Parthenon worse than you'd think.

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Gufnork

Prince
Joined
Nov 1, 2005
Messages
440
I've played a couple of OCC games recently and found that GP strategy is really efficient. In one game I built the Parthenon (more GP is always good, right?). Huge mistake. Every two or three great people turned out to be an Artist from then on, despite having some 5-10 people as scientists. I'm guessing that the 50% extra you get from Parthenon all count towards Artists and nothing else, that's the only explaination I can see for the %ages I got. The only wonders producing Artists were National Epic, Sistine Chapel and Parthenon.

Just a warning. Some confirmation that this info is correct would be nice too, since I'm not 100% sure this is how it works. I just know that my artist% were way too high and it really set me back.
 
I suppose it's possible that the Parthenon is bugged, but I think it's much more likely that you're seeing patterns where there aren't any. Just because your artist percentage is 15% or whatever doesn't mean you can't get a few in a row. That's just random behavior.
 
The thing is that I had about 35-40% chance of getting a great artist, despite only 5 GPP produced artists while 20-35 GPP produced scientists and 10-15 GPP produced engineers and a few others.
 
Yes, i had a similar experience, but though i just had pretty bad luck and didn't digged to deep into the numbers. But your explanation seems to be right.
However this effect only occurs in the city where the partheon is build that the bonus GP-points are great artist ones. So if you want to build it in a normal game to get many GP's, build it in a city with no other wonders, where you not wan't to use many specialist to get leaders. So you can get the benefit of the accelerated GP-production without producing too much artists, while you want prophets, engineers or scientists.
 
Gufnork said:
The thing is that I had about 35-40% chance of getting a great artist, despite only 5 GPP produced artists while 20-35 GPP produced scientists and 10-15 GPP produced engineers and a few others.
Click to expand...
Screenshot or save?
 
I built the panetheon, Oracle and the Sistine in Paris once. That city then churned out 4 great engineers in a row. It's random.
 
It is random and streaky, sometimes I go through a game were I see almost all engineers, all merchants etc. Even when I build the Parthenon and build up artist specialist in several cities, I dont get enough artists. Then when I need scientist they disappear. Thankfully all are useful, but whatever specialist you need seems they are mia. Sometimes it helps to save a great person for a little while if you have no immediate need, until you have a good use for them.
 
I have found artists to be pretty much useless. Cash them in for some beakers on some crappy tech, that's pretty much it. It's not the randomness that bothers me though, it's the odds of getting an artist after building Parthenon.
 
The +4000 culture can really help speed up a culture victory in the late game, or help push back enemy culture in a border town. The latter is useful if you just need to be 1 tile closer to make an invasion with quick units on a neighbour.
 
Great artists are incredibly useful.. too bad the game doesn't give you a dozen or so at the beginning. Ahh.. the things one could do at the start with a dozen great artists.. :nuke:

I played a OCC game the other night and tried for a cultural victory (afterall, it shows my city beside the next highest civ's cultural cit) only to watch my city roll over 75k and then more than double again by the end of the game as I switched to war mode. I dumped at least a half dozen great artists into the city that game. :(

I must say though, I'm surprised how effective a single city can be in civ4; I was generally in 3rd/4th place of 5 but that's only because I didn't go to war. Once I switched over in the late game I was building a L3 tank per turn (rushed) with an income of around 150gpt (occasionally broken up to build new structures as they became available). I owned most of the wonders. And this was as Salidin..

I could have totally rolled over the other civs if I geared for war earlier, but only ended up having time to remove Izzy and take a couple of the leaders' cities.

Jeremy.
 
Gogf said:
You unfortunately can't win a cultural victory with just one city, so it's futile to try that on an OCC.
Click to expand...

Apparently, but it would be nice if your city wasn't shown in the victory condition list.. I assumed (since my city was paired with one opponent city rather than showing all three of an opponents cities) that the cultural victory condition was changed to one city. Some other conditions are changed such as the number of theaters required to build the wonder. Guess not though.

In any case, that game, if nothing else I've read on these forums, has convinced me that it's not necessary to greedily expand - prescriptive grammar teachers begone - over a huge land mass.

@Gufnork: As for building the Parthenon in the city, I did get a lot of Great Artists but I got at least as many Great Prophets and even a Great Scientist (at a rather convenient time). I think in a OCC, I would want to try for a prophet (initial cash/shield boost), then a few artists, a scientist (for the academy), and finally as many prophets as possible. The income and shields you get from a bunch of prophets is crazy.. Who needs 'gineers when you can buy the wonders.

Jeremy.
 
I built the panetheon, Oracle and the Sistine in Paris once. That city then churned out 4 great engineers in a row. It's random.
Click to expand...

It is random between the actual GL's you accumulated points for. But with the partheon in a city there are much more great artist points generated than actually should. This does not say you really get more in every game, but it occurs much more often.
 
Hi,

Gufnork said:
Every two or three great people turned out to be an Artist from then on, despite having some 5-10 people as scientists. I'm guessing that the 50% extra you get from Parthenon all count towards Artists and nothing else, that's the only explaination I can see for the %ages I got.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. Even if you only have a small chance of popping a great artist, it still can happen. Counter-example: In my Monarch 3CC cultural victory, I was specifically going for great artists. IIRC I had over 100 great artist points in the city, then made the mistake of building the Statue of Liberty - and got a great merchant next! :mad:

I think the odd, bad-luck rolls get more attention than all the expected results. Just remember that even a 1% chance will happen sooner or later.

-Kylearan
 
Great artist is anything but useless. Maybe you play at too low difficulty, game is too easy that you don't need great artist. At higher difficulty games, once industrial age comes, at this point all other great people is next to useless, you gonna wish every great people will be great artist.
 
Don't overlook the power of the Great Prophets, particularly the income from the shrines they can create.

In a game I'm currently playing(Inca, Islands, Prince), I focused on the goal of founding all of the religions. I built Stonehenge and the Oracle as soon as available, and my capitol city cranked out the Prophets, allowing me to build shrines for each of the 7 religions.

Am now in the modern era, and though I only have 6 cities, I've stayed at 100% Science for most of the game, and am raking in obscene amounts of cash.
 
weimingshi said:
Great artist is anything but useless. Maybe you play at too low difficulty, game is too easy that you don't need great artist. At higher difficulty games, once industrial age comes, at this point all other great people is next to useless, you gonna wish every great people will be great artist.
Click to expand...

Ya, even if you are playing at noble Great Artists start to get important when industrail hits since you have like no cultural improvments going into your citys (factorys aren't cultural). Also another note is that sometimes (I don't know how but...) Artists only givev 2860, or something it might be just that i was in the stone age, and i got like 5 artists in a row. so i think what age your in (stone, classical, reinassince, industrail, modern) depends how much your great artists works are worth.:confused:
 
I play on Emperor mostly, sometimes on Monarch or Immortal depending on my objective for the game (the OCC is on Monarch). The thing is that a great artist can't do anything that a dozen tanks can't do better. The only times I've needed them was after a war of conquest when cultural borders puts pressure on my newly conquered cities. The problem there is that those measly 4k culture barely dents the surrounding culture. If culture flips were actually useful in this game, things might be different.

I'm amazed at how many actually reads the thread before replying. It's not about getting artists despite the odds, it's about the artists getting really good odds after you build the Parthenon.
 
Hi,

Gufnork said:
I'm amazed at how many actually reads the thread before replying. It's not about getting artists despite the odds, it's about the artists getting really good odds after you build the Parthenon.
Click to expand...

Huh? That's the same, no? You felt you got more GAs than your great people points distribution warranted, and you suspected the Parthenon would be the reason. I and some others, on the other hand, suspect it's just a matter of selective perception, or simply bad luck.

It's especially your statement (I quote), "that's the only explaination I can see for the %ages I got." that I disagree with. Simple bad luck is a very good explanation too, see my bad luck experience with the Parthenon the other way around in my first reply, which might serve as a counter-example.

EDIT: I agree with you on how useless GAs are in the late-game if you're not going for a cultural win. The 4k are indeed measly against mature borders around newly-conquered cities, at least on emperor. :(

-Kylearan
 
Abbreviating Great Artists with GA might not be a good idea (Golden Age is probably what people think of first).

If you mouseover the bar that says how many GPP you produce and how many you need to get another Great Person, you'll see the odds of getting each type of Great Person (33% for Engineer, 50% for Scientist, 17% for Artist for example). In the game I built Parthenon the odds were never below 30% or so. In the game without Parthenon it never went about 5%.
 
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