GP farm, How necessary is it?

rizou

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 4, 2007
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5
I've been wondering what everyone else thinks on GP farms, is it necessary to have at least one always, or do you only build it if you're philosophical leader?
 
I always have some sort of GP farm, though 9 out of 10 games my Science City becomes my GP farm.

If I'm Philosophical, then I make a dedicated GP farm.
 
It depends exactly what you interpret a GP Farm to be. I normally call the high food city where the National Epic is built the GP farm. They are fairly essential to a CE wanting to produce a reasonable number of GPs after the first 2 or 3 The early GPs only cost a few hundred GPPs and can be turned out with just a library and 2 scientists or a single early wonder like the oracle. Later GPs need the 100% bonus of the NE to get produced in a timely manner.

If you are Philosophical then you don't need a single GP Farm as you can distribute the generation over several cities. In fact the NE can corrupt the type of GPs with GAs and the Philosophical bonus makes every city as good as the GP farm described above, so it is not really needed. If I run a SE or HE (a mixture of farms and cottages) then running Pacifism or building the Parthenon can give a similar effect to being Philosophical during the critical part of the game between CoL and Liberalism. It is this period when lightbulbing a few key techs can make winning the Liberalism race much easier.
 
Lately I try to make a dedicated GP farm, earlier my Capital was usually a GP/Science hybrid. Works fine, because once GP's aren't very important anymore, or you just don't get any, your city is easily transformed into a pure Science city.

Besides, on importance, I think getting a lot of Great Scientists is pretty important, for Academies and Lightbulbing. A Merchant helps a lot for running mad science rates. And Engineers are great ofcourse, but mainly at the early stages.
 
Somewhat a 'can of worms' question, but;

(a.) Welcome rizou to CivFanatics! :)

(b.) I should point out (before I get beaten to it) that Cultural victories are made considerably easier if you have at least one dedicated Great Artist farm. I tend to stick with just the one, which is often ultimately a Legendary city. Other cities may pop out a :gp: from time to time, but as a side-product from running Specialist Artists more so than how I would interpret a dedicated Great Artist 'farm' to be structured.
 
If you're philosophical, you don't 1 GP farm.
you need all your cities to be GP farms.

If you're not, the national epic will make 1 city a lot better at GPPs than the others, so you're going to push one particular city a lot further into GP farming.
If you still want all your cities to be GP farms, you'll run pacifism and be philo like ;).
 
haha thx for the replies, I've started to realise how those GPs really makes a difference in keeping up tech against the tech-whore leaders but I still find it difficult to assign a city to be a GP farm especially when I'm warmongering.

Thx Cam for the welcome :P been roaming around the forums for awhile, finally posted :P
 
a GP Farm isn't necessary, unless you're playing with the Philosophical trait... you can play with the Philosophical Trait never generating a GP, but then you're just wasting the trait.

It's possible to win games, while never generating GPs... I've done it with Warmonger leaders, especially with the organized trait, Instead of creating a GP farm, I've used my cities for Cottaging and Production Only and Won Domination.

Under most normal circumstances, it's nice to have a GP farm for an edge, but they are not necessary. their just nice to have.
 
If you're philosophical, you don't 1 GP farm.
you need all your cities to be GP farms.

???

Wouldn't you still wind up with one city blowing the others away b/c of NE, GL, Wonders, etc.?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong ... do you try to keep all of your cities generating :gp: equally? ... do you intentionally try to NOT make a super-:gp: city?
 
???

Wouldn't you still wind up with one city blowing the others away b/c of NE, GL, Wonders, etc.?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong ... do you try to keep all of your cities generating :gp: equally? ... do you intentionally try to NOT make a super-:gp: city?

you make as many cities super GPP cities as possible by building farms all around the place.
As philo leader you have a built in 100% to GPPs. So the national epic is only +50% for you (in NE city you have 300% GPPs and in other cities, you have 200%). Knowing that the NE pollutes the pool with artists, you're better off avoiding it completely.
 
you make as many cities super GPP cities as possible by building farms all around the place.
As philo leader you have a built in 100% to GPPs. So the national epic is only +50% for you (in NE city you have 300% GPPs and in other cities, you have 200%). Knowing that the NE pollutes the pool with artists, you're better off avoiding it completely.

Hmm ... that seems to lend itself to an SE ... I'm not good with those yet (well, not in the late game at least.)

Is that a correct assessment?
 
I often try to have two GP farms...a major one and a minor one. The major one will tend to produce GP at the rate of 3/1 compared to the other, but when the GP number starts getting higher and more difficult to reach, it's nice having that city to generate a GP soon after your main GP farm gets reset to 0 after creating a GP.
 
you make as many cities super GPP cities as possible by building farms all around the place.
As philo leader you have a built in 100% to GPPs. So the national epic is only +50% for you (in NE city you have 300% GPPs and in other cities, you have 200%). Knowing that the NE pollutes the pool with artists, you're better off avoiding it completely.

What if you're going for a cultural victory? Would you never try that with a SE?

Also, an advantage to spreading it around as Philosophical, is that you can specialize which type of GP each city is generating. So on the fly you can adjust the rates in each city and generate whichever type of GP you need at that time.
 
What if you're going for a cultural victory? Would you never try that with a SE?
never tried, really
tried it in some hybrid fashion a lot, though
Also, an advantage to spreading it around as Philosophical, is that you can specialize which type of GP each city is generating. So on the fly you can adjust the rates in each city and generate whichever type of GP you need at that time.
right
 
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