Great Engineers: Settle or Hurry Production?

[LeHam]

I heard from elsewhere that settling Great Artists is good early game but later you want to culture bomb. I was thinking of maybe doing the same thing for GEs but they are so hard for me to get that I'm scared about wasting them. Settling seemed a good idea at first but there are so many terrific wonders in the early game that Hurry Production could help me get. Also, I want to conserve my GEs for hurrying production for a wonder later on.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Saving GEs for key wonders is good , especially for wonders that contribute points towards more GEs. Since they are rare , until later in the game , especially as Fred's Germany , I would conserve them to start cooperations first if you're already decided on not running State Property. Mining Inc is very powerful. I wouldn't worry about churning out GEs until the Industrial Era anyway when you're able to make more Engineer specialists and important wonders cost more

 

[babar]

Build the wonder if it's a good one and you have a good chance of missing it otherwise. Settling is good if you are confident you can get the wonder anyway (it will shave a few turns off as well), and especially good under representation. I wouldn't leave a GE hanging around too long, there aren't very many wonders that are worth the lost hammers and science.

Edit: P.S. Using GAs for culture bombs is almost certainly completely useless unless you are going for a culture victory. Probably use them for golden ages later on.

 

[Dr.Null]

P.S. Using GAs for culture bombs is almost certainly completely useless unless you are going for a culture victory. Probably use them for golden ages later on.

Not true! Dropping a culture bomb in a newly captured city gets you an immediately productive city with (probably) stable borders, and no chance for revolt.

As a warmonger, I don't hate Great Artists.

 

[babar]

Not true! Dropping a culture bomb in a newly captured city gets you an immediately productive city with (probably) stable borders, and no chance for revolt.

As a warmonger, I don't hate Great Artists.

You're right. I haven't been war mongering much recently so I forgot about that. Sometimes when you're warring, a GA is the best GP to get.

 

[gunkulator]

Not true! Dropping a culture bomb in a newly captured city gets you an immediately productive city with (probably) stable borders, and no chance for revolt.

As a warmonger, I don't hate Great Artists.

Remember as soon as the city comes out of revolt, you have to feed the population and start paying maintenance. A GA does little to push out borders when the city was within the core of another civ's territory. Not a big fan of GAs. As a warmonger, my favorite GP by far is the Great Merchant so that I can afford to upgrade my troops.

GEs are the most frustrating of all GP. They're really valuable at the beginning of the game but it's pretty hard to get them then. OTOH, they're fairly easy to get at the end of the game but there's not much for them to do.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Remember as soon as the city comes out of revolt, you have to feed the population and start paying maintenance. A GA does little to push out borders when the city was within the core of another civ's territory. Not a big fan of GAs. As a warmonger, my favorite GP by far is the Great Merchant so that I can afford to upgrade my troops.

GEs are the most frustrating of all GP. They're really valuable at the beginning of the game but it's pretty hard to get them then. OTOH, they're fairly easy to get at the end of the game but there's not much for them to do.

I don't culture bomb much for the reasons you describle. I usually use the First GA for a Bulb or Golden Age. Although 12 Culture per turn can help in a culture battle.

GE's a rare jewels. I like to rush wonders, especially the Pyramids or something else very expensive. It is frustrating that you get them so seldom in the early game. Even late game they can help with some late wonders.

 

[Kemal]

My GEs are always kept to rush key wonders. Either the Taj Mahal, Iron Works or save them for partially rushing the Three Gorges Dam. However, usually by the time GEs appear, the game is already won or lost (except for the Taj Mahal rush which can really make a difference).

But until Liberalism, I prefer scientists. After that, I'd say mostly merchants with a GE now and then.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Mining inc...!

 

[Nick Carpathia]

GEs are the rarest and most valuable, the wonder rush is so much more useful than the +3P/turn. It takes what, over 100 turns for settling to beat build rushing production wise, and the snowball effect from getting a good wonder like the Pyramids or Great Library before other civs decides the game much more than +3P/turn. Going down the Free Market route with Mining Inc is also great, but I've found it's often not a game changer if you've done a good old fashioned Rifle/Cannon rush. It's better to use the GE to get the Great Library so you can blitz through things like Education, Printing Press, Philosophy and Liberalism to get those Rifles and Cannons out while your neighbours are on Longbows and Musketmen.

Since this topic is also about Great People in general, the priorities shift around a bit over time. A Great Prophet to build an early shrine can make the difference between your land-blocking cities crashing your economy and the ability to backfill and develop valuable land. An early scientist to set up an academy in your highest commerce city is excellent, this works great with a Civil Service beeline to get the double +50% multipliers from Bureaucracy and Academy. After that, lightbulb things like Education and Philosophy so you can win Liberalism and get into those renaissance military techs.

After Liberalism, I like getting Great Merchants. At that point, the value of the bulb is worth maybe 2000 beakers. On the other hand, a Great Merchant can be worth 1500 gold. This can often be used to pay all your maintenance for a good dozen turns. If you have a Bureaucracy/Library/University/Observatory/Monastery/Academy/Oxford supercapital (multiplying your city's commerce by ~5), you can feed all of your commerce through your research multipliers, netting far more beakers from a Great Merchant than a Great Scientist. It helps that Markets/Grocers give 4 merchant slots, making GMs easier to get than GSs if you prefer whipping to caste system.

In the modern age, when I've got my Corporations up and running, I don't really care about my great people anymore. Instead, I prefer a grab bag, so I can get as many different types for late game golden ages.

 

[babar]

GEs are the rarest and most valuable, the wonder rush is so much more useful than the +3P/turn. It takes what, over 100 turns for settling to beat build rushing production wise

That is assuming you have a good wonder to build. Not much use rushing a lousy one because it will save you hammers in the long run (I know you weren't really suggesting this). I agree that rushing the GL is very often a good use of a GE, but I probably wouldn't even do that if I could build it quickly and safely by conventional means. I sometimes use a GE to rush a useful earlyish wonder that still hasn't been built at a freakishly late date, or save one for a wonder/corp in the near future, but otherwise I like settling them.

Also you have to consider the 3. And if you are running rep, bureaucracy, and have building multipliers, the settled GE pays off a lot quicker in terms of raw output than a hundred turns.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I wasn't kidding. For a decent sized empire the benefits of mining inc can so soundly trounce any alternative it isn't funny. If you don't have an ubertastic wonder you need, or a corporation already, mid-to-late GEs are for golden ages and corporations.

With fairly small effort mining inc can easily get to +10 (BASE hammers) per city. If you're willing to trade a bit, maybe even 20. That's not just one city, it's as many as you wish. Yes, there are some setup costs, but mining inc has the fastest payback of all the corporations by far.

If the game isn't going to end very soon, having a 10 mining inc in 10 cities will get you 1000 hammers in 10 turns, 2000 in 20, etc. This very quickly overtakes a bulb, a golden age, and the wonder rush. While the corporation costs money/city, you also get +4 gold per branch in the HQ city. Put wall street there and your GPT won't be going down unless you have some SERIOUS hammers, which is a good thing.

Now, there are setup costs, yes. In reality mininc inc won't pay back in 20 turns, but give it 50 and nothing touches it. Do not rule it out; it's often your very best option. Not always, mind you, especially when you are heavily SP reliant...but frequently enough.

 

[Yoshi1]

You must be joking, if there is one thing i never did it is settle engineers or Artists...
Artist = fail because they usually are rare and you want them for golden Ages, or if anything at all a bomb.
Engineer = fail because...no i won't go into the 10000 reasons now, sorry.

 

[*Svart*]

Usually i don't get so many GE... usually only one..... so this is the answer

Mining inc...!

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I haven't settled a GE before the last modern era in a long time.

You can get them by dedicating a city to engineering wonders - forge, Pyramids, HG, don't remember the other reasonably early one...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

It's the Hagia Sophia. It's a bit rubbish though.

 

[W|M]

If playing MP, you should never save a GE for a corp. Those games rarely get past the Middle Ages, so it's best to use them on wonders or Golden Ages.

 

[babar]

I pretty much only get early GEs from the mids so I'm usually running representation, which means almost a (citizen) free gold mine from settling. Even a half hearted replication of obsolete's wonderspamming technique can be pretty powerful. A few settled GEs/other GPs in a good production capital can greatly speed research and give you a pretty good chance to build any wonder you really want anyway, creating a kind of positive feedback mechanism. It comes down to situation and player preference in the end though. Mining Inc. has saved my *** a few times, and I often do use GEs to rush wonders.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Early on settling engineer (especially in rep) gives a much stronger game-long boost than wonder rushing, especially when you apply multipliers (think 100's of hammers vs >1000 potentially along with a significant #beakers). That said, early on there are good wonders that might merit it.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Yeah, I guess the two big early wonders are the Pyramids and the Great Library, the rest are more situational. I'm still not a big fan of settling, I'm rarely so hammer starved in the capital that you'll need the equivalent of a free hills mine. With say bureaucracy and a forge (reasonable in the early-mid game), that's +75% production, 5.25 hammers. The beakers? A minor benefit, a single representation-boosted scientist. Assuming you get your full 500 hammers out of wonder-rushing, it takes nearly 100 turns for settling to turn a profit. It's just better to even get the wonder at all. I've even rushed Oxford in a commerce-rich bureaucracy supercapital with too many plains hills to grow onto and w/o stone, because I was just that desperate while rushing towards liberalism. I did not regret it (the draft rifle rush worked).

On the other hand, if I don't have a good candidate wonder to hurry, I'll happily save him for a 100 turns or so when Corporations and Railroads have been unlocked. Those GE GPPs are just too rare. There are a couple of caveats, I'll only go down the late game corporation route if I have easy access to a Great Merchant (Economics or the 4 merchant specialist slots come in mind) as well. After all, part of the appeal of State Property are the 1F and 2F hammer tiles and the +10% production, if I can't get even more of both from corporations, I'd much rather save the maintenance and set-up cost and just do State Property.