I noticed bards give Research I really think they should provide happiness.

This could make bards exploitable. I think this is also not possible with the currrent code. Their main focus is culture. To be honest I rarelly use artists as specialists. For me the best are merchants and priests. Merchants, because they give commerce. With the current set-up there is no difference between commerce and science. Time to time if I need to boost my culture, I have plenty of choices to do so (like the spell hope, theatre or even obelisk).

Priests are good with altar.

Although I don't think regular Bards should give happiness, maybe Great Bards should, when attached to a city...

id rather see great bards and other great people have special buildings like the altar and academies (the altar is especially fun because its staged).

maybe a Great Bard can cause theatres to cause happiness

great bards being useable to make academies would make sense as well, so that atleast would be nice to give great bards some more utility.

i find great merchants pretty lacking too tho, maybe a building for them too buildable in each city via great merchants, something like:
Treasury: +2 production, +50% gold


being able to unattach great people specialists from cities would be cool too

I'm not sure how the corporations are going to work in BTS and what plans the FFH team has for them...but it might be interesting if Great Merchants were required to establish most Guilds/trading company headquarters (corporations)


I'd like to see a great bard set of colleges like the alter...They would be national wonders buildable only by great bards and sages after certain techs.
Here's one possibility, with college effects being cumulative:

Fochlucan +1 culture, +1 culture/bard, +3 bards allowed
MacFuirmidh +1 culture,+1 research, +1 GPP bard, +1 bard allowed
Doss +1 culture,+1 research, +1 research/bard, +1 bard allowed
Canaith +1 culture,+1 GPP bard, +1 GPP sage, +1 sage allowed
Cli +1 culture,+1 research/sage, +1 sage allowed
Anstruth +1 culture,+1 commerce/ bard, +1 bard allowed
Ollamh +1 culture,+1 production/bard, +1bard allowed
Magna Alumnae -- +3 culture, ,+1 GPP bard, +1 GPP sage, All Units based in this city that can possibly get an upgrade will get that upgrade for free at the begining of the turn when the appropriate tech is discovered by the civ

so the cumulative effect of having the Magna Alumnae would be:
+10 culture
+1 culture/bard
+1 commerce/bard
+1 production/bard
+1 research/sage
+7 bards allowed
+2 sages allowed
+3 GPP bard
+2 GPP sage
All Units based in this city that can possibly get an upgrade will get that upgrade for free at the begining of the turn when the appropriate tech is discovered by the civ

that's just off the top of my head.

I suppose in principle I just like the national wonders that stack on top of each other.

A set of schools of magic that granted free XP to mages would be interesting as well.

I noticed bards give Research I really think they should provide happiness.

Leonardo da Vinci. I tend to think of the beaker bonus as being because of artists like him. Art and ingenuity are closely related, anyway.

I noticed bards give Research I really think they should provide happiness.

Great idea! Forget culture slider this is the way to go. +1 happiness each bard and an additional +1 happiness per bard if you have theatre too.

Leonardo da Vinci. I tend to think of the beaker bonus as being because of artists like him. Art and ingenuity are closely related, anyway.

Ya, thats why I think at the least Great Bards should be able to make Academies too (academies even produce some culture too).

I find Great Bards to be pretty strong as they are. +3 Gold and +14 Culture is nothing to shun at for a specialist if you plant them. Especially with the lack of raw culture buildings, and excess of % culture boosting buildings. And they boost the cultural borders pretty sweetly with the culture bomb.

great bards being useable to make academies would make sense as well, so that atleast would be nice to give great bards some more utility.

i find great merchants pretty lacking too tho, maybe a building for them too buildable in each city via great merchants, something like:
Treasury: +2 production, +50% gold


being able to unattach great people specialists from cities would be cool too

That wouldn't hurt, but Great Merchants are pretty useful as is to attach to cities - they're the only specialist that provides food. Good for a city that expanded one step too far, or that is on a bunch of great mining terrain without a lot of room for farms. That said, their other abilities are definitely lacking - I pretty much always attach them to cities, unlike most of the other Great People.

Ya, thats why I think at the least Great Bards should be able to make Academies too (academies even produce some culture too).

It would take too much of the sage's functionality, I think... But changing the 3:gold: that the super specialist gives into 3:science: might be nice.

Let us not forget that the original symbols for happiness were 'Elvi', greatest of all Bards.

Bards and Merchants.

If the "great" version of each were given some modicrum of "OOoo"ness if attached to a city (AS a citizen) then each of the specialists would find more use.

Why not give "great" bards a +1 Happiness to the city. I mean, A) you're not using that great bard for a variety of other things, B) his bonuses to culture dont outweigh the "bomb" effect he normally has. And C) Its not truly exploitable - since the best way to guarnentee Great Bards is with bard specialists - which would mean that those citizens arnt doing something else.


The great merchant could (as I see it) add an additional trade route. +1 Trade route as a Citizen Great Merchant would be significant. Or perhaps he'd add 1 gold to each "active" trade route. Thus, if you got a few Great merchants in your city, each trade route would be getting added benefits.

Either of these options added to great bard and merchant "citizen" qualities, would make them more appealing to use as citizens, and would make their specialists more appealing to use to GET the great folk.

-Qes

Let us not forget that the original symbols for happiness were 'Elvi', greatest of all Bards.

I Think a certain Bill S. would cry if he heard that.
-Qes

Bards and Merchants.

If the "great" version of each were given some modicrum of "OOoo"ness if attached to a city (AS a citizen) then each of the specialists would find more use.

Why not give "great" bards a +1 Happiness to the city. I mean, A) you're not using that great bard for a variety of other things, B) his bonuses to culture dont outweigh the "bomb" effect he normally has.

Actually, the Specialist is better than the bomb but it just takes slower to get into effect, and is of course depending on when and where in the game you do it. The +3 Gold is really good actually, since it's a base sum, affected later by % bonuses like God King's +50%, and +25% from Tax Office, the +100% from the Bazaar of Mammon, etc. And it is unaffected by the slider, so it increases chance to research at 100%.

Look at this example:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/7968/GreatMerchant.jpg
That's from two great merchants, two Merchants, a market, and RoK Temple. With A Bazaar of Mammon, Tax Office and Money Changer, under the God King Civic. And this doesn't even take into account the +1 Food that great merchant gives, which enables you to work more mines, or Towns on plains.

With so few buildings to give base culture in FfH, the +12 Culture from a Great Bard is HUGE. When all % giving buildings and civics are applied the culture you will get far outscores the bombing. For example, on Epic game speed, the culture bomb will give you 6000 culture. But that doesn't help you much if you don't get to 7500, and that last 1500 can be hard to get in any decent time. In fact, that 6000 culture have the same border size as 750 culture, just with some extra strength. And while you work your way up 6000 culture, the +3 Gold per turn is gonna help a lot. Of course, there are situations where the Bomb is probably a better idea.

Here's an example:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/7968/great_bard_specialist.jpg
This is with 4 religion temples (OO, Order, Leaves and RoK) a Great Bard and Bard.

And the fact that the Great Bard gives 3x as much as the regular specialist compared to the other Great Specialists that usually just give double the amount, is pretty remarkable.

Now, consider the above example, but with 3 Great Bards, and the culture slider at 100%. Now that is a cultural monster ;)

The great merchant could (as I see it) add an additional trade route. +1 Trade route as a Citizen Great Merchant would be significant. Or perhaps he'd add 1 gold to each "active" trade route. Thus, if you got a few Great merchants in your city, each trade route would be getting added benefits.

That would either be to STRONG or too WEAK depending on circumstances.

Either of these options added to great bard and merchant "citizen" qualities, would make them more appealing to use as citizens, and would make their specialists more appealing to use to GET the great folk.

I think that the specialists are unappealing to people cause they haven't really analyzed the effect or tried it in practice. My above examples are great to show what the specialists can do. I think people HIGHLY underestimate the great specialists. Another great thing with great specialists is that they are affected by the civics that increase output of specialists, like Caste System and Scholarship, which, if you have both, would make every great specialist give another +2 Research, and +2 Culture.

Having said that, I'm not against improving the Great Specialists. Especially as Agriculture is getting toned down. But improving on them might risk breaking the balance. And again, the great specialists ARE better than most people think.

I am pretty sure that bards do not give research unless you have the proper wonder or the proper civic. Then, I am pretty sure that the boost is actually for all specialist.

I don't think Leonardo Da Vinci was ever a bard. Sure he was an artist, but his talents for music, if existent, were not up to par with his other skills

Personally, I would like the ability to have some great people fit in to multiple categories (Prophet/Sages, Prophet/Bards, Engineer/Sages, Engineer/Commanders, Bard/Adventurers) and have the abilities of both. This would better represent the multiple abilities often possessed by real great people, but could be a major programming problem.

(I would recommend making a single great person unit and relegating their current roles to promotions. Perhaps these great talents could even be occasionally discovered in a normal soldier or worker.)

I am pretty sure that bards do not give research unless you have the proper wonder or the proper civic. Then, I am pretty sure that the boost is actually for all specialist.

It does give research, a Bard gives +1:science: and +4:culture:. And Caste system boosts all specialists even Great ones with +1:science: and +2:culture:. While scholarship boosts all specialists with another +1:science:.

I don't think Leonardo Da Vinci was ever a bard. Sure he was an artist, but his talents for music, if existent, were not up to par with his other skills

The Bard specialist is based on the Artist specialist from Vanilla, and it gave the same stats as in FfH. The rename is, as I see it, just to better fit the fantasy theme.

if you reason bards were not scientific, they at least had ingenuity, which they used to create poems and ballads. They would have to be fairly intelligent, so maybe they could use their ingenuity to lend the sages a hand.

I suppose you could also argue that barbs play a crucial role in the passing on of knowledge of the past to future generations. People also say that we learn better through song.

I Think a certain Bill S. would cry if he heard that.
-Qes

C'mon, Shatner's not -that- good. ;)

I am currently reading about the gauls, and the village bards usually were the school masters.