Great People need to be fixed

[baldfalk]

Seriously, they're the only thing in the game which you can obtain early on, which scales throughout the game.

This is ironic, considering less than a couple of months ago I suggested a very similar percentage mechanic on Civ5's GP improvements for them to scale throughout the eras, but it just isn't working out in a social networking/facebook app casualized, mass-multiplayer environment where people can start at different times.

I'm in my first game, and on three seperate occasions now during off-hours, I've seen someone new to the game start (you can tell by the global chat message for a quest) followed by an insane price spike in food (I'm talking about from ~400 to 1000+), right after "X acquires a Great Y" message. The first impulse for anyone who isn't familiar with the game's mechanics is to see how 'overpriced' the GPs are compared to food, which seems more immediately important, and happily trade it away in the market.

Aside from the absolute $$$ killings I've made in both these instances thanks to newbs selling off great people in late eras and mass-buying food, the persistent, scaling percentage mechanic is really inherently broken, anyway.

edit: and looking around on Google it seems this has been a problem for quite some time and is actually related to an exploit. Oh well, I guess I'm weeks behind. Ignore this post.

 

[zeeter]

I'm not sure this is related to your post, but I think there should be a cap on how many GP's you can have. Say - ten total of all types. I've seen people with 17 scientists, 8 prophets, 6 engineers, and you get the idea. The only way to have this much stuff is via the exploit. Having a hard cap would better balance the game. It would be more difficult to specialize in one area and they'd have to decide if they want six scientists and four prophets or throw a couple of engineers in there.

BTW: Why are they called Prophets, anyway? What does a prophet have to do with farming? Why not call them shepherds or ranchers or something? And great generals? How about calling them taxmen? Then actually use the generals to lower the cost of military units or give them a slight bonus. If you're limited to ten total then it's not like they would actually buy ten of them.

 

[baldfalk]

I had 30 great scientists and 15 great prophets; totally legitimate. It takes some OCD plus night-camping when no one else is on for $ (of which I'm capable of at this time just due to some requirements of projects) so I wouldn't instantly put it down to exploiting.

An idea I had was a "Great Person" page, with a panel with say 10 slots. The first slot gives 10% bonus, 2nd slot gives 9%, 3rd gives 8% and so on, and so forth till 1% for the 10th slot. You're free to drag your great persons to the slots to gain the type of bonuses you need, and it's hard capped at 10 GP for total 55% across all resources. On top of that, it introduces diminishing returns of a sort, which both makes it less and less worth it to stack past ~5-6, and making it more compelling to get the first 1-2, which should help nations with more casual players build wonders since there'd be a better distribution of great persons in the country.

edit: Having each Wonder owned by the country increase each slot by 0.5% might be another compelling reason for people to fight over wonders, hence increasing the value of GP and wonders, and as a result culture. For example if you own 5 wonders, your GP page's slots would give 12.5%, 11.5%, etc down to 3.5% for the last slot.

 

[FlixFlax]

i am at 64 prophets in my current game.. 100% legit.. its all bout min/maxing the market..

I was just doing the 24 pop achivment which is why i went with prophets.. but normally I do this with Great Builders. my top Great builder count was 32 then i swaped to Great scientist

 

[Mahi]

Is there any way to control what kind of GP is next.... I keep getting Great Builders and I'm more focused on science than hammers.

 

[Tatran]

^^
You'll get the type of GP which has the highest market value when finishing the puzzle.

 

[baldfalk]

Is it a 100% chance or just a heightened chance?

edit: Nevermind, looking back at old screenshots the non-highest GP I've been seeing which led me to doubt this at first is actually more or less all new people going through the tutorial quests.