GP growth in Team games

[Goodgimp]

I have a question for Ye Olde Civ Fanatics

Currently in team games of Civ4, if one member of a team generates a Great Person, the required points needed for other team members goes up accordingly (similar to if they themselves generated a GP in one of their cities).

My question is what balance issues requires this mechanic to be in place? In Team games, beakers needed to research techs are already incremented. As such, does linking GP growth balance something that is needed, when cottages for instance are not similarly reduced in effectiveness?

The reason for my query is that it's something that has always annoyed me to a small degree, if for instance I desperately need a particular Great Person, but my teammate either has several wonders or running a specialist economy to the point where I cannot generate the one I need (engineer or prophet, for instance).

I have the code available to disable this linked GP growth behavior, but I wanted to see what areas it might unbalance that I'm not thinking of. There could be a very good reason why the system is set up the way it is

Thanks for any input you might have!

[Refar]

If your teammate pops a GP, your threshold increases only by 50% of what it normally would increase.

The coasts of teching are also increasen only by +50% per teammate.

But Teching is not the only thing the GP's might unbalance... Let's say GE - rushes wonder - all teammates will benefit from that Wonder.