More than 1 GP Farm?

[riapopia]

Most of the content on these forums seems to push the idea of a single GP farm (in a CE at least). Which makes sense to some degree as you can only build 1 National Epic.

But my question is, does it sometimes make sense to run multiple GP farms? You'd end up with staggered Great People with presumably less time between, and more overall, GP.

I have a situation in my current game with 2 OUTSTANDING food cities with little commerce/hammer potential. My thought is to run both as GP farms. In this case, it almost certainly has to be the right call. But is it a valid strategy to proactively pursue?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

War Academy :: Great People Points: Focus in one city, or distribute across many?

 

[popejubal]

Because of National Epic, it makes a lot of sense to concentrate all of your Great Person creating efforts into one city. As long as the National Epic city is not generating Great People so fast that the increased GPP cost of Great People outpaces the other city's ability to generate GP points, then you will get at least some more Great People out of the other city.

The question then becomes whether it is worthwhile.

If you have two cities who both have outstanding food resources and enough production to build wonders, you will still want to put all of your wonders into the National Epic city because you want the wonders' GP points to be doubled (as long as it makes points toward a Great Person that you actually want to get - no Artist points!).

The other city is then running only specialists plus whatever wonders you needed to build in another city out of fear that a rival civ might complete them first.

Let's say that the first GP farm city is producing 40 Great People points per turn from various sources. The second city is producing only 20 Great People points per turn (even then, 20 points per turn is a pretty good rate). After multipliers, that's 80 in the first city and 20 in the second city if you are not Philosophical and not running Pacifism. At this rate, you'll get 25% of your Great People points out of the second city, but probably only 10-15% or so increase in the number of Great People for your empire at any given time because of the increased cost of each successive Great Person.

Under Pacifism or for a Philosophical leader, you'll get 120 GP points from the first city (40 + 200%) and 40 GP points from the second city (20 + 100%). That's 33% of your Great People points from the second city, but only about a 15-25% increase in the number of Great People over time.

The time when it's really worthwhile is if you can run a burst of Great People in several cities under Pacifism during a Golden Age. That's +200% GP points for cities without the National Epic and +300% for cities with the National Epic. Add an extra hundred to both for Philosophical. If you happen to have a couple of cities with lots of food, go ahead and assign as many specialists as you can afford to during that golden age, ESPECIALLY if you are running a Cottage Economy.

If you are running a CE, your Great People costs will still be relatively low and you can crank out a bunch of Great People from several (perhaps 5-6) cities with relative ease. Go ahead and let the cities starve because you've assigned so many specialists and work farms in preference over cottages/villages/towns because you want that extra food to assign as many specialists as possible. As soon as a city produces a Great Person, shut down all of those specialists and put them back to work on your cottages. There's no sense in generating any GP points if you're not going to get a Great Person out of it and you're unlikely to get a second Great Person out of any city except your GP farm during one Golden Age.

You can count on getting 1 Great Person per GP generating city during your Golden Age and maybe 2 (or possibly 3) out of your GP farm and then you can switch back to your regular economy by dropping specialists where appropriate and getting out of Pacifism just before the Golden Age is about to expire. Don't forget that you can go ahead and starve those cities during the Golden Age and regrow the cities afterwards if the benefit is worthwhile.

 

[6K Man]

I always seem to wind up with 2 cities producing a lot of GPP. Usually my capital is one, and I often can't build National Epic there due to Oxford and one of Moai Statues/Wall Street/whatever being there.

It usually works out well because my capital tends to produce Scientists and the other city Engineers... but definitely there are GPP being wasted. Especially after Statue of Liberty and/or Mercantilism.

 

[Hackapell]

In an SE, all of your early cities are potential GP farms.

 

[UncleJJ]

popejubal has covered most of the good points to make but here are a couple of additional reasons why a single GP Farm can be bettered and several cities can produce GPs. In BtS there is the National Park wonder that can give a large number of free specialists (10 to 14 are possible with a favourable site). That is often enough to produce 1 or 2 additional GPs. Then there is extra food from Sids Sushi or Cereal Mills which can support many extra specialists in the late game with enough resources. Combining these two with what popejubal has already mentioned means it is easy to have several cities that can produce GPs in the late game, even in a CE, although they are more effective for a SE or hybrid.

 

[Winth]

However, you can play around with those two GP farms. I once found a patent for a nice strategy: one city is focused on Scientists (lots of scientists) to give a nice scientific output, and the other on Merchants to get more cash - so the scientific slider is higher. I haven't tried that one...

 

[AmazonQueen]

I had a game where 3 cities produced a decent amount of GP.
Capital - mainly wonder based, also ran some scientists there early on and engineers in the late game, got a mixture of GP, GS and 1 GE
Double Shrine City with Angkor Wat and Wall Street - lots of Great Prophets
City with GL, NE and later OU - lots of scientists

 

[Daedal]

Before the NP 1 GP Farm is usually best (unless you absolutely positively must have only one type of GP). Once NP comes around I try to find or found a city with lots of forest around it. NP usually comes too late to make a huge difference though.

 

[Ibian]

The problem with typical GP farming is that they cant produce prophets, and engineers take time or luck to get.

What i do is wonderspam my capital - i still remain unconvinced that there is such a thing as too many wonders. This gives me prophets for gold and even more hammers to build even more wonders, the occasional artist so i dont have to run those useless suckers in my normal GP farm, and an engineer or merchant somewhere along the way. I save the artist/engineer/merchant for corporations, if i get any extras i settle or bulb them.

Meanwhile, my second, traditional GP farm spits out scientists for my cottage cities (or anything else i need). I get about half my GP from each city this way.

 

[riapopia]

Stupid question - what is 'NP'?

 

[Duelingground]

NP = National Park

 

[6K Man]

I think that there are 2 (conflicting?) goals in GP farming:

Getting the GPs you want, when you want them, and
Getting as many GPs as possible.

If you want to get as many GPs as possible, you pick one city with lots of food and hammer resources, build lots of wonders there, run lots of specialists there, and build National Epic there. You'll get tons of GPs, but they will be a mixed bunch. Running a specific type of specialist won't help if you have 20+ GPP/turn of Prophet/Artist points.

If you want to get specific GPs (usually Scientists), it's fairly easy to do so - just run a Caste System with as many scientist specialists as you can. But that'll take a while, and you'll still get the odd GP you don't want from any Wonder-heavy cities you have.

In my typical game, I want the following GPs:

1 Scientist very early on for an Academy in my capital;
as many Prophets as I have founded religions, but no more;
1 or 2 Merchants at specific times, to found Sid's Sushi for example; and
NO Artists.

The rest would ideally be a mix of Scientists/Engineers.

Inevitably, I wind up with GPs I don't want - Artists and Prophets get burned up in Golden Ages. And almost as often, I find it takes forever to produce that one early Prophet for a Shrine. Or I end up waiting until Physics for my first Great Scientist. And so on.

I would love to see a simple system for producing GPs of a particular type when you want them, without too much sacrifice of overall GP production.

 

[Knowltok]

I have found that early great prophets are good for scoring religions. It sets me back a bit on getting the shrines, but I get to found the religions instead of the computer. With Stonehenge and The Oracle, I can get several early GP, so getting religions can be a good use for them.

 

[Ibian]

I always settle my priests. I only build shrines when im sure to have the religion in at least, say, 7-ish cities.

I dont think there is any simple and elegant way to get the GP you want. Wonders will mess things up no matter how well planned things are, and playing without wonders seems like a rather very stupid thing to do.

The problem from my perspective is that anything except a HE needs a whole bunch of scientists. I will always get a few prophets before my first scientist, so they cost a lot right from the start. After i get scientists for all my cities i still need another 4 GP for corporations, so thats at least a good 10-15 GP of specific types i need in any given game. Due to pollution and bad luck it will take another 1-5 on top of that. Its just too messy.