Expendables: GP edition

Hi
This is a "tall" strategy based on expending great persons (GP), geared toward diplomatic, culture or science victory.

Civs:
Arabia: more GP = more historic event = more GP= more faith = more GP, etc. (and each GP give you 1S/t 1C/t)
Austria: +33% GP (UB), +10% GP in capital for each marriage.
Byzantium: safe side, as you are sure to grab a religion , with the good beliefs (and even more).
Korea: +20% GP (UB), +50?% GP in golden ages, + (depend of era) on :specialists & GP improvements.
Maya: many free GP (but most of them are too early)
Venice: +8% GP in capital (UB1), +2 per GP improvement (and tourism, good for a tourism victory, UB2).

note: use musician, writers, scientists, merchants when they appear. Use engineer for your planned wonder or plant them asap. Keep others for the late-game, if possible. Don't build GP early if you don't need them.

Ancient/classical:
Go with tradition.
If you're not Byzantium, you need to focus on getting a religion as soon as possible. Trying to build Stonehenge with hammers is a good choice, to get a religion or to gain more culture for your next wonder.
Use your slots to have an early engineer for halicarnassus and an early writer to be one of the first to unlock the policy requirement for this wonder.
As soon as possible, rush halicarnassus (mandatory).
Your religion need (mandatory): Ceremonial burial, Martyrdom, Glory of god. For the two follower beliefs, choose what you want. Your major Faith-generator will be all of your GPs that you expend, not your cities yields (but they help).
If you can have some admirals/generals don't expend them now, wait modern era.

Medieval:
For the second policy branch, you can go piety before aesthetics, especially if your're not pursuing a cultural victory yet. With it, you should be able to secure the University of Sankore. Organized Religion is a must-have. If you construct monasteries, do it before the cost go up.
For the reformation belief, you should use the world wonder, as it cost less faith. But if you have many wars (or planing to), the national wonder can be worth the investment.
Chichen Itza can be good wonder (but you may be able to maintain a constant golden-age without).

Renaissance:
Pisa tower is almost mandatory. prepare your great engineer for it.
If you begin with piety, go into aesthetic.
If you begin with aesthetic, you should pick Organized Religion. After that, you can go into an other tree.
Keep as many faith as possible for later.

industrial:
Yield for each GP expanded in industrial era: 720(+aesthetic bonus), 700, 400 , 200, 200
From now, you can begin to buy GP with faith, but I recommend to rush Modern era before (using the bottom part or the upper one of the tree, it's not extremely costly). If you decided to focus the diplomatic game, you should even grab Arsenal of Democracy before.

Modern:
Yield for each GP expanded in modern era: 900(+aesthetic bonus), 875, 500, 250, 250
You can create 2 admirals/diplomats/musicians even if you didn't need them for your victory, the first is almost free, the second one is a good converter of faith. You can plant your general (for yields). If you have a bunch of them from your wars, they can create a enormous amount of yields.
If you decide to focus science victory, you should wait the information era for buying scientist (and engineer if you want use them to rush the vessel parts, or merchants if you choose the other ideology).

Atomic:
Yield for each GP expanded in Atomic era: 1080(+aesthetic bonus), 1050, 600, 300, 300
Nothing special, continue to buy and spend great persons.

Information:
Yield for each GP expanded in Informationera: 1260 (+aesthetic bonus), 1225, 700, 350, 350
You may consider buying a third admiral/diplomat/musician, even if you didn't need them.

It's a "late" strategy as it spike at industrial/modern era, but It's fun when you hit modern and begin a GP spree.

 

really nice writeup - obviously your capital is going to be GP focus, but how do you manage your GP generation in your other cities?

 

It's as you want. I didn't play enough games to have a strong opinion on that.

For most of my others cities, i didn't manage them, as the built-in ai is good enough for specializing them with one type of GP. Early, you must be careful to get your engineer at the right time. But after that, GP in others cities are just a bonus.

If you want some wonders you have to be good enough in culture to grab them, in high difficulties it's essential to work all culture slots if you want to secure them, or at least the slots with good yields.

But i didn't have enough grow/food in my cities to work all my specialists slots, maybe i should try working only the big food tiles. Most of the time, there are even not enough food in my capital to let it work all specialist slots. So i use some food caravans, i work some good farms (5f+) and the GP improved ones (on lux/bonus, mostly). I plant 1-2 great merchants also to help with food, when they comes.
The objective is to have enough population at industrial to work all the specialists slots in the capital and to continue to grow. It's 20~30 slots so you need a lot of pop. Tip: use trade routes from your capital to cities into a tourism-influenced civilization to increase your growth.

If you're venice, it's simpler: you can't manage them and you want to plant as many specialist as your tiles at your capital.

 

No love for Austria? I think it's the most fitting candidate, although going Progress+Industry is required to pull it off.

 

Ohh, i didn't notice Austria, it's a very good choice.

Arabia: more GP = more historic event = more GP= more faith = more GP, etc.
Austria: +33% GP (UB), +10% GP in capital for each marriage.
Byzantium: safe side, as you are sure to grab a religion , with the good beliefs (and even more).
Maya: many free GP (but most of them are too early)
Venice: +8% GP in capital (UB1), +2 per GP improvement (and tourism, good for a tourism victory, UB2).

Did i miss other civs?

 

Korea gets an extra 15% GPP from their UB I think, they also have great synergy with working a lot of specialists(and great tile improvements).

 

And the UA has +%GP in Golden Ages too if I'm not wrong.

 

Right, that's new.

 

This strategy is also good for China:
GPs born trigger WLTED for +50% growth,
GA points from spending GPs gives more Golden ages for another +50% growth
Extra pop facilitates more specialists for more GPs

One powerful trick is to save GPs once you are close to completing your 3rd policy tree, save faith and buy only writers if needed to rush arsenal of democracy, then spend the faith on a mass GP purchasing spree. After spending them, most of the CS will be your allies and you will get tons of yields

 

I've tried this strategy in my second CBP game, as China (standard speed and size, King level). There's a 15 turn limit between each Great People purchase so the "final burst" part of the strategy doesn't work ; I didn't know this and ended up sitting on top of 60000 faith I couldn't spend.

It has probably been changed since the OP wrote the guide, and for the better, because otherwise it would have been ludicrously OP. The strategy is still pretty solid. All these yields on GP expense really add up throughout the game and make a big difference. Also, this helped me assess the full strength of a specialist-focused approach.

Likewise, the Reformation belief is hard to get. It probably varies a lot from game to game, but converting those 20% of global population on time is not always easy, in my case it was practically impossible to do on time (at the end of the game, I could have spammed dozens of missionaries, but I didn't have the 60K faith in the Renaissance). The Cathedral of St-Basil did the job, however I don't know if it's a reliable wonder on higher difficulty levels.