Great People improvements still worthless

[insaneweasel]

Okay, so the landmark seems nice, but the other great improvements seem pointless compared to the other abilities.

Great scientist: Maybe an early academy provides greater benefits than a free tech, but after 100 turns (on normal speed), the free tech puts you so far ahead that a mere 6 or so science per turn isn't very good.

Great merchant: I have not seen any reason to use this, as 4 gpt pales in comparison to a huge lump sum and friendship from a city state.

Great Engineer: Early game, wonders seem like a better use. Late game, golden age beats 4 hammers.

Your opinions?

[Babri]

Manufactury has its uses in some situations. I once had a city which lacked hills & forests, surrounded by flood plains & grassland. I had to build a manufactury by the great engineer to make the city able to produce something.
I hope that the GP improvements will get buffed in the next patch.

[jagdtigerciv]

Yeah they're still pretty useless. The Great Artist is one of the few great people I sometimes settle. Not because the so called super tile is amazing, but rather Great Artist abilities are so poor (Culture Bombs have such limited use in limited games) and it really comes down to whether +4 culture is greater than a golden age -- and in Culture games, it sometimes is.

[cccv]

Early manufacturies are great. I went from consistently losing on king to winning on king as easily as I used to win on prince recently, and I only made a single change to my strategy: taking a GE with meritocracy, using it for a manufactury, and using the great production in that city to pump out units fast. Seriously, that one little thing and king is the new prince to me.

Landmarks are important if you want a culture win.

And all of your other critiques assume that the GP is coming later. As you said yourself, an early academy beats 1 free tech. An early custom house beats a lump sum too, imo. I don't think "worthless" is the right word, given that yes, an early academy is objectively better than an early free tech. The only issue is that you won't get a lot of early great people, but depending on your strategy there should be at least once in a game where the improvement will be the better option.

[He-Who-Hunts]

Early manufacturies are great. I went from consistently losing on king to winning on king as easily as I used to win on prince recently, and I only made a single change to my strategy: taking a GE with meritocracy, using it for a manufactury, and using the great production in that city to pump out units fast. Seriously, that one little thing and king is the new prince to me.

Never thought to do this before, although I've been playing on emperor as of late I'm going to give it a try.

Thanks for the tip.

[Lyoncet]

While I can't say that it was the only factor, Meritocracy - GE - settle (especially on hill sheep if you've got it) was one of the things that bumped me from winning 80% of my emperor games to winning 90% of my immortal games. Not just for domination either; there are some games where you'd skip liberty, bulb with a GS, or rush a wonder, but I've found the extra 4 early hammers help me stave off DoWs by getting some extra walls and units, help put me in a more secure position to grab key wonders, and are an enormous boost to early-game economy, which of course snowballs very quickly.

[apocalypse105]

It is mostly usefull early in the game because you wont gonne get so many great people in the beginning sow it is better to use a effect that will continue until you get a other great person

If you use y our early scientist to get a great accedemy you get your science faster when you got an other great scientist you can get an important technologie because you will probably have enogh science then sow an extra landmark is good

Great enginier is good for cities with no production just use his improvement again this is good in the beginning of the game because later you will have a lot of production mostly

Great merchant well to be honest i just dont use his ability mostly because his effect is better I

[jdog5000]

Originally Posted by jagdtigerciv

Yeah they're still pretty useless. The Great Artist is one of the few great people I sometimes settle. Not because the so called super tile is amazing, but rather Great Artist abilities are so poor (Culture Bombs have such limited use in limited games) and it really comes down to whether +4 culture is greater than a golden age -- and in Culture games, it sometimes is.

Landmarks give 6 culture now, the display is not always right but if you look in the city culture accumulator you'll see.

The Academy is much more powerful than +6 if you're smart and put it in NC city. University also bumps it up to +12.

The only two I've never used are the GM one and the GG citadel. A Golden Age is always better than a Citadel unless you're going to die without it, and that's never happened. And the GM improvement is a joke though IMO.

[M_Sparkle]

Settling a great person gets less powerful as the ages progress and in the long run the math stacks against them eg: great merchant sent to a city state gives 650 + friendship that would have cost you 250 gold thats 225 turns worth of gold if they were settled to get the investment back!

Why not do what they do with city state bonus over the era's and increase the amount the improvement gives you when you enter a new age. I don't wanna get into the exact math but if someone else has a suggestion on exact era buffs let me know.

I mean city state bonus increases in eras, and we no longer have cottage tiles like in Civ 4 so there is a precedence for it.

What does everyone think?

xx

[Bezurn]

A +1 to all GP improvements per era interesting. Personally I'd like to see them add a 2nd stat to each GP improvement to give them more flavor. The +1 per era would only effect the primary stat, doubtful that it'll be implemented though, can always dream.

• Engineer - +4 , +1
• Merchant - +4 , +1
• Scientist - +6 , +1
• Artist - +6 , +1

[Randall Turner]

The thing about settling Great People later in the game is that the more developed cities also usually have higher multipliers.

I'm on turn 900-ish in a Marathon game, it's still worth it to settle an artist at my highest multiplier city for culture. (I'll get something like 30 points for him, after multipliers.)

It's always a tradeoff, though - someone has a Uranium deposit w/i one tile of my border, yep, gonna culture-bomb instead.

[CYZ]

Settling a scientist or engineer early on can be a very big booster. The engineer is also great for cities lacking production.

I once did an occ and settled almost all of my great people. Every tile that didn't absolutely suck or had a resource on it got a settled GP. That was extremely powerfull although I missed out on other areas.

[ColinTH]

Originally Posted by M_Sparkle

Why not do what they do with city state bonus over the era's and increase the amount the improvement gives you when you enter a new age. I don't wanna get into the exact math but if someone else has a suggestion on exact era buffs let me know.

I concur, this would have been my suggestion.

Early GP.

Artist - Landmark every time.

Engineer - There is almost always an early Wonder that would help with your game strategy. As mentioned by others, sometimes your land dictates that you should build a manufactory.

Scientist - Long term benefits of acadamy are very good especially OCC. Then again perhaps you want to build the Oracle so a sling shot to Philosophy is very useful.

Great Merchant - Long term benefits of a custom house are very good playing OCC.

Great General - I try and keep one incase I get attacked, or indeed for when I attack. Very useful for a Golden Age when building the Utopia project.

Building to many GP land improvements can stunt your City growth, thus affecting your Science output. I am only playing OCCs at the moment, and am talking from this perspective only.

[gozpel]

If I don't want Steel early or Stonehenge, the beakers from a settled scientist is very good in the long run.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by cccv

Early manufacturies are great. I went from consistently losing on king to winning on king as easily as I used to win on prince recently, and I only made a single change to my strategy: taking a GE with meritocracy, using it for a manufactury, and using the great production in that city to pump out units fast. Seriously, that one little thing and king is the new prince to me.

Landmarks are important if you want a culture win.

And all of your other critiques assume that the GP is coming later. As you said yourself, an early academy beats 1 free tech. An early custom house beats a lump sum too, imo. I don't think "worthless" is the right word, given that yes, an early academy is objectively better than an early free tech. The only issue is that you won't get a lot of early great people, but depending on your strategy there should be at least once in a game where the improvement will be the better option.

Anecdotal evidence isn't particularly worthwhile to analyzing the comparative worthiness of in-game options. Civ generally lets players make all kinds of mistakes (even if that mistake is merely a compensation for a larger one) and still win on the higher levels. For example, I can wipe a whole continent using troops from equal or behind eras on immortal...does that mean that honor is obviously better than other early SP, or that building military on that scale is consistently a good idea?

Even relatively early in the game, an academy struggles to beat a full technology. Part of that stems from getting the beaker returns from the investment sooner, and part of it stems from the sheer #turns it will take the tile improvement to catch up. Don't forget, that it is only the VARIANCE of the worked tile over the next best alternative improvement that can be used on a per turn bases to compare against the lump sum bulb, and even then the total #beakers from the lump sum bulb is higher due to present value considerations.

Settling doesn't compare in the vast majority of cases. Manufactory might be the closest exception since it can't bulb, and wonders may or may not be a draw depending on where you are. Even so, that's an engineer that could have been a scientist and that shouldn't be lost on anyone.

[baldfalk]

GP Improvements honestly need to be reworked to some form of scaling bonus to be honest. I don't know how far out of the current code/how hard to implement something like this would be, but a GP should give e.g. +2 of their type, then a 20% boost of that same type to the entire city, multiplicative, limited to 1 per city, per type.

For example, a Great Merchant Improvement add +2 gold to the tile, then a 20% boost to the entire city (multiplicative over building improvements which are additive vs each other) if that tile is worked. You can only have one Great Merchant 20% boost per city, but you can have a 20% boost to Gold, Science, Production, Culture per city.

[bryanw1995]

Originally Posted by jdog5000

Landmarks give 6 culture now, the display is not always right but if you look in the city culture accumulator you'll see.

The Academy is much more powerful than +6 if you're smart and put it in NC city. University also bumps it up to +12.

The only two I've never used are the GM one and the GG citadel. A Golden Age is always better than a Citadel unless you're going to die without it, and that's never happened. And the GM improvement is a joke though IMO.

I've built citadels a few times on deity games, and they were definitely necessary. I've never settled a GM, but I use the others quite often. Most of the time it's best to take a GE or GS with meritocracy and just use that tile to pump up science/production, though sometimes I'll rush a tech or wonder. I spam landmarks in cultural games, often getting 10+ of them settled. I was up to ~ 400 cpt in my capital in my last game, helping me get my fastest cultural game to date (and that was even with major CS issues b/c I dow'd two of them early for worker steals). BTW, did you know that if you get your CS hate level up and get the permanent war with one or more of them, all "friendly" civs automatically lose influence twice as fast? However, hostile CS's still lose influence at the normal rate. Is this a bug?

[cccv]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

Anecdotal evidence isn't particularly worthwhile to analyzing the comparative worthiness of in-game options. Civ generally lets players make all kinds of mistakes (even if that mistake is merely a compensation for a larger one) and still win on the higher levels. For example, I can wipe a whole continent using troops from equal or behind eras on immortal...does that mean that honor is obviously better than other early SP, or that building military on that scale is consistently a good idea?

mhmm, did you notice the part where I said that alone was the difference between losing almost every time on king and winning king no sweat all the time, rather than just saying "yeah, I do this and I win, but I might win just as easily doing anything else"?

[bryanw1995]

He was simply pointing out that NC-first isn't the only viable or even necessarily the best option. Straight honor/warmonger with possible HE thrown in there is quite often the best approach. All the beefed up NC has done is to give peaceful solutions a chance to be effective as well.

[MadDjinn]

No one says you can't do both

NC start used to plow into Philosophy, spam 200g RAs, hard tech to IW and build/buy barracks/HE.

choose the RA techs that you need for your civ and spam the UUs. (Chivalry/Commerce/Machinery and 80% of the others - Steel with a few looking for gunpowder)

as per OP -

The terrain will dictate choices of the Meritocracy GP.

- all grassland/rivers - either GS for Civil Service or settled GE for actual production or GE complete the Oracle to get a free settler and find better production sites.
-- I'm finding all grass capital locations to be a poor choice these days

- all plains/rivers - GS Civil Service since your capital will be food poor until then.

no river - depends on terrain, but settled GE should only ever be used if the cap can't get decent production. Settling a GS might be 'ok' if you've got enough lux around to spam sales + buy RAs. The settled GS will help with RA blocking and finishing low cost techs to open up better ones that you might not otherwise get open. (depends on science output of the cap)

but in a more general plan... don't settle.

I could see someone taking a GM from Meritocracy if they have met a lot of civs already and can drop it for $$ with a CS near them so that you can spam 200g RAs early. (barb camp realted/stolen worker CS is best if you can then get the rest of the free influence as well to become allies) It's one of the most powerful reasons to do it before anyone hits medieval. (it's like getting a free RA for every 4 RAs which == 1 free tech from a GS)