[GS] Great People seem too slow in GS

[rgp151]

I just finished a game with Cree on Immortal where I captured the Oracle early in the game, and I was using Pingala with Grants in another city, and I was using policy cards to generate additional GPPs, yet with all of this most Great People I got (Engineers, Merchants, Scientists) were too late to really be useful.

By the mid game I was generating over 100 Science GPPs, and was way ahead in Engineering and Merchant GPPs as well.

Ones that stand out are:
James Watt: by the time I got him I had already built Ruhr Valley and had factories everywhere they were wanted. Ended up just using him somewhere that I hadn't planned to build a factory just to get the bonus.

Robert Goddard: By the time I got him I had already built 2 Spaceports.

Sergei Korolev: Was irrelevant. By the time I got him I was already on later projects and they were only taking a few turns to complete anyway, given that I had over 200 production in my Spaceport cities and I was really being held back by research (i.e. was waiting on next tech to advance the race, not on completing projects). (But I had over 500 Science per turn).

Wernher von Braun: When I got him I had already launched everything and was just waiting for the Exoplanet Expedition to complete. The helper projects only took 1 turn to complete anyway.

Giovanni de' Medici: Already had Banks in every city.

As for the science GPs, the ones that grant Eureka's mostly came after I already had all of the Eureka's or even all of the techs for the Era. The ones that build stuff came after everything was built out. The Space Race ones were irrelevant as they came too late to matter.

I compare this to Vanilla where this never happened and the GPs were key to the strategy. It seemed very odd. I think I won the Space Race around turn 260, or at least I launched the Exoplanet Expedition by then and no one else was even close.

In Vanilla James Watt was often useful in setting up for Ruhr Valley and I would sometimes get him before researching Industrialization. Same with Isaac Newton, who I often got prior to the ability to build my own Universities.

So what is going on? Why were all the GPs coming so late? How was the ratio between my advancement and GPP generation so off? Given that I was trying to earn and many GPPs as I could, and was using policy cards to advance generation of Science and Engineering GPPs, plus I had the Oracle and Grants, and was generating it seemed like at least 5x more Engineering, Merchant and Science GPPs than any of the AIs, more in some cases, how were they always so far behind? I didn't purchase any GPs except Isaac Newton, as I had just gotten the last GP and someone else was coming up on getting him. I already had Universities when I purchased him, but had a place to use him in a recently acquired city.

I did conquer my neighbor, but left all of the other civs untouched. I had 5 starting cities and then dominated to 10 cities and stayed at that until the late game, when I founded 2 more to get strategic resources in the polar regions.

In Vanilla getting the Space Race GPs was often critical to timely launch, but it seems that in GS they are far, far less relevant and production is higher and research takes longer, plus with the ability to buy the Spaceport...

Is this other people's experience as well?

 

[Linklite]

I think it's the science bug.
Basically, the AI goes crazy for science and kills itself because it doesn't build enough gold producing infrastructure to support itself, so it collapses. While it does start off giving you stiff competition for GP points, it just dies out and you race ahead because it's not keeping up with producing the points to buy the GSs. That means that you're having to scoop up almost all the GSs rather than getting half of them and the other being bought up by rhe AI (whichcwould speed up your progression through the list).

Additionally, they added a fair few GPs with the XPs which means you have to get through more to get to those endgame GPs.

Combine the two and it just takes a lot longer that it used to in order to get to a specific GS. It was paced so that they were really useful - now the pacing is quite off. I quite often get GSs too late to be of optimal use. It's quote common now that if I get a GS that grants a Eureka, I'll have already researched that tech. It rarely happened before.

 

[kaspergm]

I think it's a bit hit-and-miss also depending on map size (smaller maps = fewer civs = GP go slower) and civ selection (some civs will prioritize certain districts, harbors notoriously suffers from this).

I do regularly experience the opposite, i.e. I manage to get the great generals/admirals that give units too early - i.e. getting a free Bombard, a free Battleship, or a free Ironclad an era or even two before they "should" unlock, which allows you to plow through an AI that's fallen behind in science.

 

[rgp151]

Yeah, this was a "small" map with I guess 6 civs. I just don't think such a thing ever happened to me on Vanilla, yet it seems to happen often now. This was more extreme case. It was weird because my GPP generation was the highest I've ever had it, but they all still came too late. I guess my science and culture were just so high I was advancing even faster than the GPPs. I guess ultimately I was much taller than wide, even though I was still fairly wide. Since it was Cree, I had like pop 15 cities really quickly and I think in the end my city with Pingala had 28 pop when the game finished. So maybe that was the issue. Maybe it has to do with the ratio of how tall you are relative to how wide. I think I also had that city-state that gives you population bonuses to science or culture (I forget which), and I had 20 traders and also Research Alliances, but when I looked at the GPPT and was seeing like 150s in Science and 90s in Engineering and 50s or 60s in Merchants, I was a bit blown away that I seemed to be getting everything after it was useful. (of course some stuff is always useful, like Amenities, etc., but...)

 

[UWHabs]

There's also sort of a bug where if you go too fast and start picking from too late an era, the price of the next great people scale up exponentially. So I've seen things because everyone went super aggressive at some of the great people, the cost of the next great person was probably 5x or 10x what it "should" have been. So like a case where the next great scientist needs like 10k points, and once they get claimed, the next one is back to only needing like 2k points so the next 3-4 of them get scooped up on the same turn.