great people farms

I want a great people farm

the advice seems be don't have more than one in your civ because every time for get a GP the hurdle is raised so one city gets left behind

does it help if you change the site of your GP farm immediately after you get a GP

it would be useful because you might be able to better influence what type of GP you got (if you wanted a great artist you could change the city dedicated to GP farming to one with lots of culture buildings already and where you would normally have lots of art specialists)

Yes, you can switch around your GP farms. The question then becomes what you do with the "old" farm.

When I'm in Caste System, I try to have one GP farm but I will have other cities running a few specialists too, based on their buildings and tiles. Yes, every now and then I get an odd GP popping out of the non-GP farm, but that's fine. With Golden Ages, every GP is now useful. It may set the GP farm back a bit, but that's fine with me -- I'm not running the specialists in the non-GP farm to get GPs -- I'm running them to increase wealth, research, etc.

thanks

I haven't got the perfect site for a GP farm (there not common) so I suppose the old GP farm would be reworked with some cottages and mines instead of mills

erm, can you run an adequate GP farm without caste system. I was planning on using buildings to provide specialists but they come quite late

Do you need to select the 'encourage GP' button in the Govener options in the city screen for it to actually become a GP farm?

Soneji said:

Do you need to select the 'encourage GP' button in the Govener options in the city screen for it to actually become a GP farm?

Click to expand...

good question

I thought that just told the governor to prioritise certain squares and include some specialists (and I'm a terrible micromanager so I don't use it).

the basic formula is to maximise food and assign specialist (the type of specialists you choose effects what GP emerges)

You can have more than 1 gp farm, but anything over 3 has no added benefit. And no you cannot switch around with gp farm. Once you decide to let it become gp farm, its a long term processs, build national epic in it, transform all lands into farms, build as many wonders as you can in it. Only in some extrem conditions where changing gp farm is beneficial.

If you're not in caste system, you can't run a maxed-out GP farm and will be dependent on either (a) researching the right technologies to unlock the specialist buildings or (b) building a bunch of wonders in one city. Both of these approaches work, but it's called a "GP Farm" for a reason -- a bunch of food producing tiles supporting a large number of specialists under Caste System.

You can instruct the governor to "Emphasize Great People," but you may not get the specialists you want.

Steps to assigning specialists:

1. Determine how big the city can grow (i.e., the happy cap, or in certain cities, the health cap)

2. Build enough farms/food sources to grow the city to the happy cap (the current happiness level in the city) and support the number of specialists you want.

A simplified example:

Thebes has a current happy cap of 14. It has 10 farmable grassland tiles and no other food sources of any kind. If you farmed all of the grasslands, you would have 30 food + 2 for the city tile, enough for a population of 17.

What if you grew to the happy cap of 14 and assigned five specialists? You could then work 9 farms (29 total food) and still support a population of 14. If you later raise the happy cap, switch back to farms and grow again.

Eventually, you will hit the food cap, which is the hard limit on how high a particular city can grow.

you don't need caste system for a gpfarm so long as you are ok with variable gp. you can get a library (2 sci), courthouse (1 spy), market (2 merch), and temples (1 pri/temple) quite early and that is more than enough given early and health caps.

just use your high food tiles and farms to whip the buildings and quickly regrow and then you can settle in running these specialists generating quite a few gp.

it is a good idea to try and get a GS or two early though for an academy in your capital and to lightbulb philosophy. for that you only need a library in any city with enough surplus food.

it is sometimes a recommended practice, however, to specialize gp in different cities. so one gets temples and prophet-enhancing wonders, another gets market and merchant-enhancing wonders, etc. however, i think that in practice this is extremely difficult to do. for example, not all cities have the production necessary for the wonders and not all cities have the surplus food to run the specialists.

in general, it is best to set up one (assuming running a CE) gpfarm which is your highest surplus-food city (often your capital or conquered opponent capital). often it is not a good idea to give up slavery so that means that indeed you will be whipping specialist buildings and working with a mixed gp pool. however, there will be times (e.g., if you can assume peace and if you are growing all cities under her.rule and not really whipping) where you can give up slavery for caste system and focus on generating GSs (e.g., for the liberalism race or academies in your commerce cities).