[BTS] A couple of questions re: GP and Espionage

[Te_Wheki]

I've been playing Civ4 BTS for a few months and am currently winning more often than not at Prince so about to try Monarch but I just have a couple of questions about how to use Great People, first of all are Golden Ages ever worth 1 and then 2 etc? I never use them for this as I think tend to look at the long term. So that means I always settle them except when any of the following apply: GP with available shrine, GS for Academy in science city, GE saved for wonders, and GA if going for a cultural victory. Am I right to settle them at all other times or are GA or other uses better?

Secondly when should I be looking to establish my Great Person farm? I normally like to rush early so build a prod city second so my 3rd is normally an AI capital which are normally prime finance spots so I don't think to use them as a GP farm. Is it okay to hold off or should it be in my first few cities?

Lastly, espionage - I've never really think to utilise it properly, thus I hate GS and the fact the game seems to prioritise SPy specialists over everything else. Are GS any good? And how crucial is it to master espionage before going to Monarch? I've read guides about establishing Espionage cities but not Espionage itself. Never tried an Espionage city though as I hate GS who seem like a waste of a great person.

[traius]

Enemy capitals often have high food and decent production; this is all you need for a GP farm. You need lots of food to feed the specialists, and enough production to make some wonders to add to your gpp (especially the parthenon, great library and possibly temple of artemis, as these 3 add the most GPP, in descending order. The parthenon can actually be built anywhere, of course), as well as the national wonder the National Epic. In my last game I crossed 100GPP without pacifism, philosophical or golden ages. It was also my science city, with an academy and oxford, to make use of all of those representation enhanced specialists. Philosophical and pacifism would easily put me over 200 GPP
Alternatively, though very late game, is to put your national epic in your national park city. I did that in one game, and had 19 free specialists (19 Forest preserves, 1 forest deer and 1 grassland wheat on the Earth-18 map), which also churned out more than 100GPP without even the parthenon. It doesn't mesh with wonder GPP's though, as it will either be late settled or will go all game with unimproved forests.

[lymond]

Great People: The idea to create and Academy is a strong one and generally should be your first goal. That is, get scientists running asap - in your cap usually - and then build the academy there. The exceptions would be different strategies or ploys that are often more useful on higher levels, so no need to bother with that stuff now.

(Note: I recommend abbreviating Great Spy as GSpy since GS is common for Great Scientists)

Shrines I usually capture, so I usually use Great Prophets and Great Artists for Golden Ages. Great Scientists are way to valuable for early for bulb value. However, GPs and GAs do have some bulb value at certain points in the game, but it's rare.

GE's are good for wonders, but certain bulb ops early game can set up certain strategies, e.g., Machinery.

GMs, which I don't think you actually mentioned, are very valuable great people second to GS's and become more valuable as the game progresses. While they have some bulb value early, the ability to run trade missions to get tons of gold can be extremely valuable throughout the game for various reasons (teching, mass upgrades, rush buy,etc.)

How you use Great Spies can vary depending on your goals or type of game. The big mission can be very nice early for tech stealing, which again is probably more useful on higher levels. Also, note that GSpies are basically immortal and invisible, so you can use the as a scout early and then maybe a golden age later. I often just use them for golden ages.

As for settling specialists, for me that is mainly a factor of what type of economy I'm running. World Wonder/Specialists Economies can be powerful if you build mids and run Rep, otherwise I tend to use bulbing as much as possible or trade missions later, with Golden Ages on the odd great people. (Settling is also good for almost all your great people in OCC games since they are natural WWE/SE economies)

It's not really crucial to master espionage on any level, although again it tends to have some value on the highest levels should you choose. Generally I just focus EPs on a single - and usually strong teching - AI or military target. You might steal a tech or two over time or use the EPs for city revolts during war, which is a great tactic for immediately lowering city defenses in a single turn. Otherwise, you can just ignore EPs for the most part. I'd play some with the ideas that i mentioned above on EPs and you will get a feel for it over time.


Edit: Oh...and as for GP farm (NE city), I would look to try to get one among your first 6 cities, whether captured or settled. Sometimes you don't always find the best spot due to poor land. In that case I might put NE in my cap and build the Great Library there. The thing to note as you move up levels is that it all comes down to opportunity - more specifically - early game opportunity. The earlier that you can get these advantages (more land, more great people) the more successful you will be on higher levels.

[Te_Wheki]

Thanks.

So Golden Ages are a worthwhile use for Great People?

[Te_Wheki]

Two more final question sthat have been bugging me for ages.

1) How do I stop my cities from assigning Spy and Priest specialists without my knowledge or say so? Bugs the hell out of me I've tried citizen uaotmation on and of yet it still happens - I'm not talking about 20+ cities with sqaures left to work, mid size cities that start assignins priests or spies and mess up my GP points purity. I can kind of understand when it assigns priests to help me build something - but not when there's an engineer spot free. Is it just a quirk of the game that cannot be prevented or am I missing something. Often it's related to the city growing or squares bemong unavaiable, but I'm sure it also happens at random.

2) The final metric in the demographics around trading, mine is almost always last - unless I'm running merc, I know it relates to trade routes in and out but how do I improve it? Or is it something that no one really cares about? It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm tiny or by far the biggest it's always negative heaps (unless it's merc and 0 of course).

[TheWilltoAct]

I can't help you with question #2, but others can I'm sure!

All I can say for #1 is don't be shy about checking in on your citizens every few turns, as the city adviser can be mischievous. Great Person pollution is a reality, but diversity isn't all bad. Which leads me into another point: I do encourage the use of GP to start Golden Ages once you have some large population centers. Tiles with both and will benefit especially, so think windmills, most riverside improvements, or a city with Moai Statues.

Perhaps the most distinct benefit of a Golden Age is reserved for non-Spiritual civs: dodging Anarchy turns when switching civics or converting to a religion.

[bhavv]

Auto assigned specialists is the single most ridiculous thing about Civ IV that I cant believe was never fixed. It pretty much makes strategies revolving around certain great people useless without an obscene level of micro management because your cities will auto assign specialists which you simply dont want, and you will end up with GPP pollution in every such game ruining your GP farm.

[Htadus]

One way to avoid/drastically reduce auto assigning is to select food emphsis in the city. Then assign the population to work the tiles you want worked. Now when the city grows, the govener will statrt the new pop on a food tile. If you want the population to work as specialists, then return to the city afew turns later and manually assign specialists.
BTW, if you do not pay attention, this city will become vey unhappy quite rapidly if there are good food tiles in BFC. Good for the whip though but bad for maintanance.

[lymond]

Originally Posted by Te_Wheki

Thanks.

So Golden Ages are a worthwhile use for Great People?

Yep, using the more useless GPs like Great Priest or Artist (maybe GSpy) on Golden Ages is absolutely worth it. Keep in mind the a Golden Age boosts your GPP significantly, so by burning..say...a Great Artist on a Golden Age, you can switch to Caste System (anarchy free) and run as many scientists or great merchants as you possibly can. I even put my cities into a state of starvation. It's not out of the questions to get 3 or 4 GPs in that span or more.

I good time to do it is if you go for the free Great Artists from Music. It often times perfectly with getting up NE in your GP farm and is a good time to start the push for Liberalism with GS bulbing.


I don't have an answer to your question about the Demo screen, but I usually ignore that screen anyway. Most important number for me is troops.

[Te_Wheki]

Thanks for the responses.

The demographics question is not a major at all, as my economy doesn't seem to suffer from a large negative value for trade routes, I just wondered if it was something I should be doing better, if no one else pays attention attention to it then clearly it isn't.

[Pangaea]

Auto-assigning of (unwanted) specialists drive me batcrap insane too. Instead of having to check every city every few turns though, the BUG mod can really help you out. With it installed, go to Dometic Advisor (F1) and select the second option in the dropdown box (or one click on the right arrow if the default screen is selected). There you will see all the specialists. So it's easy to spot if a spy has been assigned for example.

[Te_Wheki]

So bulbing is the best use of GS? Or is it more situational than that? As I said I usually go Academy then settle.

[TheWilltoAct]

Use them for bulbing if you plan to chase Liberalism or at least Education for early Oxford; OR if you can trade the technology in exchange for even more advances.

Of course it is situational, because settling is powerful in a city with multipliers, and Academies are good in your best science city/cities.

[traius]

Originally Posted by Te_Wheki

Thanks for the responses.

The demographics question is not a major at all, as my economy doesn't seem to suffer from a large negative value for trade routes, I just wondered if it was something I should be doing better, if no one else pays attention attention to it then clearly it isn't.

This bugged me a lot too, so I looked up the game mechanics for Trade routes. And they are silly. While a large city of yours might get some bonuses (+5% per popukation above 10, ie 5% at 11, 10% at 12, etc), it also affect the trade routes values for the other guy trading to your large city. The larger the city you are trading with, the more money generated from the trade, and that works for the AI too. So if you are a 32 pop city, getting +105% on your trade, but are trading with a 7pop city, with +0% from trade, they will make a lot more money from the trade route than you will, even though you have +105% bonus on them due to your size.
The saddest thing about this is that your not only are your trade routes not chosen based on what gives you the highest trade differential, they are not even chosen in a way that maximizes your gold per turn from trade; I had a 39 pop inland city and a 32 pop, on-the-coast-with-a-customs-house-and-harbour in one game, and the 39 pop had 6 foreign trades, and the 32 pop had only 5 of 6 foreign. The harbour and customs house (+150%) would more than make up for the extra 35% my larger city gets based on pop.

As long as you have harbours in your coastal cities, then I would not worry about negative trade differentials. It just means your biggest cities are bigger than their biggest cities, so you are most likely winning anyway...

[Te_Wheki]

Thanks, I remember on a Terra game that had dragged into the modern era where I was was grinding out the last 10% of land area, I had my Wall Street city with 2 shines (Hindu and Islam) and 2 corporate HQs (Sushi and Construction) running FM pullling in over 1000 per turn at around 20% finance which was meaning I was getting about 3000 per turn overall (probably more on SP but I was well in the lead s having fun with the corps). Yet my trade rating on the demographics was at nearly -2000.

I went back to that game yesterday to a save a few turns before I'd won and I switched to merc as I had 3 vassals (one of which covered most of the other continent and the 2nd biggest in land behind me), and was still only at -500. Either way it was by far the best financial position I'd ever been in all coastal cities had Custom Houses (18 of them, I was huge) and still a massive trade deficit. I figured at that point the whole metric was screwy, but cheers for the explanation it all makes sense now.

[traius]

Originally Posted by Te_Wheki

Thanks, I remember on a Terra game that had dragged into the modern era where I was was grinding out the last 10% of land area, I had my Wall Street city with 2 shines (Hindu and Islam) and 2 corporate HQs (Sushi and Construction) running FM pullling in over 1000 per turn at around 20% finance which was meaning I was getting about 3000 per turn overall (probably more on SP but I was well in the lead s having fun with the corps). Yet my trade rating on the demographics was at nearly -2000.

I went back to that game yesterday to a save a few turns before I'd won and I switched to merc as I had 3 vassals (one of which covered most of the other continent and the 2nd biggest in land behind me), and was still only at -500. Either way it was by far the best financial position I'd ever been in all coastal cities had Custom Houses (18 of them, I was huge) and still a massive trade deficit. I figured at that point the whole metric was screwy, but cheers for the explanation it all makes sense now.

Mercantilism should have brought you to zero, as it is supposed to cancel foreign trade routes(?). The only thing I can think of is that MAYBE vassals are not considered foreign for mercantilism purposes while they are considered foreign for the +150% sustained peace trade route bonus? If that is the case though, that is news to me.

[TheWilltoAct]

Trade with your vassals can continue, unabated by Mercantilism. It's a good civic for a dominating empire.