few question abt gp farm

[joyceanblue]

from last few games ive been trying to learn how to make a gp farm. i have few questions, i know many ppl here are very good at making one and they know a great deal about it, so i hope they would be kind enough to clear my doubts.
i understand its important to make your gp farm on a food rich tile that is usually flood planes or tiles with other food resources. but if you dont manage to find such a tile should we go ahead and build gp farm anyway? such as on a grassland on a river?
i usually make only farms on gp farm, to make it grow faster, but ive read some ppl build cottages too on the gp farm. does it provide enough food?
i usually stick to caste system to get unlimited artist scientist and merchants, but is there a way to get many engineers? i know with forge and factory you can get few but are those enough to produce a great engineer?
is it possible for someone to post a screenshot of the city screen of gp farm?
thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[Poppis]

Having a food-rich city site is propably the easiest way to get a gp farm. All you need there is few buildings(library, forge etc) so you can get specialists or run caste system.

Other way of making a gp farm is with high production city site. Having high production(and possibly Industious leader) will allow you to build lots of wonders, which in turn gives you gp points. Of course with wonders, you usually can't decide which kind of great person to get, where as with specialists you can.

Also spending a lots of turns on building wonders in your production city might not be the best possible choice.

EDIT. The only way of getting great engineers that I know of are with specialists from buildings(forge, factory) and with wonders(pyramids, great wall).

 

[obsolete]

Sure, a forge is good for an engineer. If you have no other specialists, you'll get one for sure 100% when the pool fills up. Some people use this for certain Gambits. Once you unlock steel tech, you can run 3+ engineer specialists ontop of the others you unlocked (after national wonder) and greatly contribute to engineer GPs.

Personally, Great Prophets own in this game, and going after ankor wat and unlocks another 3 Priests to run (even without any religion) + aids another +1 hammer to each. Meaning, running priests actually is DOMINANT to running an engineer, as you get same amount of hammers as an engineer but extra gold.

The only differences is when absorbing the poped specialists, priest will contribute +2 hammer (even after Wat becomes obsolete), but engineer gives 1 extra for 3 total. However, priest also comes with +5 gold, engineers don't.

 

[fed1943]

A gp farm is just a city where the player decided to have many specialists and
perhaps Wonders.

To have many specialists lots of food are needed. To that goal food resources,
flood plains and farms.

Not many hammers are needed, while some indeed are; no commerce from tiles
is needed.

Needed buildings and things to arrive there: granary for grow; happy resources,
temple, colesseum (or Shakespeare's) ; health resources, aqueduct and
buildings that increase resources.

To maximize output: modifiers as the chosen specialists (library, market, or
theater and so; National Epic.

Philosopher trait helps the output, same for Pacifism civic. Caste civic helps
to have more scientists, merchants or artists.

Best regards,

 

[mice]

Another thing to be aware of is 'polluting' your GP pool. If you build National Epic to double to GP rate in a city,you get Artist GP points . If you then run scientists, the likelihood of getting a scientist is affected by the Artist GP points from the National Epic.

Typically you get three or four Great scientists, and then just when you dont want one, you get a Great artist.

You mentioned having a cottage in the GP farm. I dont recommend it. Just farms and food resources, and some production for buildings if poss.

If you like engineers, build the Pyramids, then the Hanging gardens, Great wall. They always give a lot of Engineers.

 

[UncleJJ]

The term GP farm is used in several different ways by different people. It basically means the place where you concentrate production of GPs and comes into existance after Literature allows the building of the National Epic (National Wonder) for +100% GPP. Another thing to note is that a CE (cottage economy) will usually benefit from a GP farm while a SE (specialist economy) with Philosophy or running Pacifism doesn't really need one. When playing with a SE I often don't bother to build the NE until late in the game after capturing a really good city (usually a capital) with lots of wonders and food that I want to squeeze an extra GP or two out of. Many cities in my SE will have the ability to produce a GP from their GPP pool.

A GP farm for a CE will produce most of the GPs in the middle and late game, although it is possible to build the first 2 or 3 GPs before it really becomes established by just running 2 scientists from a library in other cities. Once the GP farm city gets into full GPP production other cities find it hard to compete and almost all GPPs generated elsewhere are wasted. So a CE will only run specialists in the GP farm and build cottages in nearly all other cities.

The archetypical GP farm (in a CE) is a good food city (2 or 3 good food resources plus farms) with the NE built and probably the Great Library as well. Running the Caste System and with say +16 food, a GP farm like that can have 8 scientists (giving 24 GPP), plus the Great Library (8 GPP) and the NE (1 GPP) and then that basic total (33 GPP) is boosted to 66 GPPs per turn by the +100% NE bonus. At that rate in the middle of the game when say the 7th GP is under production it will take only 11 turns to produce the 700 GPPs needed. That is how the GP farm can be so powerful for a CE. It concentrates all the GP generating potential in one city.

One downside with this approach is that it can be hard to get the two key wonders (NE and GL) built quickly unless you have plenty of hammers in the city as well (although that can be done with a combination of chopping and whipping the excess pop). That is why selecting the site of your GP farm is so critical... you need the food to run the specialists and the hammers (or forests) to build the wonders otherwise it will be a GP farm coming late in the game when it is a lot less effective.

Another downside to this sort of GP farm is that it only really works if you run the Caste System (to provide enough specialists to convert food to GPPs) and that means you cant run Slavery or later Emancipation. The Caste System in a CE is a civic you are running that only benefits one city (the GP farm) while Slavery is a civic that can turn excess food into hammers in any of your cities and that is useful, particularly in times of war when up-to-date units are needed fast. So this type of GP farm (high food, few buildings) only works well when you run the Caste System.

To get around the limitation of the Caste System it is possible to build a GP farm based on wonders, food and buildings. The best candidate city is usually an enemy capital. If you're lucky, when you capture it, it might have a wonder or two already built and even a holy shrine for you to exploit. It is almost certain to have an exceptional combination of food and hammers from the tiles. So you can set about building a GP farm here based on specialists from building slots. The buildings you can build are; forge (1 engineer), library (2 scientists), market and grocer (4 merchants), theatre (2 artists), several temples (1 priest / temple) and even a cathedral (2 priests) and later in the game observatory (1 scientist), factory (2 engineers). There is also a mixture of national wonders that are useful and provide an additional 3 specialist slots Oxford, Wall Street and Iron Works and if it is a Holy City a Shrine can be built.

The number of and types of specialists you can run will grow as you build more of the above buildings. Then once Biology is discovered this city gets additional food from any farms and can run even more specialists. Running Slavery with this sort of GP farm allows some of the excess food to be converted to hammers to get the buildings faster, if that is beneficial. If you are Industrious or have the special resources then this "GP/ Wonder farm" can build more wonders to further boost its rate of GPP production. This type of GP farm (using buildings and wonders) comes into its own later in the game than the earlier type of GP farm (based on Caste System) and grows throughout the game. The earlier type slows down GP production without the Caste System and particularly once the Scientific Method kills off the Great Library. So you have a choice of whether to establish your GP farm early but have it decay in the late game, or establish it later, at a better site and continue to be productive into the late game.

The advantage of the building based GP farm is that you avoid using the Caste System and run the generally better Slavery civic in the early game or later on run Emancipation (for cottage growth and happiness). The downside is that it is very hard to control the type of GP that is produced. You can influence the chances of particular types of GP significantly but you can't control it as well as you can using the Caste System. Running just scientists (say) under the Caste System, then you only have a small chance of getting a GA (from the NE artist source) rather than the preferred GS - that's a small chance but not zero. With the multi wonder, multi specialist approach you have to be more flexible with how you use the GPs produced, because they are likely to be of all types. But I find all GPs have their uses in the middle game and don't see that as a great disadvantage after the Liberalism Race. At the end of the game you need several types of GP anyway if you want to start a golden age. A golden age can be very powerful with a CE (running the US civic with many towns) and can make the difference between winning and losing a tight Space Race.

 

[joyceanblue]

great explanation guys. thank you all for your help.
i usually lack wonders in my gp farm so from now on ill try to make few wonders in there. i usually try to save a great engineer or two to build national wonder and globe theatre in gp farm.
is it useful to join the great person in gp farm or its better to use those gp for other purposes?
i try to produce great merchants most of the time, as with US i can hurry most of the units if i have plenty of gold. i usually dont run slavery so i have no problem running caste system in the early game.

 

[svv]

Here's an article I wrote about different kinds of GP farms:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=209331

If you are running a gp farm intended to emphasize engineers, you don't need a lot of excess food (since you can only hire the one engineer anyway for quite a while until you get steel). I'll typically cottage tiles there. Then, after I get steel and assembly line, and can now hire six engineers, I'll probably farm over at least some of the cottages.

Most of the gp points from such a gp farm usually come from wonders (many of which you are building with the great engineers). This city started out this way but, again, I farmed over cottages after I got the ability to hire more engineer specialists:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=219285

 

[joyceanblue]

great city you have there svv. may i ask what difficulty level youre at? in just 1661 ad you built quite alot and youre very advance. great going.

 

[obsolete]

I really don't understand the point of Globe Theater in the GP city. It really makes no sense to me. You can only have 2 national wonders. Since one of them is certain to be NE (for obvious reasons), that leaves only 1 more.

Oxford is a huge biggie, which I understand. But Iron Works is also a biggie. The choice comes down between these TWO.

Myself, I am used to quick speed, so that means winning by Domination is super hard. For that reason, I like Iron Works so I can backdoor into space race victory. But for those on Marathon, where anyone can prance around the AI's to their heart's content, the Oxford could very well be a better choice, though not always the best.

But Globe Theater? Come on, what a waste....

 

[svv]

^^^ I agree that Ironworks is nice in the GP city, but I also see the point of Globe Theatre. One, you could farm everything and hire a ton of specialists, without having to worry about happiness. Two, you could also use all that food to whip away to your heart's content. Three, you wouldn't have to worry about building happiness improvements, and could instead concentrate on health improvements, science/money improvements, and wonders (including national epic and globe theatre itself, and others to boost the gp points).

great city you have there svv. may i ask what difficulty level youre at? in just 1661 ad you built quite alot and youre very advance. great going.

That was at Noble (as stated in that thread). However, the strategy also works at higher difficulty levels. The tough part would be getting it all started with pyramids, as on higher difficulties you're usually woried about cranking out military units ASAP. But, if you get it rolling, it works pretty well.

 

[joyceanblue]

wouldnt it be better to have ironworks in your production city specially if you have both coal and iron in it?

 

[svv]

First, you don't have to have coal and iron in that city for Ironworks to work and benefit from them. You just have to have them mined somewhere in your empire and hooked up to your trade network for them to give the ironworks the hammer bonus. Even if you don't have coal and/or iron (I typically don't have the tech for coal yet when I build the ironworks), you can still build the ironworks and hire the great engineers.

Anyway, I usually like to build both heroic epic and west point in my city with the top hammer potential. Many people do this, and they build ironworks in the number 2 hammer city.

So, by putting ironworks in your gp farm (probably your capital) you'd be sacrificing the difference between the extra hammers you'd get by having the ironworks in the number 2 hammer city, and the extra hammers you'd get by putting it in the GP farm.

That may not be a large sacrifice, and it may be no sacrifice at all - I'm currently playing Earth 18 civs as Montezuma, and my capital/gp farm actually was already my best hammer city. Even if you are sacrificing some hammers, though, it's likely worth it to be able to farm great engineers.

 

[UncleJJ]

Anyway, I usually like to build both heroic epic and west point in my city with the top hammer potential. Many people do this, and they build ironworks in the number 2 hammer city.

Putting West Point in the HE city is not a good choice in Warlords. The time and 800 hammers used to build the West Point are better put into more units where they get the HE 100% bonus. That is a lot of "wasted" units lost while you build the West Point. The equivalent 4 exp points the West Point gives can come from 2 Military Advisers settled in the HE city, if you've been active militarily, and they don't interrupt the production of units.

In my games West Point gets built in another high production city (usually captured later in the game) and then I add a Military Academy to that city for another 50% military production bonus. That way I have 2 good production cities making moderate quality troops rather than just one making troops with 4 exp more. My army is bigger than it would otherwise be (since I was producing from the HE city the whole time) and with 2 cities I can then build it even faster. It seems to me that once you invest in the HE and settle GGs in a city you should maximise their military production.

It could happen that if I researched Steel before Military Tradition that I would build Ironworks in a good production city and then later build West Point there using the improved production but that would be a coincidence rather than a definite plan. Once West Point was build in the Ironworks city it would be dedicated to military production and that would only happen if I was going for a middle to late game Domination victory.

Ironworks is an expensive wonder that can take a long time to pay back the 700 hammers it costs to build. You need to find a high production city and one that can deal with the 2 unhealth that Ironworks brings on top of forge and factory unhealth. You need iron and coal (needs Steam Power) to get the full 100% bonus. I find that seldom goes together with maximising the GP output from a GP farm (which needs health to avoid food loss). Building Ironworks in order to run 3 more engineers in the GP farm is something I've never done.

 

[obsolete]

^^^ I agree that Ironworks is nice in the GP city, but I also see the point of Globe Theatre. One, you could farm everything and hire a ton of specialists, without having to worry about happiness. Two, you could also use all that food to whip away to your heart's content. Three, you wouldn't have to worry about building happiness improvements, and could instead concentrate on health improvements, science/money improvements, and wonders (including national epic and globe theatre itself, and others to boost the gp points).

Doesn't quite make sense. I hardly ever have happiness problems in my GP city. You SHOULD be running Rep right off the bat, which removes that hurtfull cap. While you can hit the road block again if too much food, it is rather easy to get RESOURCES, and build cheap temples. I never have to worry about happiness because I am off hooking up happiness resources, or trading with others, if not just outright conquering them.

Alright, there is an exception.. when I'm still running caste, and the AI's are all using emancipation, (or I'm in a 2000 long war with everyone), then you can start running into happiness problems. But again, this is what the cheap culture slider is for, boom, instant happiness.

And you also really don't want to be whipping in your GP city! Not without good reason! I can almost understand Globe theater being used for someone who has a fettish for nation-hood, but again, NOT in the GP city!

Maybe less than 1% of the time this can be excusable if the moons & planets align right.

 

[futurehermit]

from last few games ive been trying to learn how to make a gp farm. i have few questions, i know many ppl here are very good at making one and they know a great deal about it, so i hope they would be kind enough to clear my doubts.
i understand its important to make your gp farm on a food rich tile that is usually flood planes or tiles with other food resources. but if you dont manage to find such a tile should we go ahead and build gp farm anyway? such as on a grassland on a river?
i usually make only farms on gp farm, to make it grow faster, but ive read some ppl build cottages too on the gp farm. does it provide enough food?
i usually stick to caste system to get unlimited artist scientist and merchants, but is there a way to get many engineers? i know with forge and factory you can get few but are those enough to produce a great engineer?
is it possible for someone to post a screenshot of the city screen of gp farm?
thanks in advance for all your help.

you want to build your gpfarm in a high-food city. either your capital or an enemy capital are usually good ideas. most other cities do not make ideal gpfarms although occasionally you'll find one with floodplains and food specials that will do the job.

you want national epic, wonders if you have some production, and then as many specialists as you can run. if you are able to go into caste system then run a pile of whatever you want (usually scientists). otherwise, build specialist buildings and run as many as you are able (balance them out late game for golden ages).

pacificism, representation, caste system, parthenon all help your gpfarm.

gp help your game a lot so you should always plan to have a gpfarm.

 

[UncleJJ]

pacificism, representation, caste system, parthenon all help your gpfarm.
.

Unqualified, this is highly dubious advice for a CE. Why not add that Philosophical would be good for the GP farm as well?

Obviously those 4 things do all make the GP farm a little more productive, but are they worth it? In a CE you have to ask what is the cost to the other cities running lots of cottages of helping the GP farm with these civics.

 

[obsolete]

I have experimented with philosophical, but find the advantage isn't so hot as it generally only applies to ONE city, your GPF. So for anyone who may do some warmongering, I think it's a horrible choice. But for those going peaceful-culture, it could have some value.

I believe even spiritual, despite being nerfed in civ IV, may still outperform due to the fact that it affects ALL cities.

 

[fed1943]

So, your GPfarm (high pop, I guess) has no happiness problems, even at war?

I would like to see it, please.

Best regards,

 

[Arnesson]

I have a start as Mao (Vanilla, Continents, Epic, Prince) with my capital surrounded by Flood Plains (10 of them!). A natural for a GP farm I thought. The trouble was that production was very slow and I could not seem to get the Green/Red faces under control, even with Whipping! There are 4 hills (providing 4 hammers with Mines) so production shouldn't have been a problem. I ultimately lost when JC and Vicky both declared war on me and I simply didn't have the units to counter them both.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

Instead of going the "normal" route (BW, AH, etc.) I directed my research to founding Hinduism, and succeeded. That quickly spread to the other three Civ's on my continent, although Cathy subsequently light-bulbed Philosophy and converted. That put her at odds with Vicky who was between Russian territory and my cities. I let them fight it out and then moved south when peace was declared, before Cathy could re-build her forces. My Cavalry and Maces against her HA's and Swords. An uneven battle she could not win and I ended up owning half the continent. JC fell later on, but Vicky became too powerful to dislodge. In the end, a Time victory. Nothing terribly great, but a sense of achievement in finding a solution, and a valuable lesson learned regarding flexibility in selecting a research path early in the game.