Should Great Scientists be changed?

I mean let's face it: it's just plain stupid that the best time to bulb a GS is in the late game when you've got research labs in all of your cities. It doesn't make much sense in real life, either, as you can't just hoard all of your brilliant minds for centuries so they can all collaberate on expensive technologies.

I think the way that they prevented late-game hoarding for other Great People is a good model for a new Great Scientist, like the Great Musician, which has a tourism strength associated with them based on the time that they spawned. Why not apply the same yield to Great Scientists?

A Great Scientist born when the empire was making 75 Beakers per turn will grant 750 beakers per turn (a buff from what they are now - which is the last 8 turns of research) but will nerf late game hoarding.

I know that science victory is one of the hardest VC's now, but this will make tech bulbing more of a trade off compared to an academy and will keep great people burning throughout all of history, not just the information age.

OmniPotent42 said:

I think the way that they prevented late-game hoarding for other Great People is a good model for a new Great Scientist, like the Great Musician, which has a tourism strength associated with them based on the time that they spawned. Why not apply the same yield to Great Scientists.

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Yes, absolutely, Great Scientists should be changed this way, I'm kind of mindblown how sometimes the developers introduce such features and then don't extend them to old game features (which one would think was pretty easy).

I agree that Science Victory is now the hardest (lol), but that's not so much because SV is too hard, but because DV and CV are too easy. That's only natural, given that both of these had major changes in the expansion and therefore need balancing, so I hope we'll see some tweaking to that in the fall patch.

Although I love my Great Engineer wonder-bombing, it would probably also make sense to look into changing them, because frankly, they are kind of imbalanced.

Definitely agree on the scientists.

GEs do scale with a cities population, so they are somewhat limited (early game by being small and late game by not being able to grow endlessly). Maybe they are too strong in the first place - then again I do not wanna use one and then still be beaten on the wonder. So first of all they need to tell us how many hammers they ll provide on the current project and how many would be left (also in turns) [most people don't even know how they work, they just think using a GE = wonder in a turn]. Maybe the best way to make them more balanced would be tio have cities suffer from a production malus for x turns after a GE has been used [or where the heck is the GE getting all these hammers from anyway?]. So you do get your (guaranteed) wonder in a turn, but the next project will take slighter longer than normal ["The industry needs to re-organize production processes after the GE forced a wonder construction focus"].

Yeah, this sounds good. I always make myself use scientists the turn they spawn, because I find it kind of cheeky otherwise.

The problem with basing them on the turn spawned is manipulating it.

( you can manipulate science in ways you can't manipulate tourism)

That said giving them a fixed strength (based on the 8 or 10 turns before they spawned) makes sense.

I'd welcome this change as well.

KrikkitTwo said:

The problem with basing them on the turn spawned is manipulating it.

( you can manipulate science in ways you can't manipulate tourism)

That said giving them a fixed strength (based on the 8 or 10 turns before they spawned) makes sense.

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Still, manipulating them at this level would be much less effective than the current saving, so it would still seem like a step forward.

Seems like a great idea. Particularly would help in multiplayer where currently great scientist hoarding still plays a pretty important part of the late game arms race

Or... ban bulbing by disabling it being possible, used the Great Research Boost, wait for it to cooldown (8 turns?) before you can use another Scientist.

I still think that the first few GS are best used as Academies. In large part because each one will increase the bulb yield of every late game GS by having increased your per turn yield by 24+ beakers each. (Raw 12 with Atomic Theory + all city modifiers, further increased by some policies)
Remember to subtract the GS share of unit maintenance and also consider that X beakers on turn 50 is worth more than on turn 200.

However, I do concur with the idea that the GS number be based on the previous 8 turns from the turn spawned instead of used, especially if musician tour has been coded that way. It's how I use the late ones anyway and will not impact me at all.

KrikkitTwo said:

The problem with basing them on the turn spawned is manipulating it.

( you can manipulate science in ways you can't manipulate tourism)

That said giving them a fixed strength (based on the 8 or 10 turns before they spawned) makes sense.

Click to expand...

Yeah, your idea is probably better so we don't have people rushing to put specialists in all of their slots to temporarily boost their science.