Tips on maximizing GP's?

Other than 'build wonder x and get a GP of your choice' kind of buildings?

Some games I get a lot of GP's and some not so much down to nearly none.

I'm no expert, but from my experience the bigger population of your city the more GP's.

I didn't even notice until recently, but you can go into "Specialist control" in your city screen and select different specialists. If you select a Scientist (under University) you get more Great Scientist points so you'll generate Great Scientists faster. (future Science buildings have Great Scientist slots too.) Selecting more specialists increase the amount of turns until your city gets bigger, so having lots of food allows you to have more specicalists.

You can build the National Epic and a Garden too, each of these buildings increase the GP rate by 25%, so 50% in total if you build both. (You can only build the National Epic in 1 city, you can build a Garden in any city next to a rivert, lake or the sea.)

# of cities has a role to play.

Overly simple example: One city finishes a 100 point great person, starts back at zero and needs to get to 200. Two cities, one gets a 100 point great person, the other builds up to 100 points. Only needs 100 more to spawn another GP.

They come in "waves" like that, and the more cities, the larger each wave before it resets.

More cities also means more faith, which could equate to an extra GP or two through faith purchase.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, more cities which are actually working the specialist slots. Obviously having 100 cities and only 1 working specialists won't result in very many GP

You need to slot specialists in certain cities to really build the various GPs. Just take a look and you'll see that on default, the auto settinsg will tend to pick certain specialists over others based upon your city focus and some other factors. Typically you can't build all GPs in 1 city since you can't slot that many specialists so try to build certain ones in about 3 different cities.

So are GP points city-specific? Therefore you shouldn't have specialists in the same city for two different kinds of GP's?

GP points are specific to a city. The only circumstances where you get GP point "conflicts" are Great Engineer, Great Merchant and Great Scientist points, since all three types of GPs operate on the same counter (i.e., generating a Great Engineer increases the cost of the next GE, GM and GS by 100 points). But you need to take care with that whether you are running GE, GM and GS specialists in the same city or different cities. All other GPs run on separate counters, so you can run them in the same city or different cities, as you see fit.

Filling specialist slots (which you should do manually -- don't rely on the automatic city governor) does require a source of excess food to support the specialists. If you run too many specialists in a city, you will slow down population growth in that city. In addition to building and working farms, building food buildings, and befriending and allying maritime city-states, internal food trade routes can supply extra food. If you adopt the Freedom ideology, there is a Level 1 tenet, Civil Society, that will cut specialist food consumption in half.

Browd said:

GP points are specific to a city. The only circumstances where you get GP point "conflicts" are Great Engineer, Great Merchant and Great Scientist points, since all three types of GPs operate on the same counter (i.e., generating a Great Engineer increases the cost of the next GE, GM and GS by 100 points). But you need to take care with that whether you are running GE, GM and GS specialists in the same city or different cities. All other GPs run on separate counters, so you can run them in the same city or different cities, as you see fit.

Filling specialist slots (which you should do manually -- don't rely on the automatic city governor) does require a source of excess food to support the specialists. If you run too many specialists in a city, you will slow down population growth in that city. In addition to building and working farms, building food buildings, and befriending and allying maritime city-states, internal food trade routes can supply extra food. If you adopt the Freedom ideology, there is a Level 1 tenet, Civil Society, that will cut specialist food consumption in half.

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Fascinating. After all these years there is so much I don't know about this game.

So if I create a GS in one city it won't increase the cost of a GS in another city?

Sherlock said:

Fascinating. After all these years there is so much I don't know about this game.

So if I create a GS in one city it won't increase the cost of a GS in another city?

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No; the total number of points needed for a GS / GM / GE to be born at a given point of time is the same for all cities.

The main tip is:
Build Gardens
Build National Epic
Unless hammer production is too low to make it viable, build Leaning Tower
Complete both Tradition & Rationalism, which allows starting in Industrial era you to faith buy both GE and GS. Along the way it also boosts GS generation.
Choose either Freedom or Order : And choose the level 1 tenent that also increases great people generation
Aesthetics opener also boosts guild people generation
Arts funding tends to be popular with most AIs; this will increase guild people generation but decrease GS/GE/GM generation.
Science funding tends to be hated by most AIs; it's benefit is the reverse except that the AIs will vote it down.

Wow ok and with all this you have how many GP lets says on Marathon? I remember in Civ 4 where you'd better put all your GP points into the same city. Is it the same for Civ 5. Not sure of the mechanics when you obtain a GP. I mean What reset exactly?

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NKVD said:

Wow ok and with all this you have how many GP lets says on Marathon? I remember in Civ 4 where you'd better put all your GP points into the same city. Is it the same for Civ 5. Not sure of the mechanics when you obtain a GP. I mean What reset exactly?

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If you're interested in GS to the exclusion of GE/GM; having every city filling all science slots in Civ 5 will actually give you more total GS than micro-managing to prevent your other cities from producing a GS.
The reason is that only the city in which a great person is born gets the type that got born reset to zero.
In late game, I've had 2 GS born 5 turns apart (standard speed)

So each city is independant in GP points? You basicly could have 2 GP on the same turn in 2 different cities?

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NKVD said:

So each city is independant in GP points? You basicly could have 2 GP on the same turn in 2 different cities?

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No when one city generated the first GS/GE/GM that would increase the counter for all cities for GS/GE/GM. The same applies for Wonder generated great people, these are generated before a city generates one so time this right. The exception is GA/GW/GM as they are on different counters.

What wasn't mentioned was buffing your great people generation. Gardens(whether from Hanging Gardens or not), National Epic, Leaning Tower of Pisa(all cities) all increase great people generation by %25. Befriending Sweden give a 10% increase. Unlocking 'Humanism' increase GS by 25%, adopting the Aesthetics tree increases GW/GA/GM by 25%. And the corresponding WC resolutions either increase or decrease by 33% GE/GS/GM & GA/GW/GM depending on which was passed. Certain world wonders give great people points. Pyramids, Stonehenge, and Great Wall all giving 1 GE point to name a few.

Faith generated great people, with exception of prophets do not increase the respective counters(only the amount of faith needed to buy that particular great person).

Completing the Patronage tree has its benefits as allied Cs may gift a great person. I once got a GE at a most appropriate time. I'm not sure if this increases the counter(s) or not.

Certain civs have buffs to great people generation. Sweden is +10% for every DOF(which I believe stacks), Babylon +50% for GS, Brazil is +50% to GW/GA/GM when in a carnival(GA).

A good rule is to go only go after one kind of "sciences" GP (Engineer, Merchant, Scientist). Go into your cities and use manual specialist control to place all of your specialists on the GP type you want. Avoid putting any specialists on ones you don't want; all that will do is increase the cost of the ones you want.

For example, if you want scientists, put all of your specialists in your universities, public schools, etc. Remove specialists from your workshops and markets.

Running specialists as early as possible and combining them with things like the Leaning Tower and National Epic will maximize the number of GPs you get.

Wow thank you. 2 great answers.

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If you want just as many GPs as possible, run every type in every city you got, they all are pretty useful and this strategy allow even a empire with limited number of cities to get quite alot of GPs.

If you really want to focus on a single type of GP, get alot of cities because each city can only have so many specialist of a single type.

Having plenty of food can help in making GPs... The best way to make all types of GPS, IMO is by making wonders because you don't have to rely on a specialist economy to make GPs. I'm not discouraging GP, I'm only showing the cons of having a GP specialist economy where food is usually necessary. On top of that you also need other resources like hammers for production... Unless you get the statue of liberty which really gives +2 hammers per specialist.. Relying on GP through a specialist economy I guess is best when you have too much food in a population and your people are about to go over the happiness meter and start getting unhappy from a food excess.

I had one game where all my puppets were generating lots of GM's. Their gold focus meant they were building banks and putting specialists in them. Might want to watch out for that.

In earlier versions you could get GS,GE and GM on same turn from same city. If all of their counters reached next treshold same time. This of course increased cost of next GS/GE/GM by 300 point. At some point of BNW or G&K they patched it and it's not possible anymore and you get only one of them. Can somebody confirm this? Or do they all have to increase to exactly same number?