Best Uses for Great People

[swordspider]

Here is my list for the best uses for Great People. I would like to know other people's thoughts in order to better all of our games.

Great Generals: I keep the first one for sure, usually keep the second one too. After that, I sack them for short Golden Ages (not as long as other great people). Too many people just sack their GG's without thinking about the amazing bonus of 25% they give to 2 squares in all directions. I've heard that a whole bunch of citadels is very effective close together, but unless you are playing Chinese, I don't see how you will get more than 4 or 5 GG's.

Great Scientist: I always use these for a free tech unless I am insanely ahead. The Great Scientist seems to be the most unbalanced Great Person in the game. Instead of like in CivIV where you get a certain amount of beakers, in V you get a free tech, period. If you can rock out 3 of these guys and hold them until you seem to get into a stalemate with your opponents, you can just sack these guys out get a completely unfair advantage. If anything, either the other Great People (minus maybe the General) need to get Greater, or the GS needs to get less Great!

Great Artist: Golden Age. The 'culture bomb' (are you serious about that name BTW, we can make up names, not you the developer)... is a decent bonus and it can really disrupt a contested land battle, but to use it effectively (rather than just declaring war and eliminating the problematic city) is rather difficult.

Great Engineer: Until the late game, I always save these for their 'hurry production' ability which is a great way to steal important earlier wonders you forgot (or don't have time) to build.

Great Merchant: Golden Age. I'd say these guys are the weakest of all Great People in my opinion. A trade route to a city state to make them happy? I could just pay them or sack barbs to make them happy. And the gold you get is not game-changing by any means. Maybe I am missing something with these guys, but I haven;t come up with a good way to use them that beats a free Golden Age.

Great Profit: Just checking if you are reading.

One thing I have found out that seems to be for sure is that the tile upgrades (to me) seem to be a complete and utter waste of a Great Person. Sure, they add some nice stuff, but they remove all workability of the tile and if there is a rare resource, they remove those too. They either need to have better tile attributes or not remove the existing (in my opinion).

 

[Ahriman]

I think we could increase the influence gain from the great merchant. Maybe double it.

Great engineers are nice, but I never really get them because engineer GPPs are hard to come by (and engineer specialists are rubbish).

Agree that Great scientist has issues.

All the great improvements are underpowered.

 

[duxup]

That is almost exactly what I do although I use the great artists for short golden ages much of the time.

The great scientists I'll hold on to in some cases until I can grab a nice free tech that will take a lot of turns.

 

[ignite]

I use great scientists, if I have them early enough in the game, for land improvement. It's 4 more science versus a trading post (through rationalism, and even more before that). With all the science multipliers, 4 more becomes a lot more, easily translating into 10+ science tile improvement, so that's 1000 science after 100 turns. If you use it early in the game, without rationalism, and without any multipliers, it's 1000 science after 200 turns. Although I do tend to use great scientists for free techs if I want to get a jump (much like slingshotting to civil service).

 

[Supr49er]

If you have some useless desert tiles, you can settle the Greats to make Buildings.
For example, the Great Artist builds a Landmark that adds (I think) 4 or 5 Culture.

 

[aimlessgun]

I think the science improvement is useful. If you put it down early you're looking at a fairly large amount of beakers through the rest of the game, especially since it will often get doubled from buildings. But pulling off some crazy slingshot is probably more powerful most of the time.

Culture bomb...I have used it in pacifist games to get a resource from someone. Sucks that you can't be in enemy territory when using it though, you really end up getting 3 tiles only. Artists are pretty much for golden ages so far though. I threw down an improvement once because of all the doubling you can apply to it, it's probably worth it for a culture game.

Generals I'll keep a couple. Citadel is incredibly powerful if you have a good spot for it and want to play defense.

Merchants, yeah, GA.

 

[tcjsavannah]

I, too, have found that the tile improvements have not been useful. It's pretty much either free tech from GS, use the GG combat bonus, build a wonder with the GE or just use the golden age function.

 

[budweiser]

I believe the artist landmarks are superior if you are trying to stack culture.

 

[King Rad]

If you take a basically good tile and build the GP building, I believe that adds to the resources on the tile (as opposed to putting it on a built-out tile, where it replaces the improvement). I use this for the great artist, since it can add a significant social bump to a tile that was decent to work to begin with.

 

[Punchline]

In my Bollywood game I had 10+ GA buildings/landmarks, which was quite helpful. But otherwise... I'd rather have the Golden Age.

Great Scientists are extremely powerful, but I like them that way. Buff the other Great People, and slow generation across the board and I'd be happy.

-P

 

[Monthar]

Instead of a tile improvement, they need to go back to making a special building in the city.

 

[delra]

I sometimes build their special buildings to save an otherwise wasted tile. Especially Engineer shines here. Artists I use to c-bomb neighbouring city states out of their good tiles.

 

[MaXimillionZero]

I don't see any point in using them on "wasted tiles", since you'll never work all 36 tiles in the city radius anyway.

 

[Zhahz]

Overall the system is close to being fine. Great engineers rushing or near rushing late wonders is insanely powerful as are great scientist "bulbing" - especially when compared to the merchant or artist abilities. Culture bomb can be very effective but it comes with a diplo hit and it's not the no brainer of eng/sci. I wouldn't be upset to see both of those somewhat reduced in effectiveness but it does add some drama to the game either way.

I'd like to see the great people buildings bumped up a little to make them a bit more desireable. The game as a whole generally deals with bumps all around on a small scale except for some ultra not fitting leapfrogs here and there (CS catapult, for ex). But we're talking burning a great person for a building here - it's something that should be a little more "great" and closer to the impact of rushing a critical wonder or bulbing for a game changing tech.

 

[aguds]

Anyone have good experience making a fort with their General? I'm on a continent, which is divided by a narrow passage with water on each sides, and mountains around making a hallway with only 2 tiles in width for a 3 tile distance. And I have the Romans coming up with their legions against my spearmen and I really need something to turn it around with. I just got the General, so I'm wondering what would be best of a fort, or just a row of spearmen/archers and the general for bonus.

 

[aimlessgun]

Anyone have good experience making a fort with their General? I'm on a continent, which is divided by a narrow passage with water on each sides, and mountains around making a hallway with only 2 tiles in width for a 3 tile distance. And I have the Romans coming up with their legions against my spearmen and I really need something to turn it around with. I just got the General, so I'm wondering what would be best of a fort, or just a row of spearmen/archers and the general for bonus.

If you desperately need a defensive stand I would put down the fort (remember it must be in your cultural boundaries though, so if you can't put it out on the hallway it is not very useful). I don't like giving up your only GG for the fort because it doesn't translate to offense, but desperate times...

The crazy thing about the fort is that if they are forced to walk by it on rough terrain, it will deal 9 damage to any unit over the 3 turns they are passing by. The computer does not seem to pillage it (or is it unpillageable?) so they just keep eating damage and dying to 1 archer shot.

 

[Airey]

Anyone have good experience making a fort with their General? I'm on a continent, which is divided by a narrow passage with water on each sides, and mountains around making a hallway with only 2 tiles in width for a 3 tile distance. And I have the Romans coming up with their legions against my spearmen and I really need something to turn it around with. I just got the General, so I'm wondering what would be best of a fort, or just a row of spearmen/archers and the general for bonus.

Spearmen Strength 7
Legions Strength 13

depending on your difficulty, assuming cannot out produce the AI => Quality units, Horseman or Swordsman (depending on your tech path, if no iron, trade for it)
I prefer Horseman because their ability to run on hills without trees, can compliment GG well with hit and run strategy.

Producing lots of classical units = high maintenance fee. If already paying that much, plan for offensive attack and gain money back. Defensive wars with that much cost is hard to recover post war. While you two are warring, other civs are continuing growing.

If use Citadel chock points, and hold it using spearman and finishing with archer, will prob not be enough to hold the chock points against units almost doubling the strength. Prob need to hold it with Longswordsman to combo with archer strategy.

 

[aguds]

Spearmen Strength 7
Legions Strength 13

depending on your difficulty, assuming cannot out produce the AI => Quality units, Horseman or Swordsman (depending on your tech path, if no iron, trade for it)
I prefer Horseman because their ability to run on hills without trees, can compliment GG well with hit and run strategy.

Producing lots of classical units = high maintenance fee. If already paying that much, plan for offensive attack and gain money back. Defensive wars with that much cost is hard to recover post war. While you two are warring, other civs are continuing growing.

If use Citadel chock points, and hold it using spearman and finishing with archer, will prob not be enough to hold the chock points against units almost doubling the strength. Prob need to hold it with Longswordsman to combo with archer strategy.

I play on King. With history-mod(3000turns), so there won't be a change of tech for anyone soon. Also production takes forever, so I need to make good use of available units. It seems Rome is more advanced than me. They are also bigger and got 8000 gold to my 300. They have 10 cities; I have 4+puppet Paris.

I have Iron and Horse, just got it. So a swordsman and a horsman is both approx. 10 turns away.
I see 4 legions and 4 archers coming up from Rome, and I have 3 spearmen,3 archers and a horsearcher. I have a city at the end of this "hallway" I mentioned, so that can also serve as a chokepoint. But it has one more tile of widt than the hallway, so I can get smothered by legions if I position myself there, and his archers will also be able to hit more of my units. But I am also able to hit more of his, but with his strenght beeing better than mine I think I shouldn't do that.

So; fort in the doorway, or general in the middle of the army for bonus? Can a fort bombard, btw - or does it just give the defence-bonus?
Can't ask for peace either, he just hates on me. He 'offered' to take all my stuff for peace a few turns ago, but no thank you.

 

[aimlessgun]

Read my post. Stick the fort out in the middle of the hallway. Don't even put anyone in it. Watch as they all die walking past it because the AI is dumb. Kill the 1-4 HP units at the end of the hallway until his whole army dies.

The fort gives a double defense bonus and cannot bombard.

 

[Jamuka]

I really dislike the engineer tile improvement. Seems very week. I like the scientist and artist ones though. What does great merchant improvement even do? I've only gotten one great merchant, and i wasted it on ~500 gold from a trade mission.