Best way to generate GPP - Wonders or Specialists??

[riapopia]

So, it reading most of the strategy articles, it seems the concensus (by far) is to try to identify a food rich city as your 1 GP farm and to use as many specialists as possible to generate great people.

I've done this successfully and think I understand this approach. My question is- is this ALWAYS the case? I recently played a game as an Industrious civ and had access to stone. The combination allowed me to relatively easily outbuild the AI for nearly every stone-associated wonder. I generated a TON of GP points in my capital as I concentrated my wonder production there.

In this particular game, I'm nearly certain the wonder route was optimal. Part of the problem is, a combination strategy seems difficult. Good specialist cities will typically by high food/low hammer cities that will not lend themselves toward wonder construction.

Any experience with this? Do you all *always* go the specialist route or do you try to sometime concentrate wonders in a single city?

 

[Quagga]

Even if this is the "best" way, it won't let you get every kind of Great Person. I presume you're running Caste System, which allows unlimited artist, scientist and merchant specialists, but not, for example, engineers. Therefore, you can't create a Great Engineer farm with food alone. You need buildings that allow running engineer specialists and wonders that produce GE points.

I find that Great Wall, Pyramids, forge, Chichen Itza and National Epic together produce a nice stream of GEs, especially if Parthenon is built in some other city.

 

[abuaftab]

Chichen Itza gives Great Prophet?

 

[Quagga]

Chichen Itza gives Great Prophet?

My mistake. I meant Hagia Sophia. It gives GE points.

 

[kniteowl]

Any experience with this? Do you all *always* go the specialist route or do you try to sometime concentrate wonders in a single city?

It depends on the circumstances, Industrious, your better off getting Great People using Wonders, Philosophical, Specialist is generally the better option.

But it really depends on the situation and circumstances of the Game, I've once play a Game where I got Very Few or No Great People At all apart from Great Generals because I was using a Leader with Warmonger Traits I Concentrated all my resources into build units, basic Infrastructure, Improvements and went out to conquer my rivals. I didn't build any wonders because I prefered my hammers used for Units, No Specialist because I had them work Commerce and Production Tiles. I didn't get any people untill the very late game and that was from a captured wonder or becuase I was the 1st to research certain techs eg - Physics.

 

[carl corey]

The industrious+stone/marble combination just screams for wonders. And since your capital - which is usually a very good spot both in terms of food and production - is going to be tied up building wonders it usually means your other cities will be building your army. Unless you have a great spot with lots of food and really low production there's not much room for a GP farm, and even if you do, it might be hard for it to beat the wonder concentration in the capital.

So the answer is: most of the time the GP farm and wonder-building won't merge. You're better off concentrating on just one of them. Great Persons are good, but they're not everything. As kniteowl said, you can even get by with very few GPs if your traits (financial or war-like) lend themselves to other ways of play.

 

[riapopia]

Very interesting. kniteowl + carl bring up a slightly different point that I've been thinking about - how critical is it to even focus on great people? Considering there is surely some opportunity cost to concentrating wonders or having a lot of specialists, is it worth it?

I'm guessing it is in most circumstances but if you war early and often, I'm guessing the hammers that would go into wonders would be much better spent on units.

I typically have a GP farm (specialist based) by default as usually one of my cities has a TON of food and the population would quickly outstrip my luxuries/happiness. So I use specialists almost as population control. But without such a situation, I may start to not worry about a GP farm- at least early in the game.

 

[carl corey]

Specialists as population control is indeed a normal way to use those high-food cities. You could also run Hereditary Rule (assuming you don't own the Pyramids) and just stack cheap archers in the high-food city to beat the unhappiness.

Anyway, I think there's a game in the Succession Games forum that tried to start 5 Golden Ages. Definitely Great Person related, you might want to check it out. Here it is: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185903

 

[spoooq]

First thing I've noticed is that the first GP is cheap enough that just about any method will do. It's the later ones that need more determination.

Secondly, generating different types of GP involves different trade-offs. You really need to plan not only how to research towards and generate the GPP, but also how they will fit into your strategy. I tend to generate a constant but low flow of Priest/Scientist GPP's and have trouble getting hold of Engineers, Artists or Merchants. This means I usually end up settling for the beakers and hammers, or grabbing the occasional big tech. I don't know very much about culture-bombs or trade missions.

If you want Engineers to appear in a reasonable time, you're going to need wonders and a forge. I often wait a long time to research Metal Casting (probably too long), and as mentioned above, Caste System doesn't help for Engineers.

If you want an early Priest or Scientist for their buildings, it's very easy to build a temple or library and run two specialists. You can always turn them off again anyway, or keep going to grab a couple more to settle. Even if it takes a little longer to get the GPP stream started, you get so many points per turn it doesn't really take that long. Egypt's unique Obelisk building is even nicer, as it let's you run another 2 priest specialists.

Breaking into Artist or Merchant types seems to be what Caste System and Representation are for. If I was going for an Artist, I would make sure the city was on the border so the specialist culture was useful.

As for value: I think the first GP in particular is always worth it. The first Priest builds the shrine, the first Scientist builds the academy, and the rest get settled or tech-bulb. This is the "low impact" version of GP-farming and it works in nearly any city.

 

[spoooq]

I typically have a GP farm (specialist based) by default as usually one of my cities has a TON of food and the population would quickly outstrip my luxuries/happiness. So I use specialists almost as population control. But without such a situation, I may start to not worry about a GP farm- at least early in the game.

Don't base the decision to run specialists or not on whether you will exceed /. Look at the total tile output (counting food towards hammers via slavery), vs specialist output + GP usefulness - GP generation time.

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

First we need to decide on what would constitute a good gpp rate. If we're talking 100 a turn and up...

I would say on easier difficulties it might be better to build gp with wonders. Most Wonders dont give a lot of gpp, but definately if you build them all in one city or two, plus things like parthenon, pacifism, and ne...youll get a solid rate. But even then I dont think youll equal 100. And the big cavet about this at higher levels is...

Tech. At the higher difficulties, the Ai will be beating you to tech and starting wonders before you. So that industrious trait is marginalized. But grabbing caste system is still an Oracle away, and its easier to get the earlier wonders when everyone is starting out with tech parity. Then there is always the theory that its better to capture wonders on the higher levels because the hammers are better spent on soldiers.

Easier difficulties, yes go with mostly wonders. Harder difficulties, go with specialists. I will say though that my highest gpp per turn (150+) have been in my gp farm, running caste system, with ne, parthenon, and philosophical. Even just with caste system and ne I still get more gp then if I built a bunch of wonders.


Is it more efficent to generate gp with specialists or wonders, in terms of hammers spent compared to food spent? I would think specialists. Plus specialists will give you benefits while generating that gp (money, research, culture, great with representation and/or sistine) while building a wonder gives you nothing for all those turns.

 

[cabert]

First we need to decide on what would constitute a good gpp rate. If we're talking 100 a turn and up...

I would say on easier difficulties it might be better to build gp with wonders. Most Wonders dont give a lot of gpp, but definately if you build them all in one city or two, plus things like parthenon, pacifism, and ne...youll get a solid rate. But even then I dont think youll equal 100. And the big cavet about this at higher levels is...

Tech. At the higher difficulties, the Ai will be beating you to tech and starting wonders before you. So that industrious trait is marginalized. But grabbing caste system is still an Oracle away, and its easier to get the earlier wonders when everyone is starting out with tech parity. Then there is always the theory that its better to capture wonders on the higher levels because the hammers are better spent on soldiers.

Easier difficulties, yes go with mostly wonders. Harder difficulties, go with specialists. I will say though that my highest gpp per turn (150+) have been in my gp farm, running caste system, with ne, parthenon, and philosophical. Even just with caste system and ne I still get more gp then if I built a bunch of wonders.


Is it more efficent to generate gp with specialists or wonders, in terms of hammers spent compared to food spent? I would think specialists. Plus specialists will give you benefits while generating that gp (money, research, culture, great with representation and/or sistine) while building a wonder gives you nothing for all those turns.

I agree with most of what you say.
Just one thing : wonders do give you something.
If the wonder's effect doesn't matter to you, don't build it!

 

[Mr. Civtastic]

I meant while you build a wonder, you get nothing...until the wonder is finished or someone else builds it. Building a gp, though is much different...you get all the bonuses that specialists give you every turn until the gp, and then whatever the gp does for you.

 

[cabert]

I meant while you build a wonder, you get nothing...until the wonder is finished or someone else builds it. Building a gp, though is much different...you get all the bonuses that specialists give you every turn until the gp, and then whatever the gp does for you.

your mixing up things.
you get GPP after the wonder is built, and then the wonder does give you something
using specialists to gain GPP also requires building things that allow those specialists, and while you do build those things you gain nothing, just the same as for wonders.
The difference is:
- you need to feed specialists
- you need to beat the AIs to wonders

If you have hammers, wonders are good. If you have food, specialists are good.

In any situation, as has been mentionned before, wonders won't give you 100s of GPP/turn.
Even with NE, you would need 25 world wonders to have the 100 GPP/turn. It would then be 102 GPP in fact.
With specialists, you can, but it still takes 16 specialists + NE + GT.
Or 17 specialists + NE .
Feeding 17 specialists is a hard task.
Not impossible but hard.

 

[HardCoder]

So, it reading most of the strategy articles, it seems the concensus (by far) is to try to identify a food rich city as your 1 GP farm and to use as many specialists as possible to generate great people.

You're best off specializing one or more cities to a particular kind of GP.

The best general purpose setup, if you want to use purely specialists, is a coastal city with as many sea food resources as possible. There are no pollution problems and 3-4 food tiles can get you 5-6 specialists.

Prophets and Engineers are tricky. The Pyramids is the easiest way to get a couple of engineers and almost the only way early in the game, so in that case you need a location with high production (or, best, plains hills and floodplains, and/or stone). For prophets, build a couple of wonders of the appropriate type in the city and a temple or two, so you also need production. It's a huge boost if you have a prophet handy around the time you found a religion, if you found one, because the income from the holy city will keep your research slider an extra 10-20% higher throughout most of the game. Merchants are even harder - I rarely get more than 3 a game and zero is a possibility.

After you get the first 2-3 easy GPs you can definitely use Pacifism - but it can be tricky because you need to adopt a religion, and that can make your neighbors less than ... pacific.

In general, a game where you play with a small number of cities will generate more GPs.

 

[gdgrimm]

Very interesting. kniteowl + carl bring up a slightly different point that I've been thinking about - how critical is it to even focus on great people? Considering there is surely some opportunity cost to concentrating wonders or having a lot of specialists, is it worth it?

I'm guessing it is in most circumstances but if you war early and often, I'm guessing the hammers that would go into wonders would be much better spent on units.

I typically have a GP farm (specialist based) by default as usually one of my cities has a TON of food and the population would quickly outstrip my luxuries/happiness. So I use specialists almost as population control. But without such a situation, I may start to not worry about a GP farm- at least early in the game.

For better or worse, I only worry about GP production if I have some special trait to take advantage of it (like Philosophical/Industrial or a UB like Obelisk).

Otherwise, I'll worry about GP's to make sure I get any Shrines built and one Academy. But after that, I just don't worry about it.

But in the cases where I DO worry about GP production, I'll usually try to run 2 farms. One will be driven by properly chosen Wonders augmented by the proper specialist (focused on delivering one specific type of GP throughout the game). The other will be heavy food and specialist driven (focused on delivering whatever GP I think is needed).

For Industrial leaders, the "focused" GP farm tends to have GE generating Wonders and a Forge. Other good "focused" option is GM generating Wonders (Great Lighthouse and Colossus) with Market, and for GP's, Temples and Stonehedge/Oracle. Oh, the GS one is pretty obvious -- Great Library.

The "unfocused" farm will often work on GS's (since they're the most well rounded type of GP), but may toss in some GA's if I think I'll need some border control or a culture bomb after a takeover, a well timed GM to fund upgrades, or a GP if I capture a late Holy City with no Shrine.

The "unfocused" farm will seldom worry about GE's, because as others have stated, getting a GE via only specialists is really, really tough. And by the time you can generate them well via specialists, it's so late in the game that the GE's aren't all that useful anymore (though a Space Elevator pop can be nice).

 

[Murky]

Wonders can certainly contribute to GPP but I would only build what you think is going to be useful based on what it does. Also, with specialist in a GP farm you can manipulate the GPP easier than with wonders. With wonders it's static as to what you are likely to generate. With specialist you get to choose what kind of Great Person you are most likely to get.

 

[riapopia]

"With specialist you get to choose what kind of Great Person you are most likely to get."

I DEFINITELY agree with this statement. I sort of subconciously knew there was an excellent reason to choose specialists over Wonder farms (on top of some of the other good reasons mentioned) but this seems to me to be the most critical.

I have NEVER even been close to have 16 specialists in a city or 100 GPP/turn. Is this something the majority of people see? I often get to around 60-70 GPP/turn as a max.

Last point, IF you can build the pyramids and that leads to a lot of great engineers, I wonder if the optimal use of those GEs is to rush other wonders in a specialist based GP farm. Hmmm, well I guess that's sort of contradictory- the Pyramids city would have to also be your specialist-based GP farm, huh?

 

[bippukt]

I had something like 120+ GPP/turn in my GP farm in the last game. However, that was when I had NE + pacifism (not very good late in the game, so I ditched it later) + Parthenon + specialists (caste system) + Biology. The city was useless except for the great scientists it was producing and the civics were not the best (IMO), so I can't really say that this particular GP farm was very good for me. But I got lots of academies, which was cool. For the first time, I was able to launch near 1900 on Prince (not great but good enough for a new player like me). Still, I am not sure if converting my capital into a GP farm was a good thing or not. The city placement is really important IMO, as this city had tons of flood plains and grasslands. I don't usually get this kind of cities a lot.

I have to say that the specialists did allow me have a very flexible GPP farm.

 

[Welnic]

If your capital makes a great GP farm, you can make the palace somewhere else that would be a better capital.