Great Person Idea

I liked it when you could use any GP to make a Golden Age if you wanted to so I was thinking about this for an idea:

Certain Policy Tree's would unlock the ability for certain GPs to initiate Golden Ages.

Piety - Prophets (Allows a use for captured GPs of other religions, makes Piety Tree more viable for Cultural Vic)

Honor - Great Generals + Admirals (Solves the problem of "inland lake Great Admirals")

Rationalism - Great Scientists (Probably never be used but at least you get the option)

Commerce - Great Merchants (could potentially grant you more gold than a trade mission!)

Order - Great Engineers (late in the game I've noticed Great Engineers are pretty useless because all the good wonders have been built.)

Freedom - Great Artists gain + 50% to Golden Age lengths. (Bacon)

What do you guys think?

 

I like it

 

Right now, Freedom is a really good path to go for cultural victories precisely for the GA bonus. Giving each SP a special GA bonus may take too long to rebalance.

I think making any GP trigger GA is a bit unbalanced. I like how they took GA ability from GG; also GA spawn issues will be fixed in the coming patch... thought it seems like it will still spawn based on an algorithm. I just wish they'd let us move the damn GA unit over land so I can use it like we use GGs, and move then to where we need it.

The only thing I want to see is for them to add a free GP as part of the piety finisher

 

I think this might make for a cool mod. I would definitely love to try out an Autocracy game with the Aztecs or the Persians with this in play.

Not sure how well it would work with the main game, though.

 

This would unfortunately throw balance out the window now that they've added the culture boost to the golden age.

I quite like the new system anyway, means you've gotta think about what you're gunna do to get the most out of a Great Person.

 

Yeah, the Great Artist is mega useful because it's the only GP that can create a Golden Age (which now buff culture in addition to other aspects). Before G&K most people considered GAs fairly useless.

I would not be in favor of your change at all. I think the balance we have now with the Great People is fantastic. (Well, Great Admirals might be able to do with some tweaks.)

 

I'm also not in favor of reapportioning the golden age ability to every great person. I am, admittedly, motivated primarily by aesthetic concerns (it feels like they would all be stepping on the great artists' toes) rather than one of balance.

Still, I do like the idea of social policies unlocking new uses (or enhancements) for great people. It seems like a great way to reward the kind of dedication to a specific pre-planned strategy that this game tends to encourage.

 

Um, what?

Players considered vanilla Golden Ages "useless"?

 

No, Great Artists.

 

He meant great artists.

Personally I find this idea (or just the idea of policy-specific bonuses to certain things) pretty neat. I'm not very experienced with the game however, so I don't really know the implications of this.

Edit: Ninjad lol, takes too long to post from my phone.

 

:: shrugs ::

My point still stands. People found vanilla Great Artists "useless"?

I did, until I realized that Landmarks were way more useful than culture bombs.

 

They were relatively useless for non-culture victories. The problem is that every great artist you produce adds to the amount of GPP you need to produce other, far-more-useful great people.

 

See, that's my argument for Great Merchants, but I still wouldn't call them "useless".

"Useless" isn't the same as "less useful".

I can accept that Great Artists aren't as useful/versatile as a Great Engineer or a Great Scientist, but even in non culture victories, a Great Artist Landmark provides culture that can unlock social policies that facilitate other victory conditions.

 

Yes it is, assuming you're trying to win, and you have other options. Suboptimal choices are useless, given that your goal is to achieve victory, and not have a sandbox experience.

And if you do want a sandbox experience, that's fine, more power to you. But when people say something is useless, they're typically taking as axiomatic the fact that a person is trying to win.

So they're not technically "useless" in every sense of the word, but they're a choice you'd never make if you only make correct choices, rendering them functionally useless.

 

Semantics, but I was indeed using hyperbole. Considering that popping one meant you had less opportunities to pop a Scientist or Engineer, which were more useful in almost any circumstance not focused on Culture Victory, popping a Great Artist actually hurt you more than it helped.

OTOH, I happily built the Louve in my last G&K game to pop Golden Ages to support my Domination Victory. I chide at any suggestion that would once again dilute the Great Artist to near-uselessness. And I value that each great person type has a unique role to play, which forces the player to make choices.

I admit the changes to the Great People based on Social Policy choice is an interesting idea. We do basically already have this in game play, however: the lower Social Policies all allow you to purchase a certain great person type with faith. I know I can usually purchase at least a couple of great people using that function in a game. If you want Golden Ages now: go Freedom, buy a Great Artist and pop them for Golden Ages...because that's what they do now.

 

GREAT. ADMIRAL. CANAL. BUILDING. That is all.

 

:: shrugs ::

That's a pretty big if.

I daresay the same argument could be used for the "uselessness" of all Great People in vanilla, if the player has complete knowledge of the game state tree, which is really the only way the player could ONLY make "correct" choices.

Meh. YMMV, I suppose.

 

Fair enough, but really, in vanilla, it becomes apparent to most any player with enough experience that, given a non-cultural victory goal, the added culture of a landmark is basically never worth the opportunity cost. It's not that you can't win if you make them; it's that you'd win faster/more easily if you didn't.

 

:: shrugs ::

Maybe I've become too dependent on certain mid to late game social policies.

 

Not sure about this, as it makes the GA unique(er) than before.
However, it might be cool if certain policies changed the way your GAges worked. E.g. with order, GA production bonus is increased. With Autocracy, there is a persian style combat modifier during GA's. With Freedom, there is a boost in GP production during GA's. This would bias artist heavy civs, but it's not like culture is the easiest/quickest vc atm . It could also possibly be a way to rebalance policies. E.g. piety could give a GA religious boost, but not have one for the currently more powerful rationalism. In case you think GA's would be OP, the current bonuses to production and culture could be reduced unless the correct policy is opened, so only with lots of trees would there be a GA boost, and with no trees there'd be a GA reduction.
Thoughts?