100% in just one city. Let's see how that impacts the distribution of points:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Distribution_National_Epic.jpg
We basically see the exact same behavior, but it has been "tilted" and moved to the left by 2x with the impact of the National Epic's 100% multiplier.

Now we see some more interesting, and expected, behavior:
- The total difference in points (from having no Great People Points in the city with the National Epic, to having all Great People Points in a city with the National Epic) is a factor of 2 (60% to 120%).
- Individual break-points relating to cities being unable to catch up to the pace still has an effect of about 10%.
- Focusing all of your Great People Points in one city is the way to go
- The big jump-point where no other city can produce a Great Person due to the run-away primary city now occurs at d = 4. That is, the primary city is generating 20 points (40 with National Epic), and the other two cities are generating 5 points. It takes 2.5 turns to generate 100 points for the primary city, and 20 turns to generate 100 points for the other cities at that point.

In summary, in the reasonable range of d, there is a potential to increase your Great People production by 20% to 30% if you focus your Specialists and Wonders in one city with the National Epic. Other cities will be able to produce Great People, up until a point. If you get many Wonders and Specialists in your National Epic city, you may gain no Great People from having a single specialist or wonder in another city.

As with most other game systems in Civ4, its all about specialization. Having jack-of-all-trades cities is significantly less efficient.

A little more detail on cities trying to catch-up to a pace-setting primary city.

Here's an example off of the National Epic curve, where d = 5.25 and within the scope of a game, the other cities are never able to generate a Great Person.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Timeline.jpg

Now, the required number of points goes with the square root of turns, while the accumulated points for any city goes linearly with turns, so there is always some point in time where a city will generate a Great Person. Its just that with a sufficiently fast primary city, this point in time may exceed the 400 turn limit of the game.

Here's an example of d = 2.0 (primary city has 15 points [30 with National Epic], the two secondary cities have 7.5 points).
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Timeline_d21.jpg
Here we see that the secondary cities produce 4 Great People, and the primary city produces 16 Great People. Even this relatively slight difference in raw Great People Point production (15 vs. 7.5) has a large effect.

There is one flaw I immediately see in your analysis. The number of additional GPP required for the next GP increases by 100 only until 1000. After that +200 GPP are required until 3000 GPP are reached, Then 300 additional points are required, etc.

0-1000: +100 GPP
1000-3000: +200 GPP
3000-6000: +300 GPP

You get the idea.

Note that the number of initial GPP required, and thus the initial increases and the breakpoints every 10 GP generated can be higher or lower based on game length. an Epic game has ~150% of the turns of a normal game, so 150 GPP required for the first GP.

Intriguing, I never knew that, as its not spelled out anywhere.

I don't think that really changes any results or conclusions, and in fact, it might make the effect even more pronounced in favor of focusing on one city.

Thanks for the analysis and explanation. And also the note the constructive criticism it needs some adjustment.

I had been giving this some thought without clear resolution so far. I did realize the good potential for some GP points to never be effective in lesser cities... but the specialists/improvements are typically for the other benefits than the GP points. So far, GP generation has remained one of the auto-pilot areas for me in the game and thus incidental to the fact that I typically have just a few large, high production cities which are the most likely sites for GP point related construction.

The whole question of GP point distribution also involves the special aspect of what kind of GP one wants next so a GP dominant city which is also heavily religious or scientific etc. will tend to result in more GP of a specific type than may be desirable. But this is perhaps more the result of not paying attention to this aspect of the game. :)

Another flaw is that you don't have a finite number (30) of GPP to distribute. This would be true if wonders were the only source of GPP.

But with Caste System, or many improvements, you have vitually unlimited empire-wide GPP production through specialists. Increasing GPP in one city does not decrease it in another city.

Your analysis is most applicable to Great Engineer and Great Prophet points, which can't be increased using Caste System. Still, Forge and Factory (9 Engineer GPP) is almost as good as every great wonder (10 Engineer GPP) or the Iron Works (10 Engineer GPP).

Aye, its not meant to be an end-all simulation of everything that can happen in Civ4... for that you need, uh... Civ4! :lol:

This was put together to understand some simple cases, to get a feel for the trends and behaviors. I figured maybe someone else might get a kick out of it, so I posted it. Use it for what it is, but certainly don't expect it to provide solve the problem for every case in Civ4.

I hope to put up some updated plots with the increased GPP requirements tomorrow.

Actually an improved model might have a 'base GPP' for each city (specialists which are basically available on a equal per city basis.) as well as a 'bonus GPP' (Wonders which are limited)

Perhaps an analysis of adding an additional GPP to the 'max city' when it is already X greater than the others

Woo! Good threat but I have to stop to work in order to analyse it to understand every thing.

LeSphinx

Nice Job done. ;) That absolutely clarifies some concepts behind Great People Point.

This is a great start for this issue! What about taking into account WoundedKnight's (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3339227&postcount=8) suggestion to have individual cities focus on generating specific Great People types?

Ugh, getting into Civ IV is great - I now need to brush up on both probabilities for analyzing combat and numerical analysis for this! :)

Your analysis is great, at least for its intensive use of math! :D
However, it seems to me that there is a true question: how to increase GPP? You have 2 ways: hire specialists and build wonders. To build wonders, a city needs high production, but specialists generally reduce production. This is a dilemma. What's the best compromise? I am still wondering.

OK, here's an update of the above four plots with the increased number of GPP required after 1000. As expected, this factor makes it even harder for cities generating few GPP to produce a Great Person if another city is consisently upping the requirement by 200 GPPs.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Distribution.gif

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Distribution_National_Epic.gif

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Timeline.gif

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Timeline_d2.gif

I have also generated an animation of the timeline plots as d increases, with the National Epic in the primary city. This helps visualize the impact of cities just barely able to generate a great person or not. Note that there's not a lot of difference in total number of Great People generated.

Right Click and Save As here for the animation (2.8 MB, zipped). (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Distribution_Animation.zip) :D

Again, this assumes finite number of points to distribute, but its interesting given the assumptions.

Now let me take a whack at analyzing some of these other questions that have come up. :mischief:

Whenever I get a philo leader I look for the opportunity for a GP strat. This concept has had me curious too and I have tried both types a number of times. From my experience, one city is no doubt whatsoever the fastest and easiest way of producing the most GP, but if you have the right layout for spreading early wonders and high food prevalence nearby distributing can be more effective, but slower harder game with more mm.

If I see a place with LOTS of flood-plains or fish etc that can be one of first couple cities, I go with the one city GPs. Pyramids and Parthenon are the musts (anywhere) and you set the target city up to get Great Libary. I focus on getting Mercantilism, Ankor Wat (philosophy is must for civic anyway), and later Statue of Liberty. Sistene Chappel as bonus as well.

Many GP get pumped back into target city to make it super city, and it also is of course your science city. You don't need any others cos it will make many hundreds by itself.

With Representation (immediately from Pyramids), Beurocracy if it is your capital, or else Free Speech if not, and all target city tiles are cottages, and caste system, mercantilism, and philosophy and above wonders and a high food city you have a early classical age GPP of usually 200+ and the bonuses stack up including +3 Science + 1 hammer (priests) + 2 CP on top of what each specialist already produces. 250% GP in your city in your target jumping to 350% as soon as you research Philosophy.

If you have a lot of cities (like 25+) and a generally high food terrain, distributing your GPP can be worth it with careful monitoring. You can maintain the GPP production for much longer if you add Statue of Liberty to the mix as next goal and with caste system, can add (with food allowance) often 3+ specialists per city to the exisiting 2 free ones, all getting 250% for 40-100 GP production in every single city. If its 25 cities, just the civic science BONUS alone is over 400 accross your empire. I often find myself going all priests in bursts for the production on top.

These are maybe more important strats for me than most people cos I prefer to play with tech trading turned off most of the time so the science discoveries are vital (on emporer they have been to keep ahead with tech trading off, but getting the early wonders is much harder so I mostly have to forego any real GP strat since they suck unless you go all the way). But even with tech trading allowed as default it's still nice mega-bonus and just plain fun way to play.

OK, new analysis. :)

Lets say we have built some Wonders at the capital, that in total generate 4 Great Prophet points, 4 Great Artist points, and 2 Great Engineer points. This seems to be a relatively common distribution in many of my games. Since I'm mainly doing this analysis for my benefit, that's what I'll assume. If you play differently... feel free to do your own analysis! :lol:

So 10 GPP/turn in the Capitol from Wonders that were built for the primary effect of the Wonder, and the GPP was just bonus. Now, let's say we've decided we want two types of Great People more than anything else: Prophets and Engineers. (Just as an example).

Let's also say we have a secondary city that has also built a Wonder (say, giving 2 Great Merchant points), and that city can support 3 specialists. The capitol can support 3 specialists as well, and the National Epic has been built there. Finally, lets say we have another town which can support 2 specialists but has no Wonders.

How do we go about getting the most Prophets and Engineers over the next 200 turns, assuming we've already generated 2 great people so far in the game?

I ran each possible permutation (48 cases), with 1000 Monte Carlo runs each (since the type of Great Person you get is random).
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Permutations_v2.gif

In this scenario, the Capital generates 9 Great People, the secondary city generates 1 Great Person, and the other city is unable to generate any Great People. The secondary city is no slouch, with 1 Wonder and 3 Specialists, generating 11 GPP/turn (2 + 3*3), but this can "only" generate 2200 Great People points in 200 turns. The other city is running 2 Specialists for 6 GPP/turn, but still is unable to generate a Great Person over 200 turns (since it generates 600 in that time, but the requirement reaches 1400).

For getting the most Great Prophets (average of ~6.9), making all Specialists into Priests is the obvious answer. This setup still generates 1 Great Engineer on average.

For getting the most Great Engineers (average of ~6.1), making all Specialists into Engineers is the obvious answer. This setup generates nearly 2 Great Prophets on average.

However, if we look at the sum of Great Engineers and Great Prophets (basically, trying to drown out the Artist and Merchant points from our Wonders), the total variation is small (~0.2). If neither Engineers or Prophets are valued more than the other, the selection of Specialists should be based on their raw benefits, not the GPPs they generate.

Since the total number of points in each city is constant for all cases, all cases generate 10 Great People within the 200 turns. However, it appears that very consistently, you will get 2 Great People who are not Prophets or Engineers. This is typically Artists from the Capital and Merchants from the Secondary city, due to their Wonders.

In summary, this further emphasizes that generating a few GPP in your cities just won't do much for you, and should not be a consideration when adding Specialists or Wonders to your other cities. GPP should really only enter into the decision making process for the Capital and perhaps one other city. The rest of the time, just worry about the benefits of the Specialists and Wonders, and don't concern yourself with trying to accumulate GPPs there.

So my next thought was... does it ever make sense to not have Specialists in cities with different kinds of Wonders? Basically, since the Capital has a variety of points, perhaps instead of producing more "random" Great People there, we should generate no extra points there, allowing the other cities to generate the exact Great People we want.

Here are all permutations (12) where we do not have any extra Specialists in the Capital:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Permutations_Empty_Capital.gif

Now the Capital generates 5 Great People (vs. 9 with 3 Specialists), the Secondary city generates 2 (vs. 1) and the other city generates 1 (vs. 0).

The maximum number of Prophets is 4.7 (vs. 7.0), the maximum number of Engineers is 3.6 (vs. 6.1), and the sum averages to 5.7 (vs. 8.0). And the total number of Great People goes down 2 (from 10).

So trying to focus on producing the desired Great People in cities less cluttered with Wonder GPPs is rarely something worth doing. If your whole game hinges on completing a Wonder first, slowing down the Capital's GPPs and hiring many Engineers (although its rarely possible to hire more than 1 until Factories) might be a smart move. The rest of the time, just loading up your National Epic and most Wonder-filled city with extra Specialists is better in the long run, even if you randomly get some Great People that are less useful.

:thumbsup: Awesome post.

Question: If you vary the number of great leaders, e.g. from 20 to 30 in the graphs of the first type, how does this middle region vary? Do the valleys shift left and right? It would be nice to find that given some d-neighborhood, say between d=9.0 and d=10.0, that there is an optimum choice of d that is somewhat insensitive to the number of great leaders in question.

How about this:

"As the number of turns increases from 0 to 400, how does the d at which the other cities no longer contribute (that is, an end to the sporadic peaks/valleys) vary?"

I think that would answer the basic question in a more straight-forward (for me) manner.

[Please scroll up and read the updated, previously "reserved" posts if you have not already seen them.]

Alright, here's a look at an interesting question.

Depending on the number of turns remaining (or that we care about), if we have many Great People Points being generated in the National Epic city compared to the other cities, the other cities will never generate a Great Person.

Here's the result:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/Great_People_Points_Capital_Only.jpg
Please note that the d ratio is calculated prior to the National Epic multiplier.

For example, if you have generated 2 Great People already, and are concerned about the next 250 turns, you should determine if your National Epic City's raw GPP output is more than 2.75 higher than your next highest city. So if the that city is generating 12 GPP (24 GPP/turn after National Epic multiplier), and the next highest city is generating 4 GPP (floor(12/2.75)), then that city will not generate a Great Person in the next 250 turns. If the city has 5 GPP/turn, it will.

Further example, you have generated 6 Great People already and think you'll have the game wrapped up in 100 turns, for better or worse. The d ratio of interest is ~1.3. That is, if your best city (after National Epic), is generating 32 GPP/turn, any city generating less than 12 GPP/turn will not contribute any Great People.

This of course assumes all cities are at 0 accumulated points at the beginning of the measured period.

In summary, if you have generated few Great People, and have a robust city with say, 4 Wonders, and 2 Specialists, and the National Epic, and have 200 turns to go, you'll need cities with 6 GPP/turn or greater (2 Specialists) for them to have an impact. But that impact will be in the form of a single Great Person, compared to many from the primary city.

Add more Wonders to the primary city, and the other cities will have to keep up (at the rate of increase * 1/d). Otherwise, cities with 2 Specialists are worthwhile for Great People generation.

Great job Vol. Very thourough analysis, that comes up with a clear answer.

This begs the question if civIV should be tweaked so that a GP produced in one city increases the cap for 150 in that city, but only say... 50 in the others. This would make it a bit more useful to have more than one city.

I guess though that even with this change it wouldn't be a good idea with many GP cities, and two would probably be the max, with one city still generating the most of them.

very interesting. i will tailor my strategy to this and see if it changes anything.

Well, you could design the city to grank Great Engineers and just use them to finish wonders flat, but is that undermining the versatility and purpose?

If you want to get mostly engineers or prophets you are better off spreading the great person points over your empire (since forges and temples only allow you 1 specialist)

If you want scientists, merchants or artists go for a focused city or two.

Hi,

OK, new analysis. :)
Great ones so far! :goodjob:

How do we go about getting the most Prophets and Engineers over the next 200 turns[/B], assuming we've already generated 2 great people so far in the game?
I'm not sure how you've calculated the odds for getting each type of great person, but I hope you're aware of the fact that the odds have nothing to do with the number of GPPs generated for each type, but only with the number of sources that generate GPPs for each type?

(It wasn't obvious from your post (at least to me) how you've calculated that, so I thought I'd mention it)

-Kylearan

Actually, no, I had no idea. Number of sources, huh? That seems odd, and potentially expoitable. Does each specialist count as a source? Does it count as a source if it only contributed for one turn?

Don't think I'm going to try and answer those myself, but if anyone else wants to, I think we'd all be interested.

Hi,

That seems odd, and potentially expoitable.
How?

Does each specialist count as a source?
Yes, each specialist counts as one source, as does each wonder.

Does it count as a source if it only contributed for one turn?
For that turn, yes. :p The odds are averaged over all turns though, so having the Pyramids (great engineer source) for 100 turns and adding a scientist for only one turn, you still have a 99% chance of getting a great engineer.

-Kylearan

Well, it would have been potentially exploitable if it didn't work as you just described at the end of your post.

So for the purposes of determine what kind of Great Person it will be, all sources effectively contribute 1 point per turn towards that calculation. But for the purposes of determining when a Great Person appears, the full number of GPP per turn is used.

Hi,

So for the purposes of determine what kind of Great Person it will be, all sources effectively contribute 1 point per turn towards that calculation. But for the purposes of determining when a Great Person appears, the full number of GPP per turn is used.
Correct. What I'm not sure about is whether the "memory" which sources of GPPs contributed on which turns gets wiped after producing a great person, or if the city will remember all sources that had ever produced GPPs. I'll investigate that, and maybe write a guide about all this. :p

-Kylearan

Very good article. Thank you for all the work! :goodjob:

I think it's the number of points / total points needed decide what type of GP, say engineers, great wonders producing eng GPP make up 600 of 1000, then the probability will be 60%.
Or it might be the number of points/turn on the generating GP turn that determines the odds, a la, engineer sources generating 18/24 for the turn the GP is born, then it's 75%. Something like that.
I favour the first theory but it would take quite a lot of memory to keep track of all that... but it's highly doable and possible. Don't have CIV4 on this comp to test this :)

Hi,

I think it's the number of points / total points needed decide what type of GP
No it's not. I've tested it, see my summary about it here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146174).

-Kylearan

Thanks for the link Kylearan : it help
LeSphinx

very good stuff.
anecdotally. however, i seem to have 4 or 5 cities producing gp's.
but i like gp's.
You also have to factor in smaller, or hemmed in cities that accumulate a lot of specialists.
and i try to spread out national wonders so as to accumulate more points in more cities.

Very useful guide that. It does beg the question as to if it's worth moving the capital to a high food area so that I can reap the mercantilism benefit. And if so, at what stage - you'd have to think ahead or you'd waste potential wonders.

Furthermore, I wonder how much the difficulty level will affect things? On Noble you can generally count on producing any wonder that you start ahead of anyone else, but as the difficulty rises, you have to rely on specialists only. Moreover, if you are able to go high production in one city and get most of the wonders, with few specialists and high food in another, for multiple specialists would that work on the graph? In the latter case you would presumably go for farms over cottages and ensure it wasn't your capital.

Higher difficulty levels are supposed to not get production bonuses on Wonders. So if you can keep up in tech, you have a shot at getting Wonders.

I didn't understand a digit of your math but I'll take your word on it, GP production has definitely been something I don't understand well enough to use to full advantage. Thank you.

Edit: This doesn't work in later patches.

How get Great Engineers at triple speed.

1. Build the Pyramids.
2. Wait 18 turns (+36 GPP, 18*100% Engineer)
3. Switch to Caste System.
4. Hire 10 scientists for 2 turns (+64GPP, 2*91% Scientist, 2*9% Engineer)
5. Final odds: 90% Engineer, 10% Scientist.

I've obviously been spreading my cities too far out. Dope.

Thanks for the very interesting post. I used to deal with optimization problems frequently and find these questions intriquing. While I need to think about this some more, my gut tells me your model is not properly constructed (or I don't understand your distribution metrics).

Items to think about:

In your model you treat GPP as a finite resource but it is not. It is an infinite resource simply dependent upon time. If the game were to run infinitely, then you would have infinite GPP. This simple issue can severely alter you dyanmics.

The finite resource in question is city-specific resources such as specialists and certain wonders.

Items that impact all cities equally are irrelevant to the question of distributione of the finite resource. These items impact the rate at which GP are produced but not the ratio of one city to another.

There is also a limit on specialists per city. You cannot convert every citizen to a specialist and keep a functioning city. So a city with high production values in other areas can afford to have more specialists than another city.


Some quick thoughts on how too look at this mathematically. This is not well thought out but is somewhat inuitive once put in this fashion.

How long does it take a single city to produce a GP? This is simply a function of time.

G = t(S+W)c

G = GPP points
t = turns
S = number of specialists
W = wonder gpp
c = civ wide modifier (like leader trait or civic trait)

This model describes how a city gets GPP over time.

Now the real goal here is to produce the most GP in the shortest amount of time.

Consider a 3 city civ. and its total civ-wide GPP production rate. If you have S number of specialists, it does not matter what city you put them in. Your overall civ GPP rate will be the same. The issue is that GP are not generated per civ but per-city.

Consider the formula above and 3 cities with only 3 specialists to distribute. If you put one S in each city, you will reach your first GP in ~33 turns since each city is producing +3 GPP per turn. The next GP will be in ~66 turns when the second city gets to 200 GPP. The next will be in ~99 turns. If you look at the rate of GP production; it is 3 GP in 99 turns For the first 3 GP, the rate would be 3GP in ~99 turns. Or a GP every 33 turns.

Now consider if you put all 3 specialists in one city. You now generate 9GPP per turn. The first GP comes in just ~11 moves; the second GP comes in ~33moves; the 3rd GP comes in ~66. The GP production is 3 GP in ~66 turns. or 1 GP per ~22 turns.

Since GP are produced per city, you should distribute your resource in a way to maximize GPP production in a single city.

The same holds true with wonders, stack them in a ctiy to maximize that cities rate.

One caveat is that once you get to a larger CIV, you have to consider sub-optimal distribution because if you can't pile all of your S in a single city, but the general tenet should hold true. Maxize one city at a time.


Just my nickle's worth. Look forward to comments, critiques.

I had a bash at a gp city with the Germans +100% GP rate. I got my capital up to 60gp points a turn. At one point i was making a GP each 10 turns from the capital.

Does reducing specialists in the highest GP for a few turns to allow other cities to make a great person make sense? What happens to your theory if you halve the GP rate of the number one city for 10 turns or so?

I did have to use the civic pacifism for 100% gp rate for this rate of 60. Each specialist was adding 9gp points. Although i needed a religion. Also the national wonder to add 100% but i wasnt able to build this in Berlin. Bad planning and late development of Berlin as GP city. It was interesting the plus 100% was done on the base rate not cumulative. Grrrr.

Begs the question what is better for a GP farm. Lots of irrigation to have loads of specialists or lots of wonders? GP rates over top 5 cities worked out at 60 24 12 12 12 spread over top 5 GP producing cities. I ended up with a lot of scientists. Wasnt ideal need to plan wonders better.

Ideally i would of prefered great artists or great engineers.

1. 60gppt -490
2. 24gppt - 342
3. 12Gppt - 640
4. 12Gppt - 613
5. 12Gppt - 522

(Great Person points turn) (1290ad on monarch standard map)

I would interested in any comments on these figures. Plus any advice on how to improve these numbers.

The only real downside to going for GP points was it didnt aid any strategy on my game.

Wow, is there a short summary for those of us who just joined this forum? (and cannot make sense of the graphs and vocabulary)

I think the gist is have one specialist Great people farm (city) using lots of irrigation to allow more specialist such as artists etc. Using the caste civic to allow multiple specialists in your cities. Plus Pacifism civic to add 100% to your base rate Great people point per turn assuming you have the religion in your city that your currently using. other wonders too. Its been pointed out elsewhere in forum that adding great merchants to city give you +1 food and extra trade allowing a bigger GP farm. (320 points a turn is highest i have seen on forum so far)


I find if you can have a city of 16+ in size with a huge excess of food this will allow 7-8+ specialist. End of day this post seemed to be about the value of having a second/third great people farm. In my opinion its only of value if the second/ third or even fourth city producing great people points stands a chance of catching up to your specialist GP farm.

If city number 1 produces 100 Great people points a turn and city 2 only produces 20 points a turn it will take many turns to ever produce a great leader. If it ever does.
4 turns
100+100+100+100=400
20+20+20+20=80
After 9 turns
100+100+100+100+100=500
80+20+20+20+20+20=180

By time city 1 resets to 0 after producing a great leader and the required rate rise 100 to 500 city 2 now has 420 points to gain to reach the 500 mark and is not looking likely of ever producing a great leader.
If the second city produces 70 points a turn it increase chances of great leaders arriving. It appears the charts try to look at the value of additional cities producing more great leaders and what the optimum solution is.

I figure a city must produce at least around 50% or so of the leader great people farm you have to stand a decent chance of producing a few leaders in game. The 2nd GP farm needs to cover in excess of what the incremental rise in points required for the next leader is to stand a chance of ever producing a leader.

I hope that makes sense. Im no expert.

wow thx...

I have a problem with city specialization on civ in general.

I tend to take industrious leaders and build wonders. Wonders (Great and National) are one of the cornerstones of city specialization.

But Wonders are also a large part of the GP point supply, at least for folks like me who build lots of wonders.

And GP supply is maximized by putting all the GP points in one city, and building the national wonder there (which I already knew before I found this thread, but this thread reveals it objectively).

Hence there is a tension between building a wonder where it would be useful for city specialization, and building it where it will maximize GP points.

In practice I find that maximizing GP points performs better. At least for the frst 3 quarters of the game or so, which is usually what decides a game.

So the net effect of this is that I don't end up doing much city specialization, which rather detracts from the fun idea that the civ4 designers had for spicing up the game. Or to be more specific, I do one special city (my capital) that has gobs of wonders, the National Epic, and usually the Oxford University. The rest of my cities are fairly generic, although there will usually be a partly specialized city for cranking out military (Herioc Epic, West Point) and another for production (Ironworks) if my capital city isn't in a good production spot.

One possible way to fix this would be to simply remove the national epic altogether. If you do that, you aren't giving up so much when you spread your GP points around, as the first graph in this thread demonstrates.

So the net effect of this is that I don't end up doing much city specialization, which rather detracts from the fun idea that the civ4 designers had for spicing up the game.

I don't believe the designers especially wanted to encourage city specialization. I think they wanted to create a variety of viable approaches---which I think they did. You may find that specialization or non-specialization fits your goals better---it's fine either way.

Well Rarely does a World Wonder contribute anything to city specialization. The only City Specific effects of a World Wonder are Culture and GPs
(the Great Library also gives some science to the city its in) so for a non Cultural Win, for max GPs, all World Wonders should be in one city. (and you don't give up anything for that.)

Now the National Wonders... well they contribute very little GP so they don't need to be in the GP city (although having one of the National Wonders that allows more specialists is nice there, and trhe one that boostsa GP is mandatory)

The thing is what specializes a city is the National Wonders, the Buildings, and the Terain Improvements, World Wonders really don't do anything.

*pull*

VERY interesting read and confirming a gut feeling I had some time now. But has anybody checked the math for later patches and Warlords? :)

After reading this thread, the philosophical trait seems pretty weak. If you should collect your GPP in one City, the "major" advantage of philosophical is reduced to one city. Not very much of my (usually not very large) empire.

I don't believe the designers especially wanted to encourage city specialization. I think they wanted to create a variety of viable approaches---which I think they did. You may find that specialization or non-specialization fits your goals better---it's fine either way.

The cap on National Wonders per city suggests to me that they wanted to strongly encourage city specialization.

The cap on National Wonders per city suggests to me that they wanted to strongly encourage city specialization.

I don't see that at all. The National Wonders are extremely powerful when combined, so, if you let them all be built in one city, people would tend to do that. Forcing them to be separated prevents them from being too absurdly powerful. This has nothing really to do with whether different cities are specialized or all do much the same thing.

I would argue that specialization arrises naturally whenever there exists some degree of comparitive advantage in the realization of a goal. The simple fact that, in CIV, you settle your cities across diverse terrain leads to certain cities being better suited to certain tasks. The quantity of cities which you devote to any given task will be determined by the desired quanity of output of that task. The singular purpose of a national wonder is simply to reduce the number of cities devoted to a task required to meet a specific output goal (or, put another way, to increase output if resource devotion remains constant), allowing the marginal cities to pursue other goals. So, in a way, the simple inclusion of the national wonders (regardless of the 2 per city limitation) seems to indicate a desire to drastically increase the comparitive advantage of certain cities, reinforcing the idea of specialization. At the same time, the 2 per city limitation has a moderating effect, limiting the ability of any city to gain wide ranging comparative advantages across a number of tasks and forcing interesting decisions regarding the spreading of specialization among numerous cities.

After reading this thread, the philosophical trait seems pretty weak. If you should collect your GPP in one City, the "major" advantage of philosophical is reduced to one city. Not very much of my (usually not very large) empire.
If Great People only benefitted a single city, you might have a point. But, as it stands, your whole civilization stands to gain from an increase in the birth rate of great people.

For instance, wonder building is often best confined to one or two very high production cities. Does this mean that the industrious trait is only adding any benefit to those two cities? Is industrious automatically a weaker trait than creative based on the simple fact that creative give a passive benefit to every city across the empire? Certainly not, as every city is able to reap the rewards from the additional wonders the industrious trait allows you to complete. In the exact same way, philosphical lets you transform a limited single-city bonus, into a civ-wide bonus.

This doesn't even address the fact that, in the early game, it is quite reasonable for a philophical civ to be running specialists in a number of cities, while the cost of great people is relatively low, speeding even further the rate of great person acquisition.

From experience running dedicated production of great people (with a specialist economy, many large cities) I have to say that the assumptions of the above analysis are very weak, i.e. no skilled player should run cities at constant ratios, and therefore one should never find the situation described above..

One has to monitor the GPP in each city and assign specialists as necessary, sometimes even to the point of starving a city, so that great people appear in all cities..

I'd say that with a specialist economy ca 60% of the great people come from the GP farm in the long run, and having specialists in many other cities noticeably increases the total number of great people.

The analysis simply shows how a badly run civ would fare...

The analysis simply shows how a badly run civ would fare...
While I agree with you that the original analysis was full of holes (it is quite old at this point), I disagree with the conclusion I believe you're attempting to draw.

I'd say that with a specialist economy ca 60% of the great people come from the GP farm in the long run, and having specialists in many other cities noticeably increases the total number of great people.
You mention the long run, but CIV is not about the long run. Why should I care that if I run 3 scientists in this city over here, in which I could be working cottages instead, 200 turns down the road, I'll get one extra great person a few turns sooner than I would have. That's a high short term cost for something that won't pay off till the very long term. (Note: If, instead, those 3 scientists are going to get me an extra great person soon, I see less reason not to run them. This is why specialists are much more powerful in the early game.)

No one will disagree that running extra scientists in extra cities will produce more great people. However, you have to look at the cost of those extra great people. A natural great person farm will have an easy time running lots of specialists due to numerous food resources and generally favorable terrain (high food concentration onto a smaller number of tiles). This, combined with the output-increasing national epic, results in a very high output/cost ratio for a basic stream of great people. Now, if I choose to augment this stream with a second city (even if that city is just as well suited to great person generation), it must be accepted that this will not double the rate of great person births. Hence, the output/cost ratio of your great people has been lowered across the empire. You are spending more resources, but not as efficiently as before.

A more realistic scenario is that any other city chosen to augment your national epic city will be inferior in it's ability to generate great people. At this point you have to look at what that city could be doing instead of producing great people. It's generally accepted that, absent representation and past the very beginning of the game, cottages produce more beakers than specialists (when Great People are excluded from the equation). With that in mind, it becomes a matter of cost-benefit analysis. Is the extra great person(s) sometime down the road worth a reduction in my present research capacity? This will depend upon a number of factors: the number of cities already devoted to GP generation, the quality of the land, the current stage of the game (cost of additional great people), and some others.

In the end, it's an interesting balancing act. I support a play style that spreads specialists out during the early portions of the game, but consolidates into a single great person farm sometime shortly after completing the national epic. The other cities, by that time, have transitioned back to cottages, as I prefer the increased research output (and other benefits) to the distant opportunity to get an extra great scientist.

You say, in the long run, 60% of Great People will come from the Great Person Farm. I say: A) What does that look like in the short term? and B) Wow, the whole of your empire outside your great person farm could only account for a measly 40% of total great people? Seems like a misappropriation of resources to me. Maybe they should have been doing something else with their time...?

I used to advocate putting wall street and national epic together in a GP farm, preferably in a city with a shirne(s), where you build a ton of farms and maintain a huge bunch of merchant and priest specialists. You get huge GP points and huge gold.

The problem is, as I've increased in difficulty levels, I've found it difficult to keep all those citizens happy - unless you have globe theatre. Since I can't put all three of those national wonders (globe, national epic, wall street) in the same city, I have to choose how to split them up.

In my current game, my original capital was a pretty good gp city (decent food resources, some early wonders). I managed to start a religion in a city with good food potential. So, I ended up with two GP farms, my capital with national epic and wonders, and my money/religion city with globe and wall street. I think the capital ended up generating about 144 gpps, and the science/money city about 110.

I built a new palace in a commerce city, and this new capital/science city also ended up generating enough gpps to produce a gp every now and then as well.

So, I suppose if you were ONLY interested in GP points, you'd combine globe and national epic in your GP farm. But, it seems worthwhile to incorporate a money city.

It's also worth considering that it takes time and resources to create a good GP Farm; relevant techs have to be discovered, wonders have to be built, the city has to produce food and grow to support specialists (and it can't run as many specialists while growing), once GP farm reaches health/happy caps buildings/wonders have to be built to raise caps (or additional units shipped in while running HR).

Therefore while the maths indicate a GP farm running eg 40gppt will outpace five cities running eg 10gppt you need to work out how long it will take your GP Farm to create that kind of output and whether its better to be running multiple GP producers in the meantime.

Whilist I'm not clever (or keen) enough to do the maths this suggests to me that early game (before GP farm matures) it will be stronger to run multiple GP producers (aka specialist economy), late game (with mature GP farm) its better to run single GP producer (and cottage over the rest of the cities) and somewhere in the middle it will become very confusing.

What I do quite often is run GPP in parallel early game (i.e., SE), and as each city produces a GP, effectively "turn off" the GPP by sending in the workers and cottage over most of the farms. Early on, I choose which city will be my GP Farm, and I don't cottage that one over.

Very nice synchronicity in this strategy, and it allows complete customization as to what type of GP you get early and how many of each. e.g., you could run priests in just one city because you were able to found only one religion (with scientists in all the rest), or whatever is needed.

Interestingly, this whole strategy is more difficult to manage on lower levels. On high levels, you can't get a significant number of Wonders, if any at all. Wonders make the GPP income vary from city to city, can't have their GPP turned on/off and thus you have less control over maximizing your GPP resource production into GP, and also muddy up your GP types. So, on high levels (Emperor and above) it's easier to do this (takes less management).

Wodan

This is obviously only if your not running an economy heavy based on specilists. One big problem for actually graphing up stuff like this is that the gpp generation doesnt start at the same point for all the cities nor do it remain constant over an extended period of time. Is it possible to make a threedimensional graph with one beeing how much gpp the primary city is generatng oin average then seeing how much GPP would be needed in the 2nd city to be benificial and in the 3rd city and the 4th city and so on? For any given value of city 1(say 40) you need an amount of GPP in the second city to produce at least 1 great person and then another amount to get the 2nd city to produce 2 and the 3rd city to get 1 and then 3,2,1 etc with how much reqruired for the extra cities depending on the average output in the maincity. Is this even remotly possibly to graph? From your analysis it seems that you never want to have more than 2 cities producing gpps but with philosophical pantheon and pasicifism is this true? Say you can run 4 specialists in up to 5 cities would this produce enough great persons or do you need more to be worth it? This analyses feature only very low amounts of GPP. This is what i mostly use in my games but i would still be very much interested to know at what point its worth to get up the 3rd city? or the 7th? or the 10th and so forth. Eventually the city wont produce any great persons and it is likely better to use the city for something else.

I hope i made sense and didnt come across as too harsh and it was indeed helpfull for somehwat understanding the mechanics for generating GP assuming low gpp generation.

This case assumed that there were no boosts to Great People Point production. Most boosts are empire-wide (Parthenon, Philosophical, Pacificist), and thus the d value is unchanged (all numbers get bigger, but the ratios stay the same, you have 60 points to distribute instead of 30).

However, the National Epic boosts Great People Points by 100% in just one city. Let's see how that impacts the distribution of points:


Perhaps Im misunderstanding something, but pacifism, philosophical are not 'ratio-neutral' at all if one is considering the impact of National Epic, but infact diminish its importance significantly; all these bonuses multiply the base 3 GPPs, so for instance someone non-philosophical & outside pacifism would be getting 3GPPs per scientist in other cities, and 6GPPs in National Epic city; ratio of 1/2. Someone both philosophical and in pacifism would be getting 9 GPPs in other cities, and 12 GPPs in National Epic city; a much better ratio of 3/4.

Another problem I see with this analysis if I understand it correctly, is, if it were done, for instance for beakers instead, it seems to me it would likewise come to the conclusion that any beakers produced outside the oxford city are just as wasted; for instance library, academy, university and observatory combined give 125% (or little less due to rounding down on each 25%) boost to base beakers, and oxford adds another 100% - so non-oxford cities would be getting just a slightly better ratio than, in the case of GPPs, non-national-epic cities of someone EITHER philosophical OR in pacifism have for them, and far worse than someone who is both philosophical and pacifist.

Yet, avoiding having any commerce cities besides the oxford one is hardly a good advice on how to play this game, for working many more tiles (i.e. with more cities, population) obviously more than compensates those not nearly as bad ratios..

Perhaps Im misunderstanding something, but pacifism, philosophical are not 'ratio-neutral' at all if one is considering the impact of National Epic, but infact diminish its importance significantly; all these bonuses multiply the base 3 GPPs, so for instance someone non-philosophical & outside pacifism would be getting 3GPPs per scientist in other cities, and 6GPPs in National Epic city; ratio of 1/2. Someone both philosophical and in pacifism would be getting 9 GPPs in other cities, and 12 GPPs in National Epic city; a much better ratio of 3/4.

This is correct.

Another problem I see with this analysis if I understand it correctly, is, if it were done, for instance for beakers instead, it seems to me it would likewise come to the conclusion that any beakers produced outside the oxford city are just as wasted; for instance library, academy, university and observatory combined give 125% (or little less due to rounding down on each 25%) boost to base beakers, and oxford adds another 100% - so non-oxford cities would be getting just a slightly better ratio than, in the case of GPPs, non-national-epic cities of someone EITHER philosophical OR in pacifism have for them, and far worse than someone who is both philosophical and pacifist.

Yet, avoiding having any commerce cities besides the oxford one is hardly a good advice on how to play this game, for working many more tiles (i.e. with more cities, population) obviously more than compensates those not nearly as bad ratios..

This isn't a correct analogy.

The difference between the great person generation and the beaker generation is that beakers are accumulated over your entire empire and then used to research a technology while great person points are accumulated locally and used for the local generation of a great person.
The amount of Great Person Points (GPP's) needed to generate a great person is a moving target. After the generation of a great person, the second one costs double the amount of the first and the third costs three times as much as the first. This means that a city slowly generating great person points might never reach the moving target. Each time another city is the first to reach the target and all of the great person points generated in this city are essentially wasted. They aren't reset to zero or something but they just aren't accumulated fast enough to reach the moving target. Of course, great persons also contribute production, gold, science and culture.

Oh, and welcome to civfanatics, by the way. :band: :dance:

This is correct.



This isn't a correct analogy.

The difference between the great person generation and the beaker generation is that beakers are accumulated over your entire empire and then used to research a technology while great person points are accumulated locally and used for the local generation of a great person.
The amount of Great Person Points (GPP's) needed to generate a great person is a moving target. After the generation of a great person, the second one costs double the amount of the first and the third costs three times as much as the first. This means that a city slowly generating great person points might never reach the moving target. Each time another city is the first to reach the target and all of the great person points generated in this city are essentially wasted. They aren't reset to zero or something but they just aren't accumulated fast enough to reach the moving target. Of course, great persons also contribute production, gold, science and culture.

Oh, and welcome to civfanatics, by the way. :band: :dance:

thx!
thats a good point, but his first chart seems to say that the racing condition between cities, discounting the effect of National Epics, under reasonable distributions is not problematic, it alone only affects some random walk +-8% around the mean. Since its the argument, as I understand it, that the debalance by National Epics is what makes the situation so very inefficient, the significantly diminished effect of National Epics probably relieves a substantial portion of the worry about issues with such distribution, because of the racing conditions.
The potentially added total population of specialist due to more area being worked for them (in all cities) should be more than able to make up for this (smaller) inefficiency it terms of total efficiency of the use of the empire & its territory, just as much as a commerce in a non-Oxford city is still worth it even though such distribution of commerce between cities is technically less efficient than putting them all in that city - only in this aspect did I draw a parallel.

Point is a concept of distribution of specialists across cities seems to imply that one is like actually choosing whether one would put 10 specialist around your empire or somehow migrate those populations to once city; just like with commerce resources found or built on tiles, the food resources and the city population is not free to move in this way, but this doesnt imply its wasteful to use them in such cities anymore than it would imply so for the commerce resources, with even potentially worse multipliers in comparison to that fictive alternative.
It doesnt seem to me to be the most useful way of investigating about specialist distributions. Im thinking perhaps finding some ideas about how to distribute such specialist so that those outside the National Epics city are not aditionally hampered by the racing with it more than say their relative GPP multipliers, or even say, to around 2/3 , like it is with commerce..

I would like to understand more about the mathematics used for that chart+-8% chart, I tried analysing the racing situations, but couldnt come up with a way to reason about situation with multiple cities. Im particularly interested in what exact situation does a city loose the race with a larger city forever, under what kind of a concrete scenario? Though Id intuitively expect this to happen, I couldnt understand exactly how when I tried thinking about such situations, it allways seemed it would catch up eventually with the moving target, even if in game-impractical amount of time, it seemed their GPP points grew quadratically due to accumulation, while the 'border' moved only linearly...

thx!
thats a good point, but his first chart seems to say that the racing condition between cities, discounting the effect of National Epics, under reasonable distributions is not problematic, it alone only affects some random walk +-8% around the mean. Since its the argument, as I understand it, that the debalance by National Epics is what makes the situation so very inefficient, the significantly diminished effect of National Epics probably relieves a substantial portion of the worry about issues with such distribution, because of the racing conditions.
The potentially added total population of specialist due to more area being worked for them (in all cities) should be more than able to make up for this (smaller) inefficiency it terms of total efficiency of the use of the empire & its territory, just as much as a commerce in a non-Oxford city is still worth it even though such distribution of commerce between cities is technically less efficient than putting them all in that city - only in this aspect did I draw a parallel.

Point is a concept of distribution of specialists across cities seems to imply that one is like actually choosing whether one would put 10 specialist around your empire or somehow migrate those populations to once city; just like with commerce resources found or built on tiles, the food resources and the city population is not free to move in this way, but this doesnt imply its wasteful to use them in such cities anymore than it would imply so for the commerce resources, with even potentially worse multipliers in comparison to that fictive alternative.
It doesnt seem to me to be the most useful way of investigating about specialist distributions. Im thinking perhaps finding some ideas about how to distribute such specialist so that those outside the National Epics city are not aditionally hampered by the racing with it more than say their relative GPP multipliers, or even say, to around 2/3 , like it is with commerce..

I would like to understand more about the mathematics used for that chart+-8% chart, I tried analysing the racing situations, but couldnt come up with a way to reason about situation with multiple cities. Im particularly interested in what exact situation does a city loose the race with a larger city forever, under what kind of a concrete scenario? Though Id intuitively expect this to happen, I couldnt understand exactly how when I tried thinking about such situations, it allways seemed it would catch up eventually with the moving target, even if in game-impractical amount of time, it seemed their GPP points grew quadratically due to accumulation, while the 'border' moved only linearly...

I just skimmed over the article again. I had read it some years ago and had forgotten its exact argumentation. The article was written shortly after the release of the game and not every detail about the game mechanics was completely understood then. The article explains a small part of the effects of the way the game generates great people and does so with nice graphs, but it isn't the the definite article on great people generation (and wasn't meant to be so).

The point that I was making in my previous post is not really included in detail. The article is more about the effect of the National Epic. Of course, when you are able to focus all of the great person point generation of an entire empire in a single city with the heroic epic, then you will generate about twice as many great people points then when you focus them outside of the city with the National Epic (or a smaller factor than 2 with the philosophical trait or the pacifism civic). That's the factor 2 that you see in the second graph (60% on the right versus 120% on the left).

The article doesn't really explore the effect of spreading great people points generation over many cities. The analysis is done for 3 cities, for d=1, the great people points are spread over 3 cities, for very small values of d, the great people points are focussed in a single city, for very high values of d, the great people points are focussed in 2 cities. If you're generating all of the great people points of an entire empire in 1, 2 or 3 cities, then you're still focussing them and not spreading them.

I'll try to show the results of spreading them in an example. You'll have to do some minor calculations. You can't hope to really understand the mathematical effects of game rules without doing some calculations. But I'll keep the numbers simple so as not to complicate matters unnecessarily.

But first of all, I want to remove a misconception shared by many namely: doubling the number of great person points generated by your empire will result in double the number of great persons after the same amount of time. This is not true. This has to do with the number of great person points needed for the next great person. It is a number that increases as follows (normal speed values):
100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000,
1200, 1400, 1600, 1800, 2000, 2200, 2400, 2600, 2800, 3000,
3300, 3600, etc.

Say for the sake of simplicity that all of the great person points are generated in a single city, so no loss of great person points in a city that is not going to generate a great person. Then after generating 1000 great person points, you'll have created 4 great persons, the ones for 100, 200, 300 and 400 great person points. It will take you 2100 great person points to generate 6 great persons, more than double the amount to generate 4 great persons.

(If you're mathematically inclined: the function describing the number of great person points needed to get n great persons starts of behaving like a quadratic function and even speeds up to a polynomial of the third degree after the n=10. This means that the number of great persons generated after a time T (at a constant great person point generation) starts of behaving like sqrt(T) (4 times as many great person points gives you twice as many great persons) and slows down to T^(1/3) (8 times as many great person points gives you twice as many great persons).)


Let us now discuss spreading great people points vs focussing them in one (or a few) cit(y)(ies).
First of all, there is an opportunity cost to using specialists to generate great people. It means that you will need more farms (to feed the specialists) instead of mines and towns which usually means a lower output of the city. The representation civic and small cottages might temporarily give an advantage to the specialist situation, but once the cottages mature a little, they will even outproduce a specialist under representation. You can have multiple cottages for each specialist because the specialist needs farms to feed him. In return for this opportunity cost, you expect to gain great people which make it worth the investment. If the return in great people is low or the time it takes to get great people is very long, then the investment wasn't worth it. The opportunity costs were too high for the limited return.

The best way to show what happens when you spread great people is an example. I'll try to use simple values in the example so that the calculations are relatively simple.

Situation 1:
The player created one Great Person farm specialised entirely to create great person points. It's generating 50 great person points per turn. Obviously this is unlikely in the early game, but it is very possible in the late game.

Situation 2:
The player created the same great person farm. Additionally, the player chose to create 5 great person points in 10 other cities effectively doubling his output in great person points. What will be the effect of this?

Situation 1:
Great People will be generated after this many turns:
2, 6, 12, 20, 30, 42, 56, 72, 90, 110, 134, 162, 194, 230, 270, 314, 362, 414, 470 (game end)

Situation 2:
Great People will be generated after this many turns:
2, 6, 12, 20, 30, 42, 56, 72, 90, 110, 134, 162, 194, 230, 270, 314, 362, 414, 470 (game end) all in the great person farm. Hmm, really? Yes, the other cities never in the entire game produce one single great person. Yes, they do produce many great person points, but they can never finish a great person before the great person farm has finished its next one and the amount increases again.

I'll show a few of the calculations to hopefully convince you that I didn't cheat with the numbers.
It takes 1000 (100+200+300+400) great person points to create 4 great persons in the single great person farm. That takes 20 turns at 50 great person points per turn.
To create the fourth great person in another city takes 400 great person points. But after 20 turns at 5 gpp's per turn, these cities only have 100 great person points.

It takes 23500 great person points to create 19 great persons in the single great person farm. That takes 470 turns at 50 GPP's per turn. The 19-th great person costs 2800 great person points. But after 470 turns, the 5 GPP's per turn producing cities have just accumulated 2350 GPP's.

Does this mean that these small cities will never produce a great person even if the game would play on indefinitely? No, not never, but it takes longer than the length of a game to produce one.

What this shows is that if the difference in great person point generation is too big, then the additional cities are useless for generating great persons.

If the 10 cities would be producing 10 GPP's per turn (tripling the empire wide output of great person points), then one of them would generate a great person after 100 turns and another after 160 turns (didn't calculate any further). In this case, there is some return of the investment, but producing 1600 great person points in 10 cities (16000 great person points in total) for 1 great person after 100 turns and another after 160 turns while the great person farm created 11 in the meantime shows that tripling the output of great person points has a very low revenue in this case. In my opinion, definitely not worth the opportunity costs.

If you can get a few cities which produce high amounts of great person points, then that is okay. But if you add numerous other cities which only add small numbers of great person points, then those aren't going to help generate great people. Try to concentrate the generation of great person points in a few cities (1, 2, 3, maybe 4) which have a roughly equal output (differing no more than a factor of 2 or 3 in output).

Of course, you should focus the production of great person points in those cities that have multiple food resources. Not only can you get a higher food output in these cities than in normal cities meaning that the total number of specialists and the total generation of great person points in such cities has the potential to be much higher, but also the opportunity cost to support these specialists is low as each food resource can support several specialists already very early in the game. You don't need many farms to get a decent number of specialists in these cities.

I hope this helps. :)

This has been a fascinating read, even if I'm too lazy to do all the math.

I just have one question. If I want to create a GP city, then I want high food production to support the specialists. I'd also like to build lots of Wonders there for the "free" GP points.

Cities with high food production tend NOT to be good production cities. How am I building all the Wonders? There are only so many forests around.

I'm relatively new to this forum, and I'm sure the answer is here somewhere. I need to keep reading...

This has been a fascinating read, even if I'm too lazy to do all the math.

I just have one question. If I want to create a GP city, then I want high food production to support the specialists. I'd also like to build lots of Wonders there for the "free" GP points.

Cities with high food production tend NOT to be good production cities. How am I building all the Wonders? There are only so many forests around.

I'm relatively new to this forum, and I'm sure the answer is here somewhere. I need to keep reading...

It's not that hard to create a city that produces enough food to support 10 specialists and if you pick the city where you want to create specialists right, then this city will be able to support many more specialists by the late game. 10 specialists create as many great person points as 15 great wonders. If you're able to get anywhere near 15 great wonders in a single city, then you're playing at a difficulty level that is clearly not challenging you.

So the idea is that the great person farm is creating great persons by having many specialists, not by having many great wonders. It might have some (by chopping forests as you say or by temporarily changing terrain and focussing on production), but this city is typically not having many wonders as it doesn't have the production to create them.

Some other cities that are focussing on a high hammer output will (try to) build the wonders of your civilization, not for their great person point bonuses but for the other benefits of the wonders.

That makes sense. I've just made the jump from Noble to Prince (I know...I'm a piker...that's why I'm reading the boards). I'd been playing industrious civs, and I knew is was time to step up when I was building 4/5ths of the Wonders and founding 5 religions. Needless to say, Prince has been a bit of a shock to my system. From reading the boards, it looks like building a Wonder is a rare achievement at the higher levels. I need to get out of the habit now, and learn other ways to get ahead. Anyway, thanks for the reply.

That makes sense. I've just made the jump from Noble to Prince (I know...I'm a piker...that's why I'm reading the boards). I'd been playing industrious civs, and I knew is was time to step up when I was building 4/5ths of the Wonders and founding 5 religions. Needless to say, Prince has been a bit of a shock to my system. From reading the boards, it looks like building a Wonder is a rare achievement at the higher levels. I need to get out of the habit now, and learn other ways to get ahead. Anyway, thanks for the reply.

At the levels that are really challenging someone (doesn't really have to do with the actual difficulty of the level, just the relative difficulty for the player), the player doesn't have the luxury to go for many world wonders. Especially at the start of the game where expansion and claiming good city tiles is very important, going for a wonder can be a luxury that you can't afford. One will have to choose between building a wonder like the pyramids and building several cities. If the level is really challenging you, then you probably can't afford to miss those cities.

Not everyone likes to play at a difficulty level that challenges them so much that it is hard to build a world wonder. Many just like to build an empire with many beautiful cities with many wonders. In that case, maybe the world wonders can be a substantial source of great person points. Usually, I won't have many world wonders in my great person farm.

See Obsoletes games for a strategy on producing Great People and wonders. You settle the great people (usually priests) in your capital to provide more hammers to build more wonders which produce more Great People. Its a pretty nice virtuous circle and he plays it at Immortal/Diety.

Wonders don't produce as many Great People as specialists, but you can have both specialists and wonders in the same city.

And, wonders don't eat food.

Wodan

See Obsoletes games for a strategy on producing Great People and wonders. You settle the great people (usually priests) in your capital to provide more hammers to build more wonders which produce more Great People. Its a pretty nice virtuous circle and he plays it at Immortal/Diety.

Wonders don't produce as many Great People as specialists, but you can have both specialists and wonders in the same city.

Personally, I think settling great persons is a relatively pretty poor investment of the great person. Many of the great persons also don't provide a great number of hammers when settled. Still, if you want to create a super city, then that's the way to do it. Super cities work better on smaller maps where their relative influence is bigger. On huge maps, one single super city is unlikely to have a big influence on your empire.

If you have Pyramids and are running Representation, settling an early GP is a very good option. Otherwise, I tend to agree. Save them for a golden age, if nothing else.

Wodan

If you have Pyramids and are running Representation, settling an early GP is a very good option. Otherwise, I tend to agree. Save them for a golden age, if nothing else.

Wodan

I must admit that the representation bonus on settled great persons is pretty significant. I just don't like to go for the Pyramids in my games. That wonder is so expensive and there is always some industrious AI or an AI that starts near stone. To get it first, you'll have to build it fairly early. If you have stone yourself or play with only a few AI opponents on a small world, then it's probably less costly to try and get that wonder after some expansion of your empire. On the lower difficulty levels, it's probably also not that costly to get it first.

Yeah but even if you don't get it, you get a very efficient translation of hammers to gold which can allow you to run a deficit economy and increase your tech speed.

Look at it this way: if there was something that allowed you to research at 125%, would you do it? I think you probably would.

Wodan

ps I pulled the 125 number out of my rear; it would be interesting to do an analysis to see what that number really is.

Yeah but even if you don't get it, you get a very efficient translation of hammers to gold which can allow you to run a deficit economy and increase your tech speed.

Look at it this way: if there was something that allowed you to research at 125%, would you do it? I think you probably would.

Wodan

ps I pulled the 125 number out of my rear; it would be interesting to do an analysis to see what that number really is.

It can be an efficient transition of hammers to gold if you have stone or are industrious.

And no, I won't always go for research at 125%. Not if it would seriously harm my expansion. So if I can build the pyramids without seriously harming my expansion, then I'll try it.

On huge maps at immortal or deity level with the standard number of opponents, a decent rate of expansion would give one more than 10 cities before 0 AD (without war, with war it's hard to tell).
The pyramids cost 500 hammers, a settler 100, so building the pyramids is a rather costly affair (or 750 and 150 at the epic speed at which I usually play).

10 cities before 0AD seems to me is way too much. That's crippling to your economy, no matter what size map. When do you usually get Currency or something?

Regardless, personally I feel that with CIV, expansion at all costs is not the best way to go. That's a good way to get yourself in trouble. It always has to be a balance of economy, military, expansion, and research.

Wodan

10 cities before 0AD seems to me is way too much. That's crippling to your economy, no matter what size map. When do you usually get Currency or something?

Regardless, personally I feel that with CIV, expansion at all costs is not the best way to go. That's a good way to get yourself in trouble. It always has to be a balance of economy, military, expansion, and research.

Wodan

I agree that you should balance your economy with your expansion. It's quite easy to overexpand and ruin your economy. That has been true since the first version of civilization 4.

Usually, claiming some resources and using hereditary rule so that my cities can grow a little and use multiple cottages per city helps to prevent a catastrophic stagnation in my economic expansion.

The balance between economic expansion and normal city expansion is a little different on the different map sizes. For instance on huge maps, city upkeep costs are typically a little lower. This is done intentionally as otherwise only a tiny fraction of the map could be settled at the start of the game. The high difficulty level does increase the city upkeep again.
I won't say that it's very easy to create an economy that can sustain more than 10 cities at 0AD, but as I usually play that way, it is certainly possible.

If you don't expand at a fairly fast pace at these settings (immortal/deity, huge map, standard number of opponents), then you will see that the AI will claim a significantly larger part of the map than you do and you will have to compete with AI civilizations twice your size. That can be a problem. Especially if you also use the aggressive AI setting as they will see you as a weak civilization that can be conquered easily.

By the way, we're derailing this thread a bit. It is a thread about great people points, so maybe we should continue this discussion elsewhere if you want to continue it.

Nah, let's just drop it. Thanks for your thoughts.

Wodan

Nah, let's just drop it. Thanks for your thoughts.

Wodan

Thank you for yours. :)

By the way, we have almost the same number of posts (at the moment).

:lol: You're right. Neck and neck. ;)

Anyway, back to the OP... lately I've been focusing in one city, but not worrying about GPP "purity" like I used to do... so I get the mixed bag of GP to feed golden ages.

Wodan

The pyramids cost 500 hammers, a settler 100, so building the pyramids is a rather costly affair (or 750 and 150 at the epic speed at which I usually play).

You are certainly right, that losing 5 settlers can hurt your expansion. But on the other hand, who can build 5 more cities from the start, and not run their economy into the ground by doing so?

Of course, the math isn't so straight forward. Some Civs get settler building bonuses, and others get wonder bonuses, and then there are resources to make the case more complex. So the base value comparison is a little hard to guide by.

Back in the days of Civ 3, the Land-is-Power ideal was pretty much dead-on. It still has certain valid points, but there are at least a couple deity builders who get along fine by focusing on vertical growth instead.

You are certainly right, that losing 5 settlers can hurt your expansion. But on the other hand, who can build 5 more cities from the start, and not run their economy into the ground by doing so?

Of course, the math isn't so straight forward. Some Civs get settler building bonuses, and others get wonder bonuses, and then there are resources to make the case more complex. So the base value comparison is a little hard to guide by.

Back in the days of Civ 3, the Land-is-Power ideal was pretty much dead-on. It still has certain valid points, but there are at least a couple deity builders who get along fine by focusing on vertical growth instead.

I didn't want to say that not building the pyramids would allow one to build 5 more settlers and I purposefully didn't say so. To create new cities, you also have to create units to defend them and workers to improve the area around them. Furthermore, you will want to grow your cities vertically a bit so that your economy doesn't stall.

I just wanted to say that building the pyramids will cost me a lot in expansion speed, usually too much for my taste. If you start near stone, then it's less of a problem, but that depends on luck.