The AI gets cool Great People like engineers & scientists.
I get lame Great People like artists & priests.
I suppose I'll just pray he don't nuke me. Oh. I sing a song about not getting nuked as well.

micromanage your cities :P

Priests are not that bad. If not needing shrines can still settle them for :commerce: and :hammers: ... Artists... oh... uuuh... The can help you sing that song about not beeing nuked :P

You can somewhat influence the type of GP you get. Check the wonders and make sure you assign appropriate specialists. Also, Great Artists are not lame. Expanding your borders through culture is a very effective way to get rid (or get in possession of) those pesky enemy cities just at your border (culture flip); and all without your neighbour being angry and what. Also, try a cutlural victory once. YOu can't get enough Great Artists for that.

cheers
-wannabewarlord

If you can get the pyramids or the great wall early on then you get engineers. If you save them, then you can rush wonders that give you points towards scientists or engineers. Also, you can build forges and liabraries to assign engineer and scientist specialists.

As Wannabewarlord Artists are brilliant for "culture-bombing" if you have close neighbours or need to consolidate your hold on captured territories. You can also use most GPs (though not Great Generals) to research techs; Artists go for things like Communism or Constitution or whatever later in the game but they can still give you a leg up if needs be. I save them mostly for during or after war when I can strengthen borders and turn a disparate group of captured city-states into more of a homogeneous whole again to work whatever improvements the enemy has left me.

The trick is to get the maximum out of what you generate. There are a lot of threads on the Stories and Tales/Strategy and Tips forums where people who know this game inside out and back-to-front can calculate what they need to do where to get a specific kind of GP. I tend to leave mine to chance but I'm getting better about using them properly.

The AI gets cool Great People like engineers & scientists.
I get lame Great People like artists & priests.
I suppose I'll just pray he don't nuke me. Oh. I sing a song about not getting nuked as well.

perhaps you should start running scientists in your cities? (from libraries)?