Is a GP Farm necessary?

I'm currently playing a game as Ramses with an absolutely stacked GP farm in Thebes (2 pigs, lots of grasslands, fresh water, and river tiles ).

I'm loving all the GPs I'm pumping out, but it's a really unusual situation for me. In most games, I hardly focus on GPs or wonders at all. I'm wondering whether building GP farms is considered an essential strategy for the rest of you.

So here are my basic questions:
- How important do you consider your GP farm?
- Is the GP farm more useful in SE?
- If running a CE, do you still prioritize building a GP farm?
- Do you build more than one GP farm to emphasize different GPs?

Any other useful tidbits are, as always, appreciated.

GP farm is obviously way better in a CE, especially when philo. When running what you call an SE, essentially most of your cities are GP farms.. You can only have one NE, you can reassign what sort of GP's you want to generate in that one though. Having at least one food heavy site to run specialists is very important. Most of the time it is the second most important site in your empire behind your capital. Ofc sometimes your capital is a GP farm...

ViaArete said:

- How important do you consider your GP farm?

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Very important.

ViaArete said:

- Is the GP farm more useful in SE?

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What Oyzar said.

ViaArete said:

- If running a CE, do you still prioritize building a GP farm?

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Absolutely. The specialists do amazing things for an economy. Building an academy is essential (scientist). Have you ever run a trade mission with a merchant? Absorbing specialists into a city is also very worthwhile.

ViaArete said:

- Do you build more than one GP farm to emphasize different GPs?

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Yes, although it's a more advanced topic, as it requires a lot of micromanagement and some luck. Personally, I normally just run a hodge podge of various GP, because any great person (except artists) will significantly stimulate my economy.

A GP farm is not more usefull with an SE... The main benefit of a GP farm is to farm GP's. Since your other cities will produce GP's as well when running an SE it is less beneficial when doing so.. SE != representation. Sure some of the time you get it, but alot of the time you don't have it. Hence this assumption is flawed...

Counter edit.

A few comments:

1) Thebes: I can hear Dave screaming already. That city with all the riverside grassland sounds like a cottaged capital, perfect for running Bureaucracy. Two bonus food resources is great for any city, but for the uber-GP farm you really want 4-5 food bonus tiles. A captured AI capital is often perfect for this.

2) Importance of GP farm: Having more specialists is handy, and you usually can get similar performance to cottages during the early-mid game if you have enough specialists going, particularly if you're running Caste System. Specialists give you a lot of flexibility. That said, I have played many games without a food-driven GP farm, and you can generate specialists with multiple mini-SE cities running a couple of specialists each, or with a wonderspamming city.

3) GP Farm better in SE or GE? Arguably it's better in a CE, because most/all of your GPPs are coming from one place -- the GP farm isn't competing with other cities for specialist generation, which becomes an issue when each GP starts costing over 1000 GPPs. That said, a CE thrives in a different set of civics from a SE, and the GP Farm will be better and more flexible in Representation and Caste System. The GP farm works well with either.

4) prioritization of GP farm in CE: If a GP farm candidate presents itself, then yes, it is a priority. The main requirement for a GP farm is a lot of food and either Caste System or a ton of specialist-enabling buildings. Since many GP farms are captured capitals, it's usually easier to get the specialists going with Caste System, which you may or may not want to run with a CE.

5) Multiple GP Farms. It's rare to have multiple city locations with enough food to run multiple uber-GP farms. But yes, if your land allows it, go for it. Just realize that there is a diminishing returns effect in the mid- to late-game when you're running more than 2 or 3 GPP-generating cities. More likely is that you'll have one GP farm and another city getting specialists from wonders.

But to clarify: many people like to have a science city (with Oxford) and a gold city (with a holy shrine and Wall Street). Traditionally, these are cottaged cities with other commerce tiles (gold, dye, etc.), but you can also make also this work with specialists under Caste System or in the late game when you've got multiple specialist-enabling buildings for each kind of specialist. So in this sense, you could have a specialist-powered Science City that acted as a scientist "GP Farm."

Personally, I don't care much about what kind of specialist I get. I find them all useful. About the only time I aim for a particular kind of specialist is when I need one for a corporation.

NcNikke said:

Why did you get so mad? Johnpecan was just agreeing with what you said.

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He edited it

The importance of a dedicated GP farm decreases pretty quickly after liberalism. Not only do you get proportionally fewer from each GP after that, but you also get fewer GPs so it's a double whammy. This may not hold true at Emperor+ where you need to catch up even after liberalism.

At Monarch I'm finding that I can make a GP farm if I see a good spot for it and forget about it if I don't. The important thing to remember is to get your GPs from somewhere because they're important to the overall game. You just don't have to dedicate a city to generating them.

Just to clarify:

Lots of Food + Lots of Hills = Production City (wonders or military)
Lots of Food + Lots of Grassland = very large Cottage/Hybrid City
Lots of Food + marginal land = GP farm

Some cheap, nice GP farms are when you have a lot of seafood but not much else. Occasionally you'll get this kind of setup on a one-tile island or peninsula, which makes for a nice little GP farm. With just three 5-food tiles and the city tile, you generate 17 food which will support a size 9 city running 6 specialists.

The uber-GP farm, with (say) five 5-food tiles supports a size 14 city running 9 specialists. This is why Caste System is so important for this kind of city -- you won't have enough buildings to run all the specialists until late in the game.

It is worth sacreficing a great loads of riverside city / loads of hills for your gp farm if it is the best spot in your empire...

oyzar said:

It is worth sacreficing a great loads of riverside city / loads of hills for your gp farm if it is the best spot in your empire...

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I dunno...I'd probably farm a quick GS off a random city somewhere and stick an academy in the capitol, and use a bad!@# site like that to make units and TAKE a gp farm . An exception may be isolation, which is one of the areas I still struggle in a bit.

Here is my GP farm and a capital from a current game of mine. It is by far the best GP farm in my empire and getting up another one would take way too long... A GP farm is sooo much better at generating Great people than several small cities. I don't have an academy yet in this game but a scientist is currently on the way there to make it. Small crap cities are much better at just whipping / drafting an army. I have another production site selected out for HE as well... I'll probably use my second best food city(fish + rice) for globe theater...

When I said use a small crap city for a GS, I meant for ONE GS . Then it goes back to business as usual.

I find the academy in my best city (capitol usually) very powerful, as it lets me tech at a rate usually only available to peaceful builders if I set it up correctly...

Of course you want a REAL gp farm as soon as possible. I'm just saying that if taking it is an option, it's better to war for one than forcing a square peg into a round hole oftentimes.

...Nice cities. 3x that kind of food is . Obvious GP farm if you have it .

I did war for that city . +2 motherland unhappiness kinda sucks, but obviously possible to combat with hrule. With 10 riverside titles not counting the banas it is also a very good cottage site however. The point is that you should make a GP farm if you can instead of making it into a production or commerce city(both would work for this site).

Is a GP Farm necessary? No.

Is it desirable? Well, ask yourself what you could do with say 20-30 great people and then answer the question for yourself

oyzar said:

I did war for that city . +2 motherland unhappiness kinda sucks, but obviously possible to combat with hrule. With 10 riverside titles not counting the banas it is also a very good cottage site however. The point is that you should make a GP farm if you can instead of making it into a production or commerce city(both would work for this site).

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I gotcha and I agree . I usually tell people who ask about this to make their "best food city" their GP farm. It's a sad state if this isn't at least 2 strong food resources, with 3 being better, but it happens...and when it does I strongly advocate war .

If you get a horrible draw like no more than 1 food resource per possible city in isolation (!), then you still want to use the best food site, it just sucks then .

I think that a timing factor is also involved when considering a GP farm. Should the NE go in the capital, or be delayed for a future city that will eventually have excellent GP potential? Sometime it makes sense to build the GL in the capital along with the NE, and run a couple of scientists. It might not be the best candidate for a GP farm in the long term, but the ability to generate lots of early scientists can often be of greater use than generating more GPs late.

The Rook said:

I think that a timing factor is also involved when considering a GP farm. Should the NE go in the capital, or be delayed for a future city that will eventually have excellent GP potential? Sometime it makes sense to build the GL in the capital along with the NE, and run a couple of scientists. It might not be the best candidate for a GP farm in the long term, but the ability to generate lots of early scientists can often be of greater use than generating more GPs late.

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Sure, but you can't get great lib every time... It is great if you have marble and can get litterature early enough though...

Thanks for all the advice - loads of help.

A question that arose as I was reading and noodling around with my game (not sure if there's an objective answer to this, or if it's just opinion):

say you have two cities; one which is getting GPPs from wonderspamming and another with ideal resources/tiles to house specialists and pump out GPs -- Where do you put the NE?
...Or, more to the point: Are wonders or specialists generally more effective for GP farms?

My thinking is that wonders make a more obvious solution, since they're not really going anywhere and they don't tie you to Rep/Caste.

Generally specialists will generate way more GPP than wonders, but in some cities you could first build wonders then run specialists afterwards... Ofc NE cost quite a few hammers so it might be better to build it in the wonder farm since the GP farm might not have much hammers. If you don't build NE in your main GP farm i strongly suggest to run pacfism though...