Great Engineers

[Forster]

How often do you get them, how do you get them and how do you use them. I rarely get to industrial era and don't usually build industrial districts, especially since the change, because I enjoy the early game more than the slog to the end.

 

[Archon_Wing]

You're not really missing out on much as most Great Engineers aren't really worth the hassle. If you see the one that builds a wonder, try buying it with faith or build an industrial zone with a city that has oracle in it to get it faster. Otherwise, you're just rolling dice in the hopes the good Great Engineers will pop up, and sometimes they just won't.

 

[Cedbird77]

I am not a fan of Industrial zones myself. I like the GE choices however at least half the time.

Providing Amenities, building Wonders, and building workshop and Factories . Pretty useful.

Then some of them seem blah and never relevant to my play style. Maybe I need to think outside the box more. Maybe they need to tweak the GE

 

[Disgustipated]

I love the wonder building ones, because I still love building wonders even if they aren't that great. Sergei Korolev is pretty good, but often he comes so late that I've already won the game by that point. Honestly I'd rather just use Royal Society and builders for the Science Victory.

And I do build industrial zones, it's hard for me not to. I still love productive cities. This is part holdover from my SMAC days where you could get cities with obscene production numbers. While you could do a lot with gold in that game, production was still very very useful. Often my industrial zones don't come until mid game. There's just no room to build them early.

 

[Captain Pugwash]

I mostly use them for Space Race (Science) victory. There are a couple of Great Engineers who give you a distinct advantage in building the space rocket stuff. If you don't play the game to the end then this won't be of much use.

 

[Softly]

Great Engineers (and Great Merchants as well) could use a buff across the board. They are both pretty weak when compared to Great Scientists. The medieval and renaissance great engineers are especially awful, which is a shame because normally the game is won by the industrial era anyways. 4 changes they really should make.

James of St. George: +25% production to walls across your empire.

Leonardo da Vinci: This workshop now acts as a regional building, similar to a factory.

Mimar Sinan: +25% production to city center buildings, excluding walls. (2 charges).

Ada Lovelace: I like the eureka to Computers, but +1 district capacity really isn’t that useful by the industrial era. Maybe give her 2 charges.

 

[Halcyan2]

The 3 wonder production Engineers are great, as are the three Factory/IZ related ones.

Space Race ones are also good if you are going for that victory condition.

The rest are just mediocre.

However, Great Engineers become even better with the Mausoleum though.

 

[Scaramanga]

If I can get more adjacency out of an industrial zone than a Campus I'll build one. And the eventual Great Engineers have uses beyond just Space Race. At least the one who builds walls can get more housing under Monarchy.

 

[Forster]

I'm playing a game now where I am actually building a couple of industrial centers, so I guess I'll see what happens.

 

[Sostratus]

Great engineers become much much more useful if you've secured the Mausoleum. Some (like Ada lovelace, the scourge of the industrial era) are still useless, but James Watt can give all your factories +4 production* and Tesla can make one uber factory/powerplant combo dish out 7 & 8 production over 12 tiles. Even Leo's workshops granting +2 culture is quite good. It's also handy to get an extra charge out of some wonder boosters. On the ocean side, the mausoleum is particularly handy if you get the Ironclad admiral- 2 ironclads very early is devastating on the coast.

*James Watt boosts the city's local yield, not the regional. The city will show the higher local yield, but others in range will still see the base +3 regional effect. Yes, this also means you can't combine watt and tesla to make a regional effect of +11 on a factory; locally yes, but regionally it will still only be +7. On the upside, it does give building factories some marginal benefit.

I'm really not sure why they let the mausoleum apply to engineers, since it's a balance nightmare.

 

[Tech Osen]

Some of the abilities of admirals and engineers make me wonder if they actually double when used twice with the Masoleum.
Like the 50% bonus to flanking or the boost to raiders production. Anyone ever bothered to look into that?

 

[Sostratus]

Like the 50% bonus to flanking or the boost to raiders production. Anyone ever bothered to look into that?

I know for a fact that the spaceship part guy that affords +100% production indeed increases his effect. I believe raiders production also stacks.
I also know that the appeal boosters ("+2 appeal to all tiles in this city") do not stack with themselves, although they stack with each other. My plans to create the uber resort city around ha long bay were foiled once!
It's the difference between coding something as
NewModifier=CurrentModifier + GreatPersonBoost (stacks with itself)
and something like
Modifier=(1 or 0)*ModifierA+(1 or 0)*ModifierB+...(1 or 0)*GreatPersonBoost
where activating the great person enables the modifier in question and sets coefficient to 1.

The sad part is we don't even know what is intended behavior; I would have thought they would have checked before releasing the mausoleum, but I get that civ is a huge game and thus a QA nightmare.

Oh: James Watt is coded as a local only bonus, he doesn't apply at all to magnus aura stacking. Which is sad because that would be so awesome. Tesla is coded as both a local and regional bonus so it does apply.

 

[Tech Osen]

Thanks, typical though, I figured the appeal guys would work just fine.

Tis a bit weird that an ancient wonder can be such a boost to the space race.