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.