great people of early eras discarded too often?

[king of nowhere]

I see very few great people of eras earlier than renaissance/industrial. the reason is that it takes one single civilization beelining one single tech or civic, and all great people of earlier eras are discarded. As a result, after the first great people (from ancient era, by default) is earned, the next one is already from the renaissance. the middle age is skipped entirely. I don't think I've ever seen a middle age great person (non prophet) being earned in a deity game.
I would like to dally with those early great people. There is also the fact that great people are limited, and every one discarded is one less to use in the game. anyone else would like to see a fix to this?

 

[Amrunril]

This is definitely an issue. I'm not sure one way or the other whether one civ is actually enough to advance the great person eras, but there are a couple of other reasons for things to move too fast. First, both the tech tree and the civics tree have eras attached to them, and the game seems to use the higher of the two (this can contribute to a related late-game issue where the game completely runs out of great people, as culture-focused civs rush to information era civics without necessarily getting close to winning the game). Second, the AI's difficulty bonuses are incredibly front loaded, leading it to rush through the first few eras and then stagnate in the mid to late game.

I will note that, although I do think the game's pacing should shift to support more early game great people, I don't think discarding some is inherently problematic. I think an ideal state would be if the game had 5-10 great people per class per era, of whom you'd expect to see 3 or 4 in any given game.

 

[joncnunn]

It's much more of a problem on high difficulty levels where AI gets massive discounts to both. With the current patch it's mostly on the civic tree side; that tree has far more dead end civics and consequently it can take very few civics to cross three or four eras.

 

[Kyro]

I've been roasting this since day one. Great People should not be obsolete by eras or any reason for that matter. It makes it too Luck Based and punishes faster progression which is contradictory to victory conditions.

Guess what it's not just the Eras that destroy great people. The game physically limits the number of Great Person types from respective eras through unknown means and that methodology takes priority over pace of era progression.

As evidence I tripled all Tech and Civic costs and Classical/Medieval Great People still get destroyed way before the eras are even over. (No they weren't all claimed they were removed)

 

[Victoria]

Yep, although Rushing apprenticeship yourself does not help. If you try and grow the eras steadily it helps a bit but on high levels you are just going to miss out on a lot period.

 

[Hrothbern]

Perhaps an open door, but:
At Prince or lower, IF you are the leading Civ, you can get a lot of GP's if your rate of GP points to Civ-Tech points is high. Divine Spark, the Lavra of Peter, Oracle, NO or little build up of CS type bonusses of Civ-Tech City States, NO or only the first building on all your Civ-Tech districts, etc.

At Deity, the AI's just rush forward indeed.
Somewhere was said that the progression of the Era for the Great Persons is determined by the average Era all players have.
Can someone confirm that ?

It gives at least, besides the insight, some means to influence it. For example leaving one (lousy) city for a Civ you could eliminate. Aiming your expansion first at the most developed Civ.
(I know... easier said than done.... I am at Deity so far struggling until at least mid game)

But all in all I do agree with the OP.

I wonder.
With World Wonders we have the same issue at Deity. You can forget Stonehenge, Oracle, Pyramids and only later you have a chance.
Knowing that the amount of World Wonders is not adapted to the amount of players....

Why not increase the amount of World Wonders and Great Persons with the amount of players ?

EDIT
For the GP's there should then be added a minimum amount of GP's per Era rewarded BEFORE it moves on to the next Era.

 

[king of nowhere]

Maybe the amount of great person is increased with the amount of players, but so is the chance that one of those players will beeline sommething and cause all GP too be discarded.

 

[Calyxx]

I think one of the root causes of this is that the tech and civic costs are simply too low across the board - advancing in eras is easier than getting great people, building stuff, or moving the military. If these costs were increased, it might go a long way towards ameliorating this problem.

 

[Hrothbern]

Maybe the amount of great person is increased with the amount of players, but so is the chance that one of those players will beeline sommething and cause all GP too be discarded.

agree with you

that's why I made the EDIT

If there is a minimum of GP's that have to be earned before the next Era comes, and that minimum is adapted to the number of players, you have a more fair chance.

 

[king of nowhere]

I think one of the root causes of this is that the tech and civic costs are simply too low across the board - advancing in eras is easier than getting great people, building stuff, or moving the military. If these costs were increased, it might go a long way towards ameliorating this problem.

oh yeah, there's another thing I think is skewed. I can't build half the things I research because production is so slow compared to research. I can never build everything I want to build before the information age. And that's playing peaceful: if I even have to make units, I may as well not make any district at all until almost the industrial era. the bigger the empire, the worst that is, because research is faster, but production is more expensive. I figure they had some important balancing reason to make everything cost more the more you build, but i really dislike the mechanic.

 

[Victoria]

Can someone confirm that ?

I have seen similar but as there is nowhere I can actually find what the average is I struggle with what that period is.

I do like the idea of having a couple of low tech civs left and wondering why it has not been mentioned before. Sometime we miss the obvious I guess

 

[Orange1861]

I think there needs to be more actual techs and civics and then increase the time to research all techs by 20-40%. Then reduce eurakas by 10% and then reduce costs to produce units by 15-25%. This would greatly balance the game.

 

[nzcamel]

oh yeah, there's another thing I think is skewed. I can't build half the things I research because production is so slow compared to research. I can never build everything I want to build before the information age. And that's playing peaceful: if I even have to make units, I may as well not make any district at all until almost the industrial era. the bigger the empire, the worst that is, because research is faster, but production is more expensive. I figure they had some important balancing reason to make everything cost more the more you build, but i really dislike the mechanic.

I think you'll find that is deliberate to give you tough choices to make

 

[MadDjinn]

Yes, GP progression is based up eras and averages. Ofc, the average era is the part to figure out. I can't remember specifically, but I believe it's skewed towards a higher end average, where 3/8 civs could easily force the average higher than the other 5/8 civs are. Or some such form. So leaving 1-2 low tech AIs around won't help. You can see this by being the low tech civ yourself.

Ofc, the religious path (5/8 civ) has a super fast civic side run into the renaissance.

Very likely, a change to the choice of average would help. The number of gp per era could always get higher, but expectations of a super slow pace generating masses of GPs is also not desirable for gameplay. People aren't great if you have a stack of them running around.

So it really comes down to adjusting the tech and civic trees to reduce multi-era beelines (my mod slows that side down already) as well as trimming up the eureka %value and otherwise reducing speed of early game tech and civics.

My personal choice would also be to remove GP points from districts and buildings, aside from unique ones, and add GP points to working specialists.

 

[kaspergm]

There seems to be a bug (since latest versions?) where the game skips an era too far when selecting great persons. For instance in my latest number of games, I have had the case where all civs are in industrial era (or earlier), I recruit a renaissance GP, and the next one on offer comes from modern era. That makes zero sense. It simply skips entire industrial era rooster of industrial GPs.

 

[craney1987]

could they avoid this by when the game wants to move forward eras, allocating out remaining GP to the highest rated civs per class. Ie. Great scientists go to the civ with most science per turn, engineers to the civ with the highest average production, merchant gpt. If there's more than one person left for a category then they go to the next highest rated etc.
also if a civ has progressed past that era, it isn't considered for the free GP
this way the rest of the field is not adversely affected by civs focussing entirely on culture or entirely on science. It would encourage a more balanced approach to play

 

[MadDjinn]

could they avoid this by when the game wants to move forward eras, allocating out remaining GP to the highest rated civs per class. Ie. Great scientists go to the civ with most science per turn, engineers to the civ with the highest average production, merchant gpt. If there's more than one person left for a category then they go to the next highest rated etc.
also if a civ has progressed past that era, it isn't considered for the free GP
this way the rest of the field is not adversely affected by civs focussing entirely on culture or entirely on science. It would encourage a more balanced approach to play

a more balanced approach is found by making other GPs worth getting; and they are worth getting.

Plus, you can just go take someone's art.

 

[MantaRevan]

I would like to dally with those early great people. There is also the fact that great people are limited, and every one discarded is one less to use in the game. anyone else would like to see a fix to this?

Yes! I Included this in my balance changes wishlist in the suggestion forums. This seems like it is not working as intended, hopefully Firaxis will implement the "average era" fix similar to what we had on the World Congress in civ 5.

 

[kaspergm]

could they avoid this by when the game wants to move forward eras, allocating out remaining GP to the highest rated civs per class. Ie. Great scientists go to the civ with most science per turn, engineers to the civ with the highest average production, merchant gpt. ...

This to me seems to open an extreme range of balance skewing effects, from snowballing by enforcing the player that's already leading in an area, to cheesy micromanagement-tactics, where you'll want to *not* earn a great person the regular way because you know you'll get it for free when era advances.

I think a much better solution would be either to not skip great persons at all - so that you'll have to plogh your way through all renaissance era GPs before industrial ones come up (but this would probably require a greater pool and flexible pool size to both secure variation and account for number of players) - or at least to have average game era, like in Civ5 (seems like the obvious quick-fix).

 

[Victoria]

One thing to note is that on deity you are never going to be anywhere near the opposition in science until you get industrial. If each GP was always given this would allow the AI more eurekas, fine of they reduced the difficulty modifiers perhaps but not currently.