philosophical trait not so good?

mystikmind2005 said:

Also if your playing a highly challenging, survive by the skin of your teeth difficulty level then you can forget about building any wonders! It would be better that wonders did not even exist in that situation!

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mystikmind2005,

On the contrary. Because the AI receives zero bonuses to wonders, you build them just as fast as the AI, even on Deity. In fact, every Deity game that I've won (and many that I've lost) I have build the Pyramids, which is one of the most costly wonders of the early game.

Yxklyx said:

I just started trying out Philosophical with China. My GP managing skills aren't that great yet. I generally don't research religious techs and get them later from the other Civs in trades. Anyway, I built Stonehenge and shortly thereafter got a Great Prophet. I could have light-bulbed Meditation - seemed a waste since it's such a cheap tech and since I haven't founded a religion I settled him. Was that a good idea? I'm thinking now of beelining to Philosophy so that I can adopt Pacifism.

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I'd say you did the right thing with this Prophet. You'll get plenty more of them for shrines/bulbs later anyway. A couple of questions though:

Did you settle him straight away? If not then you've wasted some gold and beakers. It pays to be decisive when you pop a GP.
Where did you settle him? This guy should go to your future Wall Street city. Since this is usually a holy city though, which you don't have yet, he should go to the city which is most likely to become holy, that is, your largest non-capital city.

I love Phi, the only problem I have with it is that once I get my science train at full steam, its hard for me to swap out of it. When playing Phi, I get a couple libaries cities up soon and get me 2 scientists.The first couple GSc's usually build acadamies in the cities I see the most potential in. But sometime around late medieval to early renessaince, I want an occasional artist, or spy, with maybe a prophet in there. (Of course, an engie would be nice too but I can never seem to get them.) But I usually have my good science cities kicking out so much Science GPP that its hard to work anything else in. (And IMO its mostly a bad idea to knock your science down for the possibility of another GP type.) SO most games I play I get I don't know how many GP but probably 75-80% are GSc's.

ANyone have any good ways to switch momentum of GP types?

I am not too excited about early Great People, especially in high difficulty. We will consider without pyramids, since building it is very hard in high difficulty. Here are the things they can do.

1. Build shrine or find religion(Christianity or Taoism). But in high difficulty you are not likely to find an early religion, so no shrine. If you use the GP to find a late religion, you can't win the conversion race.

2. Bulb. But in early game, there isn't much expensive techs to bulb. Bulbing will be wasting their potential. You could wait a bit and tech education/printing press.

3. Settle. That will provide provide long term benefit, and easier to compare with other traits. A typical GP will provide 9 (for convinience, 1 = 2 )
With no modifier, philosophical with get 1 extra GP once reachs 300 raw . 300=100 +200 for non-Phi and 300*2 = 100+200+300 for Phi
With 100% modifier on both side, philosophical will get 1 extra GP once reaches 500 raw 500*2 = 100+200+300+400 for non-Phi and 500*3 = 100+200+300+500 for Phi.

Now in a typical game, at the time you reach 300 or 500 raw , your empire will have 5+ cities. Organize or financial with save/give you more than one single great people.

I think you're over-simplicist here with philosophical. Because first you get more GP (which can be much more tha juste one), but more importantly, you get them SOONER.

Erizibef has a great combo of Phi/Fin. You can do SE early and switch over to cottages later.

If your play the game in such a way that early great people are not helpful, then you won't see much benefit in philosophical.

PHI might be the top trait if you want to beeline to a critical military tech, then take over the world; I rarely play that way though.

I had an eye on its usefulness in my last few games emphasising settled GPs, and the effect is less impressive than I would have thought; for medium to large empires the additional output doesn't outperform the savings from Organised.

PHI also suffers because it kicks in later than the other economic traits, and doesn't allow one to abuse the economy as much as one might want.
ORG cuts cost and is in full effect even while you're too busy cranking out units and infrastructure to worry about research.
Ok, FIN doesn't do that either... but it generally allows for a speedy recovery, again giving one more leeway in rapid expansion.

PHI comes into its own later and reaches a peak after which it loses in value (with other GPP modifiers like the National Epic, the Parthenon or Pacifism, we might look at as little as 3 additional GP in a typical game that lasts to the modern age). The benefit also doesn't scale well at all with empire size (this works both ways; by the same token, it is a top trait for a OCC and very good for deliberately compact empires).