Aren't great prophet's too weak?

[Hemlige Arne]

My opinion is: Great people of all sorts totally outweigh the great prophet. The great prophet is good once for every religion you've founded, in that it lets you build the religious building required to receive gold from all cities where your religion has spread. But after that, it's pretty useless. Of course you can transform them into priests and so on and use them for golden ages, but these abilities correspond to the abilities of other great people, that have other abilities from which you can benefit throughout the entire game. Examples: "culture bomb" of the great artist or "finish production" of a wonder etc. of the great engineer. Shouldn't a great prophet have an ability to help you spread your religion somehow? Historical prophets include Jesus and Mohammed, who surely must be said to have helped spread religions, am I right?

The least thing a great prophet should be able to do is to work as a missionary. Perhaps a great prophet could be converted into several missionaries, or be used to raise the probability of regional cities converting to the religion in question, or something similar. This would give greater balance to the game, and make great prophets a lot more fun!

Opinions? Suggestions?

 

[duezeone]

building the religious buildings do help increase the spreading of your religion. If you get one and you have nothing to do with it just save it for a GA

 

[Hyronymus]

But a GA requires a Great Person of a different kind, usually the ones you rather save to speed up research or construction. I always save the Engineer I get from Physics for speeding up the Three Gorges Dam (which takes too long imo).

 

[Hemlige Arne]

building the religious buildings do help increase the spreading of your religion. If you get one and you have nothing to do with it just save it for a GA

What you're saying is true, but my point is that the great prophet is less useful than the other great people, which IMO makes the game unbalanced. Also IMO it makes sense on an intuitive level that a prophet could spread a religion. After all, that's part of what a prophet does.

 

[Heero Blaze]

I guess the reason why Great Prophets lose their power is because there really aren't in "Great Prophets" in the modern age, or even before the modern age. I don't think they are useless, I just put them into developing cities if I get them.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

It depends of interpretation. Maybe not great "prophets", but great "religious leaders" exists and have alot of impact in our world - like Pope John Paul for example.

My suggestion is that in the late game Great Prophets to make possible to (re)conciliate/strenghten friendship with a chosen civ ( I mean a huge diplomatical bonus once and consume the Great Religious Leader ).
Diplomacy is significant in Civ4 so this will be worthy in every era.

Regards all

P.S. : I curious if someone really take care about our suggestions ...

 

[atreas]

Another idea would be to allow great prophets to build a "secondary shrine" that helps (gives a chance of) spreading the religion into cities that already have a religion (the first shrine only works on cities without any religion). But I have come to the conclusion that most of the times the best thing you can do with your great people it to put them in the city (especially in early eras), and GP are really great additions to the cities (of course, after the Shrine is built). They really make the difference between building or not building things FAST.

 

[Hyronymus]

The best is perhaps to prevent Great Prophets from appearing after the Classical Era and instead produce any other Great Person from then on.

 

[warpstorm]

What is the problem? Either use them for the part of the Golden Age or have them be a Super Specialist. Extra shields and cash are a good thing.

 

[Hemlige Arne]

What is the problem? Either use them for the part of the Golden Age or have them be a Super Specialist. Extra shields and cash are a good thing.

I think you're missing my point. Sure, they can be used for GA or as super specialists, just like any other great person can. But my point is that compared to other great people, they provide less benefits. A better special ability, i.e. one connected to the spreading of religion, would make sense and improve game enjoyability and strategy.

 

[warpstorm]

They provide one of the best specials, founding a Shrine to your religion. Sure, it is limited to one per religion under your control, but it is very strong (and spreads religion). In addition, like I said earlier they are one of the few GP that I do use for super specialists. Three or four in one city can make it awesome.

 

[Hyronymus]

But that's your usage of them and appearently not everyone uses them that way, warpstorm. I don't think you can enforce your way of using upon others . In that vein I agree with Hemlige Arne's suggestion.

 

[warpstorm]

I don't think you can enforce your way of using upon others .

Enforce, no, but I can suggest things to the developers (in ways besides posting here).

 

[Beamup]

The way I see it is that the first few Great Prophets are probably the most useful of all Great People, as the shrines are so good relative to the other things GPs can do. After that, sure, they're less useful.

Some of the other types have the same sort of curve - Scientists get a lot less useful once your commerce cities all have Academies, Engineers aren't that good once all the wonders are built. The Prophets just have the most pronounced curve to them.

They're not worse - just different. In particular, if they had some other ability so they were as good as the others once the shrines were built, they'd be by far the most powerful GP. Which is a bad idea.