Great Person Farm

Does anyone have a screenshot of their "great person farm"? I've always concentrated on wonders as a way of generating GP's, and I have a hard time visualizing the great-person-farm concept. Thanks.

A GP farm looks sort of like this shot from Kylearan's Epic 3 submission:



This one is a bit atypical, in that Epic 3 was notably scarce of locations with real Power Lunch opportunities. One must make do with what you have. Often you will have a few more food tiles (Pigs and Corn being the big two) and floodplains.

That's INSANE!!! That Must Be Help ALOT in the late Game Space Race Spy Sabotages huh?

kniteowl said:

That's INSANE!!! That Must Be Help ALOT in the late Game Space Race Spy Sabotages huh?

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Well, the scoring for the game included points for the largest city, so it's a bit distorted (note that he's running 28 merchants, plus all the attached ones, in a city that doesn't have WallStreet); also he was playing for a Time victory - that screen shot was taken in 2050 AD.

Ephebe22 said:

Does anyone have a screenshot of their "great person farm"? I've always concentrated on wonders as a way of generating GP's, and I have a hard time visualizing the great-person-farm concept. Thanks.

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The screenshot VoiceofUnreason has posted is amazing but is not at all typical of the GP farm in most games.

I'd say the basis of a GP farm is the combination of the National Epic (+100% GPP) and a high food surplus and running a large number of specialists for as long as practical. Some people add the Globe Theatre for happiness and almost unlimited size. Other wonders are not needed and in fact they will be difficult to build in a good GP Farm which will have high food and hence low or average production. If possible run the Pacifism civic for some time and a further boost to GPP but this is not essential and depends on what the rest of your economy is doing, economically, militarilly and diplomatically.

The main point of discussion I see about how to run the GP farm is what method is used to provide the specialists. The type of specialist is determined by either the Caste System or by the types of buildings in the city. The Caste System is great if you want lots of scientists, merchants or artists but no use for engineers or priests. Some people; (and I lean towards this school of thought) say that a GP Farm in an efficient empire should never run on the Caste System as Slavery is a much stronger civic for the empire as a whole. They argue the empire should not be run for the benefit of the GP Farm but the GP Farm for the benefit of the empire. A high food GP farm can install as many buildings as needed as these are researched although that does mean that a mixture of specialists has to be run and hence there is an element of pot luck about what GPs are produced. An obvious exception is for Cultural victory which has to use the Caste System for the artists.

I tend to run a SE (often with a philosophical leader) and so I don't rely on just the GP farm to produce my GPs and that allows several cities (as many as 6) to produce one or more GPs throughout the game. The NE just makes one city special and increases its GPP production but I don't really consider it to be a GP Farm. Also I run Slavery and not the Caste System so I rely on making the necessary buildings in all my cities that produce GPPs, but these buildings boost the economy in that city anyway and so can be justified. I like to think of my economy including the part producing GPs to be integrated into the empire as a whole. It seems to me that in other economies like the CE the GP Farm is a distict part grafted onto the side of the main economy which is orientated towards commerce production.

As a related question: is it better to run the GP city to always maximize specialists and maintain slow growth, or should you maximize food production first and then be able to apply more specialists sooner?

willpax said:

As a related question: is it better to run the GP city to always maximize specialists and maintain slow growth, or should you maximize food production first and then be able to apply more specialists sooner?

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I tend to grow my GP Farm as quickly as possible until adding more citizens won't allow more specialists to be run and stagnate it there.

I'm not sure if this is doing it right, but I tend to have two GP farms. One focused on science, usually my capital, where I end up having a lot of science-related wonders and scientist specialists. I'll usually build National Epic there. The other is focused on gold, and I'll try to put this where I've founded a religion (and hopefully there's plenty of room for farms). I'll build wall street and globe theatre there.

When people say they're running a "specialist economy" as opposed to a "cottage economy," I think that what they're saying is really that they have the slider pointing to gold, so they count on specialists for the science. In that case, you'd want a lot of commerce specials and cottages in your gold/religion city. On the other hand, if you keep the slider pointed to science, and count on specialists for gold, then you'd want a lot of commerce specials and cottages in your science cities.

Thanks all for the pic and the commentary. Very helpful. Even if the pic posted is atypical, my highest GP producing city in a typical game is producing only about 5-10% of what Kylearan has here. And that's late in the game. Willpax had my next question, although I'm not sure I understand Pagagonia's response. At about what city size do you start swtiching to specialists?

svv said:

I'm not sure if this is doing it right, but I tend to have two GP farms. One focused on science, usually my capital, where I end up having a lot of science-related wonders and scientist specialists. I'll usually build National Epic there. The other is focused on gold, and I'll try to put this where I've founded a religion (and hopefully there's plenty of room for farms). I'll build wall street and globe theatre there.

When people say they're running a "specialist economy" as opposed to a "cottage economy," I think that what they're saying is really that they have the slider pointing to gold, so they count on specialists for the science. In that case, you'd want a lot of commerce specials and cottages in your gold/religion city. On the other hand, if you keep the slider pointed to science, and count on specialists for gold, then you'd want a lot of commerce specials and cottages in your science cities.

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I could be wrong but I thought:

A cottage economy (the type I use) uses cottages (and their successors) in the majority of their commerce cities to generate commerce for whatever use. The slider then controls the form generated.

A specialist economy (SE) uses farms, resources etc to support specialists in the majority of their cities. This produces less base commerce but allows them to specialise each city and only produce the necessary buildings to save production, i.e. no banks in science cities and no librarys in gold cities.

I am not even going to get into discuss their merits, see many other threads.

As for two GP farms its personal choice. If I get Great Library I will tend to have one scientist/engineer based one (without national epic because I would rather have two other national wonders). Otherwise I may or may not bother. This may be due to me playing on relatively small maps, reducing the opportunity for specialisation.

Wow... i had no idea I needed food to produce great people. What have I been doing all this time?!

Ephebe22 said:

Thanks all for the pic and the commentary. Very helpful. Even if the pic posted is atypical, my highest GP producing city in a typical game is producing only about 5-10% of what Kylearan has here. And that's late in the game. Willpax had my next question, although I'm not sure I understand Pagagonia's response. At about what city size do you start swtiching to specialists?

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My answer: the point of the GP farm is to produce Great People. More specifically, the purpose is to create the next great person as quickly as possible. So if you can get the GP faster by growing, you do that. Otherwise you wait. It's just math.

Beyond that, there are various synergies - as a rule you want to be growing during a golden age (where working the tiles has more value than normal), you want to do your growing before national epic goes in, not after. Running your farms to grow after you've built your observatory wastes some of the beakers you would get from your scientists - better to grow right before the observatory goes in.

Ephebe22 said:

Thanks all for the pic and the commentary. Very helpful. Even if the pic posted is atypical, my highest GP producing city in a typical game is producing only about 5-10% of what Kylearan has here. And that's late in the game. Willpax had my next question, although I'm not sure I understand Pagagonia's response. At about what city size do you start swtiching to specialists?

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More or less what VoU has said above: grow to produce the extra citizen/specialist just before you actually need them, but to elaborate a bit further:

Each citizen in your city eats two food assuming you're below the health cap (each citizen added above the health cap will eat 3).

Citizens eat food whether they're working tiles or being used as specialists (or when they're unhappy, so it's important to avoid unhappy people in your farm if you want it to function as effectively as possible). If you're under the health cap, you therefore need two surplus food from the tiles being worked to support each specialist; plus you get one "free" specialist supported using the two food from your city square itself.

Once you reach the point where your city has grown to the population size where splitting the citizens between farms and specialists will give you the maximum number of your desired specialist(s) with just enough food to go around provided by the remaining citizens, there's little point growing any bigger. In fact, it could be argued that since large cities cost more in upkeep, having a size 15 city supporting 6 specialists is much less efficient than a size 10 city doing the same.

Under caste system where you can theoretically run unlimited scientists/merchants/artists, the maximum useful size the GP farm can be is the size at which the only tiles being worked to add additional food provide just two (ie feeding the citizen working them) and the existing surplus is already being eaten by specialists.

Can someone post a screen shot of a good GP farm? I usually build the Great Library in my capitol, and waste a National Wonder on the National Epic. I devote all specialists to scientists, and since this is the capitol and it has pretty good production, I build all Great Scientist wonders that I can in the capitol. What type of Great person would you be trying to get? There is no way that you could build all of the specialist buildings with farms, and whipping will be limited(not from happiness, the Globe can be built pretty early) by the city's ability to grow back if it is running specialists. The only two labor civics that I ever use are Slavery and Emancipation, at which point production is based on gold. I only even switch to emancipation to annoy everyone else, there aren't any "Cottages" left by then, and towns don't grow.

A more typical example, taken from ALC 4



I like this example, because it serves to illustrate a number of different aspects of the GP farm:

Good: Three big food bonuses. Also cows on the grassland. Note that this means at size twelve, you can be running eight specialists. Yahtzee!

Bad: Water tiles - you can't farm water. The ideal GP farm has a river running next to the city. Of course, if you have a lot of river, there are opportunity costs to consider.

Good: flat green tiles. Each of those is worth another specialist post biology. Taken in pairs, they are worth half a specialist each pre biology.

Bad: cottages. It may be a tempting way to use the grassland, especially when you don't have any GP slots left to fill, but they should get farmed over. Yes, it's painful to farm a town. You'll get over it.

Good: Slots - Note that he's been pounding religions in here to hire priests. Shrines are a lovely fit with a GP farm, as they give you "free" slots, but failing that Angkor Wat and Cathedrals can also help on that score. Oxford, Wall Street, and Ironworks also have slots available.

Production: notice that he's getting more production from the specialists (8) than the tiles (6). All praise the Angkor Wat. The mine is OK, most of the early and middle game you don't work it. Here, it's making a nice contribution to the production of the grocer, but note that he's wasting a specialist to do it. He could instead toss in a windmill and run stagnant at size 22 (wise, at least until the health clears up).

Health: the usual problem in a GP farm, since Globe Theatre is a good fit for "city with huge amounts of food".

All engineer specialists live in unhealthy buildings, and the only one that is available early is the forge, so is there no way to pop engineers from your farm?

wioneo said:

All engineer specialists live in unhealthy buildings, and the only one that is available early is the forge, so is there no way to pop engineers from your farm?

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Engineers are the hardest specialist to "farm" as the building that allows you to recruit the most (the Ironworks) is best placed in a city surrounded by watermills and workshops (think State Property), rather than one surrounded by farms where you're wasting it's hammer multiplying bonus.

You can get them more easily earlier in the game, especially if you're a philosophical civ. Either build the Great Wall (warlords), Pyramids, or use the Oracle to pop metal casting, build a forge and run an engineer specialist from that. The first two great people come relatively cheaply (especially when you're philosophical).