CivGuy61 said:
Hi guys. I'm still new at this game but have so far crushed the AI with space race victories on Noble. My question is I keep reading about growing Great Scientists and Growing Great Enginneers by making two of your civs scientists? Is this true? If so when should I be doing this? I want to build a great scient city so I'm sure this would help.
You're on the right track, anyway. It's a bit involved, so stick with me for a minute.
You can take some of the population in a city away from working tiles and assign them as specialists. Initially, the only specialist type available is the 'citizen', which just provides one hammer and is generally worthless. Certain buildings and civics will allow you to assign more powerful specialist types that produce better benefits. For instance, a Library in the city allows you to have up to 2 Scientist specialists, each of which generates beakers (research points) for your civilization. A Forge allows one Engineer, who generates hammers (production) in the town, etc.
In addition, some of the civics alter the picture. Representation makes all specialists generate additional beakers. Caste System allows an infinte number of Artists, Scientists, and Merchants, regardless of what buildings are present in the city.
So what does this have to do with Great People? Specialists also generate 3 Great People Points (GPP) per turn. When you reach a certain threshold in the city, a Great Person will be born there. The
type of Great Person is determined by what type of Great People Points have accumulated. If you've been running only Scientists in the city, you'll get a Great Scientist. If you've run a mix of Priests and Artists, there will be a random chance for one of those two types.
Note also that World Wonders and National Wonders also produce GPP - the description of the wonder will tell you what type. You can also mouse-over the GPP bar in the city screen (near the lower-right corner) and it will show you the current probablilty of each different type of GP. Certain Wonders also create one or more specialists (e.g. the Great Library makes two extra Scientists in that city)
So...to finally answer your question: When people talk about 'farming' a certin type of GP, they are mostly referring to either (1) building Wonders which provide a certain flavor of GPP all in the same city (e.g. Great Wall, Pyramids, Hanging Garden all make Engineer points), (2) running a bunch of specialists in a city to produce a GP of a specific type (e.g. running a bunch of Artists in one city to increase the chance of popping a GA), or (3) some combination of 1 & 2.
A specific example would be creating a city with a Library and the Great Library WW. You could run 2 Scientists (from the Library) plus the 2 free ones from the GL, and have 4 Scientists, generating 12 GPP per turn, plus two more from the GL itself. On Normal speed, that would create a Great Scientist in 8 turns (if it's your first GP).
Running a lot of specialists requires extra food (remember, those guys are just like regular population - they eat 2 food each), so a GP-farm is generally going to have a lot of high-food tiles, and a lot of farms.
