Great People

[dutchfire]

Currently we're 4 turns away from getting a Great Person in NoneOfTheAbove. There's a 60% for a Great Scientist, and a 40% chance for a Great Prophet. If we get a GS, I suggest building an acadamy in Equus Aurum or maybe even better lightbulbing (a part of) Education.
If we get a GP I suggest joining it to Equus Aurum or Ainu, both great potential commerce sites.

I think our next great person should be generated in Paris. It has a lot of surplus food, and can run a lot of specialists. We could try getting a Great Merchant there, and sending him over by caravel to the new world for thousands of .

 

[grant2004]

I'd say it's best to build the academy with the great scientist, EA will produce a lot of science during the course of the game, and a 50% bonus on that should be a lot of beakers over the long term.

As for the GP from Paris, I'm very interested in the great merchant idea, if we could increase our gold supply it would allow us more time to develop with our high maintenance costs.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Bring the Prophet to Equus Aurum, but found the Shrine there instead. Lord knows we need culture and money...

 

[ordinaryguy]

Bring the Prophet to Equus Aurum, but found the Shrine there instead. Lord knows we need culture and money...

The shrine has already been founded long time ago

 

[Ranbir]

I'm for the Academy.

 

[GeorgeOP]

The Academy is almost always better than the lightbulb. The lightbulb is like the "one lump sum instead of annuity payment" commercials seen in the states. Sure, you get some now, but you'd get a lot more if you just take the little bit at a time for a long time.

 

[dutchfire]

That's certainly true, but on the other hand getting X tech faster will improve your current economy, leading to you getting Y tech faster, improving your economy more etc... Compound interest really.

 

[DaveShack]

Lightbulbing is especially important when it gives access to a "first" tech like Liberalism. Then you get two techs for the price of one lightbulb. Of course it's hard to tell if we're close to being first, or if some civ from another continent is ahead.

I usually build academies with Scientists, except for the special case of getting double benefit from a "first" tech.

 

[Provolution]

There is also the "far advance tech", where you get a technology, for example machinery, which is worth much more than comparable techs. With machinery, you can trade your way to get all techs, for example.

 

[grant2004]

Good point, I'd like to know which tech this scientist would lightbulb. Does anyone know that for certain?

 

[dutchfire]

I do

Writing //Check
Mathematics //Check
Scientific Method //Out Of Reach
Physics //Out Of Reach
Education//First
Printing Press //Check
Fiber Optics //Out Of Reach
Computers //Out Of Reach
The Wheel //Check
Philosophy//Second
Chemistry //Out Of Reach
Fission //Out Of Reach
Fusion //Out Of Reach
Optics//Possible
Paper //Check
Astronomy //Out Of Reach

 

[DaveShack]

Next question, do we know how many beakers a lightbulb will give? It would give only partial progress on some techs.

 

[Provolution]

Yes, we need to get the exact number, so we can make an informed judgement.
Also, a great person in a city as a specialist, can be key in bringing up a more peripheral city.

 

[dutchfire]

Next question, do we know how many beakers a lightbulb will give? It would give only partial progress on some techs.

I guess that it will be partial, don't know exactly how many beakers, that depends on the total number of citizens in our empire, map size and difficulty level.

Yes, we need to get the exact number, so we can make an informed judgement.
Also, a great person in a city as a specialist, can be key in bringing up a more peripheral city.

I think it will bulb about 2/3 of the tech, but that's only a guess. Acadamy is almost always better than specialist.

 

[Provolution]

I agree on academy is better, in all circumstances, and I only use great people as specialists when they are prophets and so on.

I still think we should consider the technology boost. Education will manage to lift our empire up on a much bigger scale than what a small academy can do.

I also see that the revolution I advocate for will solve many of these issues, and the increased worker capacity can be used to chop trees to rush bigger projects like wonders coming from education and so on as well as universities.

I may also argue for rusing Optics, in order to get to know which other civs out there we can do trades with. Again, the trade with the Germans include their Confucianism loyalty, which means our back will be safe as we check out new civs overseas.

 

[dutchfire]

It's a great Scientist, he'll bulb about 1700 beakers into Education IIRC.
So, what do we do with him?

 

[Provolution]

See how many beakers we need for A) Education and B) Optics.

And we should possibly go for the one closer / less than 700 beakers, in order to get the fruits of that tech into the game asap.

 

[fed1943]

Build the Academy in EA.

Still plenty of turns to surpass the beakers from lighbulb.

Best regards,

 

[Provolution]

The lined up technology is Education with 1779 beakers. I think we go with this one, as the many universities built much sooner than later, will allow us more beakers than a single academy can produce in some eons.

This is economics of scale, more units so to speak.

 

[ordinaryguy]

I usually build the academy, but light bulbing education is an interesting idea. However, it would only be better than the academy if we have quite some cities with high beakers output to make full use of the research bonus. Otherwise, the academy would be better overall.