which GP's do you shoot for (philosophical)

Lately i've been trying a great merchant path, to research techs at the top of the tree towards civil service. with the great lighthouse and the colossus I find myself producing them quite often.

other people have suggested that great scientists are a better path, and I have to concur that the techs they generate and the academies are invaluable

I also like to see one great prophet to set up a shrine in the city that founds the religion I get off of code of laws.

engineers are a luxury but not to be ignored, if you get a city with a GE wonder and a forge might as well assign someone (and/or your free specialist later) to get a great engineer or two for midgame wonders.

what I'm looking for in this thread is people's input into what GP's they look for, if they try to focus each city to produce specific ones, timing of doing so etc. do you use 2 scientists off of a library and sacrifice temporary hammers or food or do you go auto off of wonders etc

I'm looking for prince and monarch level difficulty input.

I think everyone at these skill levels could benefit from shared opinions and discussion on the matter

looking forward to your input!

NaZ

dont know if its against the rules to bump topics but 100 views and no input? would love to see a discussion started on this

NaZ

I specialize to get my first GP (GS-academy, GP-shrine, GE-wonder are all good). Then I build a specialist farm and get whatever luck sends my way.

Lately my pattern has been to build Stonehenge and the Oracle in the capital to produce Great Prophets. I'll obtain Medition and Polytheism, but often deliberately ignore Masonry, so the GPs will give me techs along the same path the OP is after--for CoL and CS.

Obviously I've been ignoring the Pyramids; they're very expensive and even something of a distraction. Unless I have stone available very early on, I tend to give them a pass. If I can build them, though, I try to put them in a differnt city to get pure GE points. If I can, I'll later build the Hanging Gardens and Hagia Sophia in that city for the same reason.

Polytheism and Writing eventually lead to Literature. I aim to build the Great Library mainly because it's such an excellent contributor towards Great Scientists. I try to put it in a separate city too, again to guarantee the GP I want. The first GS will often discover Philosophy, especially if Taoism has not been founded, and later ones build Academies.

I don't usually build the Colossus or the Great Lighthouse. If I played on archipeligo/island maps, or just had a ton of sea resources and therefore coastal cities, I might give it a go. Again, I'd try to put them in a separate city to guarantee GMs.

Much along Sisiutil's thoughts it would seem ...

My lack of earlier response to your question doesn't reflect lack of interest, but for a 'Monarch player struggling through my first Emperor game' the amount of thought and care that I devote to my generation of Great Person Points probably leaves a bit to be desired from a strategic perspective. I got part-way through a long and winding response to your opening post and dropped it, hoping that someone like DaveMcW would come through with an insightful and thought provoking strategy.

Great Prophets

If I snag a religion - great, but generally these guys are only wanted at the start of my game when attempting 'Ye olde no-Masonry - Stonehenge two technology slingshot!' If I snag Confucianism, then 'yes', The Kong Miao would be handy to set up with a third Great Prophet. One problem is that usually the Capital starts to get contaminated with Great Prophet points, which does not suit my later-game strategies. I'm still to be convinced of Angkor Wat-focussed strategies and running tons of Specialist Priests under Representation spewing forth Great Prophets, but "eh", that's possibly my lack of experimentation.

Great Scientists

I still aim for The Great Library, so a Great Scientist to build an Academy in the science city is a welcome appearance. It's rare that I run any more than two Specialist Scientists in my #1 Science City. A large proportion of my wins are by Cultural, so my next two Great Scientists end up building Academies in my designated Culture Cities.

Great Engineers

Rarely do I get to Metal Casting early unless playing Qin or Mao (Cho Ko Nu bee-line) where I can start running with Forges' Specialist Engineers, so I tend to find them popping up in the late game. Sure - if I'm Industrial and near Stone, I'll look very closely at The Pyramids and then use the first one to hurry The Hanging Gardens for extra Great Engineer Points, but this is a rarity.

Great Merchants

I tend not to shoot for them specifically, but when playing the Classical Age conqueror, I will often run Specialist Merchants in newly captured cities under the Caste System when Slavery just can't do the job of maintaining a sprawling empire without letting research 'go to the dogs'. Occasionally this will later prove to be enough to pop one occasionally. As noted, I often defer Metal Casting, and that means The Colossus is usually lost to me (capture aside). I tend to use them on Trade Missions.

Great Artists

I have a real 'love them or hate them' attitude to these guys, but usually it's the former. As noted earlier, I get the majority of my wins by Cultural Victory, and as such these are the Great People that I really shoot for. A Great Person Farm is set up but is not one of my designated cities, and the Globe Theatre and National Epic are hurried along with a Granary, Aqueduct, and Grocer (and if coastal; Harbor). Emphasise food and balance city growth against Specialist Artists.

Summary

If near Stone and Industrious, I will usually take a shot at The Pyramids. The Great Engineer popped from here will often be burned on The Hanging Gardens.

Otherwise, I'll consider the prospects for a Stonehenge build, and use the first two Great Prophets on Code of Laws and Civil Service. This usually contaminates the GPP pool for later in the game, which is unfortunate. I will often attempt getting The Great Library and depending upon circumstance, add an additional one or two Specialist Scientists on top of the two there. Usually, despite the GPPs edging towards another Great Prophet, I'll pop a Great Scientist with such an approach.

I will gladly take Great Engineers or Great Merchants when they arrive, but I wouldn't say that I shoot for them in most games.

Great Artists are a cornerstone of my Cultural Victory strategy, and I will commit considerably to running Specialist Artists in any city with decent GPP generation.

I admit that I am more of a food/cottage spammer than a food/specialist spammer strategically, and my preference for Slavery and Universal Suffrage over the Caste System and Representation tends to reflect that.

I don't think you need to spam specialists to focus on GP generation. sisuistil has a VERY good point about keeping cities PURE in terms of production. it always sucks to be counting on one and having a different one spit out.

great scientists are very easy to generate off of just a library, and I frequently use the capitol towards that goal. if you get to civil service the prduction/commerce bonus magnifies even further through the library and academy.

because COL generates confusionism in your 2nd city, all the better if it has the stonehenge or oracle so that you eventually get a great prophet. if you're falling behind the capitol (which can happen if your philo) put a priest in there to generate enough GPP's to get a great prophet, then dump them

great merchants tend to be very multi useful. the techs they pop can lead to civil service and other good techs like banking and such.. but if you can go on a trade misison the 1500-4000 gold can either be used to mass upgrade your army or run at 100% research for a while even though your
-150gpt.

but you do need to have a few coastal cities to make GM's worthwhile. even on pangea the lighthouse and colossus make it possible to generate large handfuls of gold for the coffers. even paying for upkeep of cities that are further away for a while. the bonus trade routes are another plus

when I get the luxury of a great engineer city its always nice, especially if it can rush the great library in the capitol.

thanks for the input keep it coming!

NaZ

That's a good point about your second city usually becoming the Confucianist holy city. The problem is that my second city is usually built to claim copper. The copper mine gives it good early production, and it usually becomes my military city. Having it take time from building units to build wonders or temples (and, later, commerce multipliers to take advantage of the shrine) is problematic.

Then again, the capital is usually the best potential commerce/science site, in which case you don't want its GS points contaminated towards a GP.

If the capital is a good commerce site, it may make sense to keep it producing Settlers, Workers, and city defenders for the initial expansion, at least until Writing for a Library and Literature for the GL come along. The second city can then claim copper and hopefully some other good production tiles and get going on the Oracle and maybe Stonehenge as well.

There's a post elsewhere in this forum about using merchants and Wall Street to make a super commerce city. If I can get the right conditions, I'll often prioritize merchants.

Basically the idea is to run Caste System with as many merchant specialists as possible in a great person farm with National Epic and Wall Street. Whenever you generate a Great Merchant, you merge him back into the city, which provides one more food in addition to the commerce. Over time, the merged Great Merchants support more and more merchant specialists, and you get into a nice cycle. If you can also get a shrine into this city, the amount of cash it generates is astounding.

Dr Elmer Jiggle said:

There's a post elsewhere in this forum about using merchants and Wall Street to make a super commerce city. If I can get the right conditions, I'll often prioritize merchants.

Basically the idea is to run Caste System with as many merchant specialists as possible in a great person farm with National Epic and Wall Street. Whenever you generate a Great Merchant, you merge him back into the city, which provides one more food in addition to the commerce. Over time, the merged Great Merchants support more and more merchant specialists, and you get into a nice cycle. If you can also get a shrine into this city, the amount of cash it generates is astounding.

Click to expand...

I have GOT to try this sometime. Next ALC, maybe?

Sisiutil said:

I have GOT to try this sometime. Next ALC, maybe?

Click to expand...

For a while I was doing it every game. Recently I've eased off on it a bit, but it's still an amazingly effective strategy when it works. The main thing that holds me back sometimes is that it isn't always the best choice to put Wall Street in your GP farm city. If I can found my GP farm early enough, I try to turn it into a holy city by manipulating religion spread and population growth to maximize the likelihood that the religion will be founded there. When that happens, I always use this strategy. It's just too effective to do otherwise.

I'll see if I can find the thread where this was originally discussed. I think there are some example numbers and maybe a screenshot or two that shows how productive it can be.

Edit: Here's the link http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3924645

see both of those points seem wonderful.

the capitol is ALWAYS good for production and commerce.. making it excellent for both science output and for unit production (w/o wasting national wonders towards units.. west point etc)

your 2nd city.. while posessing copper generally will end up producing the bulk of your early military.. and end up being the foundation of your 1st religion if you are not spiritual.

this is where using stonehenge in the capitol might have its uses. get a prophet then turn it off with calendar.. but right during those years we're using scientists to produce a different GP.. tough decision.

your 2nd city though useful for its copper may not end up being the highest production city so it can be allocated to commerce if it is the religion foundation. if you get the prophet in time to get a shrine set up, it magnifies the commerce output making that a perfect site for wall street and/or national epic if you can convert the land around it for farming to run the many specialists required to use the merchant massing like described earlier.

I havent tried such a strategy yet, will be a focus on my next game!

NaZ

Personally, I don't see what's the big deal with GMs. Sure, the gold it can give you is a lot in the early game, but they're much harder to generate than GS (who can give about double the beakers lightbulbing). +1 food as a super specialist? It would have to be really late game and an eternity of getting GMs before the food bonus can make a significant difference. Not my cup of tea at all.

someone posted a link in here about that aelf, take a look I think its interesting.

I'm thinking about some sort of build like this (english)

settle on coast.. but minimize coastal tiles (no production or excess food)
tech: BW, wheel, pottery, writing, myst, med, priest, COL: (CS) (fit sailing in there if theres time, otherwise after)
capitol: build worker, warrior, warrior, settler, library, axe, axe, lighthouse, great lighthouse
2nd city: warrior, worker (mine bronze) axe axe axe until priest is done, start oracle.

as soon as great scientist spawns, assign academy, then stop using scientists. use production to spawn axes while 2nd city builds oracle.
when oracle is done switch roles so the capitol can build lighthouse. gp points from oracle will eventually spawn prophet for same location, foundation of confucionism.
tech towards machinery, build collossus in capitol if time permitting. switch to caste system and allocate merchants as you can.

capitol would get national epic and oxford I think
religious city would get wall street

havent gotten into the game yet to work on this.. but would love input

NaZ

aelf said:

It would have to be really late game and an eternity of getting GMs before the food bonus can make a significant difference. Not my cup of tea at all.

Click to expand...

Yes, I've found that merchant city to be most effective for a late game victory like space race or perhaps modern era domination or conquest. It takes a long time to develop. First, you obviously need to have Wall Street. Second, you really want Biology and a fair number of merged Great Merchants so you can support 10 to 15 merchant specialists.

I think that's part of why I've gotten away from it. My recent games haven't lasted long enough for it to pay off properly.

I take what I get.

the big question then I guess would be:

is it better to continue to spawn scientists and merge those instead??

or if you do go the merchant path is it worth it to pop them for techs instead of merging them?

I occasionally like to see games run into the industrial and modern era, but at higher difficulty the AI tends to race away on tech.. so having a 500gpt city dumping beakers into the pool seems like a really good idea... is it a bigger late game impact then a bunch of super scientists merged into the city??

not going the merchant wonder route does leave many hammers to go towards axes and settlers.. so rex and early warmongering have their support in that direction.

I have had some success with the strat I posted, but mixed luck on what techs I get off of the merchants.

NaZ

NaZdReG said:

is it better to continue to spawn scientists and merge those instead??

Click to expand...

I'm not sure. I can't (and won't ) back it up with examples or math, but I think the theory is that

• The merchants "compound" somewhat, since you get the food bonus from the merged Great Merchant. That allows you to run one more specialist for every two Great Merchants.
• The money from the merchants lets you raise the science slider to 100% (eventually) which increases your science empire wide instead of just in one city. I'm not sure whether this is actually better in practice, but it sounds good.
• The commerce can be used for other purposes like military upgrades, rushing buildings, trade, etc. Research is just research.

or if you do go the merchant path is it worth it to pop them for techs instead of merging them?

Click to expand...

I don't usually find the late game technologies that merchants offer to be all that tempting. There's probably a way to calculate the optimal use given the number of turns you think remain before you win. For example, with a scientist, if he'll generate more beakers as a merged scientist (6 beakers * nTurns) then that's probably better. Of course, you also need to consider the opportunity cost of waiting for the technology. Do you really desperately need it right now with no waiting? If so, then it might be worth burning him for a technology even if he could theoretically generate a few more beakers as a super specialist.

Great prophets are nice at the begining, but dang it do they get annoying once you have all the important religious techs and no religious capitals....

I usually save them later on in the hopes of a great merchant (equally useless in my book...) to start a golden age so i don't have to sacrafice someone important....

Well, Prophets are obviously favored in the early game, but only if you found a religion. Still, if you don't found a religion but get a Prophet through wonders, you can use him to found a later religion. Then you are going to want another Prophet to found the shrine. Founding several religions and building their shrines is comparable to the above Merchant strategy, in my opinion. If I make a game of religion I can run 100% science. But I've stopped doing it because it tends to make the entire game about building missionaries, and that gets boring.

Engineers are my favorite, if I have a civ that's appropriate - e.g. China. This is where the Philosophical trait really shines. Only getting one Engineer from a forge sucks, but it sucks exactly half as much if you're Philosophical. Your first GP will come quickly, so you can make it an Engineer, and then rush a wonder that also gives you Engineer points, for a "snowball" effect similar to the Merchant strategy. And those Engineer points are rarely "diluting" the pool, since I can hardly imagine being displeased to see one pop; an instant wonder or national wonder is always useful.

After Engineers I prefer Scientists. The reason is that they're so versatile. Whether it's building an academy, joining a city, or hurrying a tech, a Scientist is almost always useful. In my last game as Mao I was isolated and fell far behind in tech. By the modern era I was the tech leader, and it was all because of hurrying techs with GP, then trading them.

Merchants are my least favorite, but I don't mind them. I haven't tried the Merchant city strategy, but it sounds interesting. When I do pop a Merchant I usually send him on a trade mission. The influx of cash can parlay into many things, whether it's a period of 100% research or a massive upgrade to your army.

Che Guava said:

Great prophets are nice at the begining, but dang it do they get annoying once you have all the important religious techs and no religious capitals....

I usually save them later on in the hopes of a great merchant (equally useless in my book...) to start a golden age so i don't have to sacrafice someone important....

Click to expand...

I always have religious capitals--I usually capture them.

But if the best GP techs are discovered and the shrines are built, GPs are still handy. I sometimes save one for a Golden Age, especially if I'm going for a Space Race victory, but I usually merge them into my best commerce city. The gold and production benefit are always welcome.