cammcken
Prince
Agree!
I feel the value of Great People has dulled from its place in vanilla BtS, not because GP have become weaker but simply because everything else has become stronger. They're still good, but not as great. The automatic response would be to make GP stronger, but by adding GPP to tiles you seem to be taking a different approach, making GP more frequent. I'm excited to see how it goes. More GP has the added advantage of making the wide variety of new GP types more accessible.
To bring it back on topic, I've come up with a few build guides, one for the classic traditional BtS "specialist economy" and one for a new emphasis on citizens. This is purely theory-crafting; I haven't tested any in play, so take them with multiple grains of salt. Anyone with more experience should feel free to rewrite them. (Only the first one is posted for now.)
Classic Specialist Economy
This strategy emphasizes producing as much of the empire's commerce yields (gold, science, culture, and espionage) as possible by employing as many specialists (merchants, scientists, artists, and spies) as possible. Traits are selected to maximize the yields from these specialists. Unlike the builds emphasizing slaves and citizens, this build tries to maximize "professional" specialists, those normally limited by buildings. Therefore, Caste System and other civics providing unlimited "professional" specialists will be important, and Great Person production will be strong. Your land should be improved with mostly farms, producing food to support all the population working as specialists in the cities, and mines/workshops for production. Production and military boosts from traits are sparse. I think this strategy can be adjusted to work well with both wide two-radius city placement or tall three-radius placement.
Traits to Choose Summary
- Focus Traits (see explanation)
- Scientific I - III
- Financial I - III
- Creative I - III
- Deceiver I - III
- Philosophical I
- High Value Traits
- Philosophical III
- Naturalist II - III
- Philosophical I - II
- Good Traits
- Organized I - III
- Glorious I
- Good Negative Traits
- Excessive I - III
- Minimalist I
- Other Negative Traits
- Meek
- Managing Properties
- Progressive I-III
- Lawful I
- Medical I - III
- Naturalist I - III
- Humanitarian I - III
- Progressive I-III
- Positive Traits to Avoid
- Expansive I
- Charismatic I
- Prolific I
- Expansive I - III
- Negative Traits to Avoid
- Populist I - III
- Naive I - III
- Greedy I - III
- Traditional I - III
- Unrefined I - III
I threw in Deceiver because it acts like the others for spies and espionage points. However, there are other traits available for a strong espionage-focused build.
Philosophical I also provides +1 to all and a double-tap to engineers, but its boosts commerce and engineers slightly clashes with this strategy. You want Philosophical traits for other more important reasons.
High Value Traits: Although these trait aren't musts, they're pretty close to it. They're just too good.
Philosophical III is superb for maximizing specialists' output, granting +1 of the appropriate yield to all of the "professional" specialists. The other levels of Philosophical are also very strong, so building up to III is no waste: All levels provide +1 commerce per specialist and a heavy boost to Great Person points. There are also free specialists per Wonder: National Wonders for the first level, World for the second and Projects for the third. Although the extra commerce clashes with Excessive and Naturalist, Philosophical's other benefits are strong enough to ignore it.
Special thanks to @Esfera for pointing out Naturalist
Naturalists II and II provide +1 food per specialist, which is huge. Each pop consumes 4 food (does it change per era?), but if they also provide 2 food working as a specialist then their net consumption is reduced to 2 food each. That effectively doubles the number of specialists each farm can support, which means double the yields, and that doesn't even include potential food modifiers. Naturalist lets your cities grow much higher than without, limited only by the adverse effects of population which is discussed below.
Good Traits: Each level of Organized provides +1 production per specialist, a handy boost to a potentially production-starved build. It also enjoys significantly reduced city maintenance costs, ideal for a wide empire. Be aware, though, that it nerfs Artist-type specialists, so it may not be best used with Creative.
Although not as strong as Philosophical, Glorious provides a hefty 25% modifier to GPP. With all the Great People you'll be producing, you might find yourself using Golden Ages more, which are much longer and more useful under a Glorious leader. Unfortunately, it also comes with -1 free specialist per city. You'll have to decide if the trade-off is worth it. Having more cities benefit more from the improved Golden Age, but hurt more from the lost specialists.
Good Negative Traits: The specialist economy is all about producing national yields directly, rather than converting commerce into whatever the empire needs. Producing very little commerce to begin with, the -5% commerce penalty that accompanies Excessive doesn't hurt too much. Likewise, with few cottages/towns, there will be few high-commerce tiles subject to the -1 penalty. These are Excessive primary penalties; there's not much else. In fact, Excessive has a strong reduction to maintenance costs from number of cities, and ideal choice when settling wide.
Minimalist I comes with a significant positive: +1 science per Scientist, although the food and production maluses will take their toll. Be wary of the significant increase to city maintenance costs, both from distance and quantity. This could be a good pick for tall, compact nations with low initial city maintenance, as well as Scientific leaders.
Other Negative Traits: Meek comes with a small boost to Great Person points, which might be handy, and reduced crime. However, military units will be more expensive and taking cities will be harder. Like Minimalist, city maintenance will be much more expensive. Potentially good for small, tall nations, but I'm not sure the small boost compensates for it.
Managing Properties: The big disadvantage of the specialist economy is needing twice as much population to get the same yield as a good town/suburb (although the silver lining in having high populations is the improved trade routes and free unit support costs). As mentioned, the Naturalist traits can reduce this ratio, but that usually results in even higher populations to get even more yields. Cities will quickly reach the limits of what happiness, health, crime and disease will allow, so choosing traits to help handle these can be a good idea. Crowding cities closer together can mitigate high populations, as cities will reach their food limit sooner, but that will bring higher maintenance costs.
Lawful I provides the best passive reduction to crime, and a convenient +1 gold boost to merchants. However, it does not boost investigators. This might be a good choice if you're already using many merchants, such as in a wide empire under a Financial leader. The extra gold can cover the costs of more law enforcement and healthcare units, should you need them, instead of assigning investigators and lawyers.
The Medical traits have the best passive disease prevention, along with significant boosts to the doctor specialist: +2 yields at I, +3 at II, and +2 at III. Doctors will enjoy the benefits all specialists get from the traits above, so Medical could be a good pick for the largest cities employing many doctors. However, all the disease reduction might be overkill, and you may not end up using too many doctor specialists. Extra healthcare units should be disbanded.
The Progressive traits benefits crime, disease, and education, and is, I believe, the strongest pick for this build. Although half as effective as Lawful or Medical, it affects both property types and also provides the same free specialists found in Philosophical: from National Wonders at I, then World Wonders and Projects at II. Progressive II and III also provide a nice GPP bonus, and small improvements to population growth rate. On the downside, they bring significant wartime disadvantages to a build admittedly already weak in military, and the largest penalty for sacrificing population.
Humanitarian is an option. It comes with a small boost to GPP and a free promotion to healthcare units. However, it has the weakest properties reduction, half as effective as Progressive and a quarter of Lawful/Medical. It's primary benefit is the extra culture on citizens a slaves, better suited for a "mundane" specialist build.
Naturalist is best for combating pollution. Its best benefit has already been discussed, so if you run into pollution problems, go ahead and pick this one.
Civics: Caste System is a must in the early game, but also look for others that provide unlimited specialist slots, such as Egalitarian and Pacifism. If you find your cities with enough slots from buildings, you can try switching Caste System out for Marxist, for the free specialist or maybe Feudal for its farm boost. Bio Caste is also an attractive option, with +1 gold per specialist, but it cripples GP production.
Civics can't follow a build too strictly; choose them for what you need. But keep an eye out for those which boost specialists' output, such as Democracy, Technocracy, Gestalt Mind, Confederacy, Guilds, Serfdom, and Engineered, those which provide free specialists, such as Meritocracy, Marxist, Specialized, and Apprenticeship, those which boost farms, such as Confederacy, Feudal, Corporate-Owned and State-Owned, and those which boost Great Person points.
Last edited:
-1
humanist
naturalist 1
spiritualist 1
, 
, 
spiritualist 2
