Ideas On Great Persons

Cool wonder and all, but it doesn't show up until the very dead end of the game, and how often do you actually get there to see it? :lol:

I mean: Ascension Gate is a World Wonder (GreatWonder as civilopedia sais, iirc) and not a Project, so it can be rushed now, and not the rush project would affect it.
Also, the SpaceShip consists of many parts, so hurrying 1 or 2 parts of it would not outballance the game, imho. So maybe we could give a second thought to the "hurry project" idea.
 
Actually since I mostly play with Mastery Victory, I get to the end of the game almost every time. You could be surprised how hard it gets sometimes to win a Mastery Victory. You could be the score leader until 3 turns before the end and then AI launches a spaceships or gets 1 or 2 more Legendary Cities and you lose. Happened to me sometimes.
 
Also, the SpaceShip consists of many parts, so hurrying 1 or 2 parts of it would not outballance the game, imho. So maybe we could give a second thought to the "hurry project" idea.

What about the many projects from earlier eras? The ones that can push a Civ ahead because of the civ-wide boosts they give, especially if they get more than one?


45°38'N-13°47'E;13213359 said:
Actually since I mostly play with Mastery Victory, I get to the end of the game almost every time. You could be surprised how hard it gets sometimes to win a Mastery Victory. You could be the score leader until 3 turns before the end and then AI launches a spaceships or gets 1 or 2 more Legendary Cities and you lose. Happened to me sometimes.

I usually get bored and quit before then, or as with my previous game: Encounter a bug that prevents me from continuing. Usually the former. :blush:

I'd imagine that if AND did not have some of the Automations it has - especially Automate Airstrike - I'd find the Modern and Transhuman unbearable for my style of play. Especially when you consider just how massive a Stealth Bomber's range is even when unpromoted :crazyeye:
Having to tell 60+ jets and 40 bombers what to do and exactly when to do it every turn for the next 300 ~ 400 turns? Yeah, right :lol: I don't have that sort of patience.

Most of my aircraft tend to be on automation, except for a few bombers when I need precision attacks or my aircraft carriers, which for some odd reason don't seem to do anything when they're idle or blockading? Maybe they do, but in my current game I had a stealth and modern fighter both on a supercarrier but they just sat there idle while the carrier blockaded but never attacked despite being set to Automate Airstrike.
 
The other thing about Academies is that building new ones is generally not a good idea after the Renaissance. Here's what happened in a recent game: I could use a Great Scientist to either build an Academy in the best city available that would produce 65 beakers/turn, or have it discover Printing Press at a cost of 45405 beakers. This is a slightly older version, so I know the cost of Renaissance techs has come down, but in this case, it would take almost 700 turns to give the same beaker count. I would probably be close to Computers by that point, so I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to build an Academy unless we give it some other bonus.
 
I agree with that, Academies are wastefull in games that I play.
I wonder if they could have the ability to grow somehow in usefulness over the eras. Maybe gain one new additional feature each era for example or be able to spawn a new unit or building that would be unique?
 
I have one last idea about Great Persons. This is something that I've had in my head for a long time. I'll spell out what I am trying to accomplish and how I think we can go about implementing it.

Goal: Make the Shrines able to become Great Wonders again.

Right now, the Shrines act like Great Wonders because only one of each can be built, but they are not treated as Wonders by the game code. I'm pretty sure the main reason that they are NOT currently treated as Wonders is to avoid being "locked out" of them as long as wonder limits are active. This is why I wanted to apply the +1 Wonder Capacity ability to all the Shrines. If the Shrines were Wonders, they would not count against Wonder Capacity once they were built, but you would still be unable to build them if the city was already at its wonder limit. So there is one last hurdle to clear.

Observation: Certain Wonders (mainly the Corporations, but also Heroic Epic, National Epic, Ironworks, Pont du Gard, National Courier Service, Secret Army Base, Central Bank, and Wall Street) can be built by a Great Person directly. With the exception of using a Great Engineer on Pont du Gard (which simply feels like an extension of using a Great Engineer's ability to rush any building), this seems like a waste of a Great Person, when you could build said building in a few turns the hard way.

So, this leads to an idea: What if Great Persons using their Build ability ignored Wonder Limits? I don't know if this is even possible (I suspect building legality is only checked at the beginning of turns). I don't think this would be very game-breaking since there are only a few wonders that can be built this way, and we could remove any that were causing a major problem. Secret Army Base is probably the only one I can see that would be very powerful.

Alternatively: What if Shrines could be built regardless of Wonder Limits? I think this could be done with a boolean tag in the building XML.
 
I think that Shrines should simply not be considered Wonders, and not count against the Wonder limit.
Mainly because the only way to build a Shrine is to have a religion's holy city and a Greap Priest.
A non-shrine Wonder can be built just by applying enough hammers to it, the Great Person boost is optional.
 
Alternatively: What if Shrines could be built regardless of Wonder Limits? I think this could be done with a boolean tag in the building XML.

Mmm, I thought they could already, but I have to check.
Moreover, I'm not sure how WonderCapacity could react to your idea, but I think you should build the increasing wonder BEFORE reaching the limit. But again, I need to test. :)
 
In the interest of sharing the wealth of tricks overall, I'd like to move a couple of Great Engineers around on the tech tree.

Architecture to Clockworks
Architecture is one of the techs in the top 20% with a trick count of 6 (Stonemason, Masons Guild, Alhambra, Leaning Tower, Notre Dame, Great Engineer) and can easily spare one of those tricks. Clockworks is a 2-trick tech (Clocktower and Goldsmiths Guild) and I would love to give it something else. I really like Clockworks as a tech but it's hard to think of anything else it could get.

Also, having a Great Engineer show up exactly when a Wonder becomes available is probably stronger than it should be. I suspect this is one reason why the only Great Engineer on the BTS tech tree doesn't show up until almost the end of the game; all the Wonders are probably already built.

Fusion to Megastructure Engineering
One thing that we haven't done up to now is move any of the original BTS Great Persons away from their original techs. We have added a lot of GP's but left the original ones where they are. I'm about to move the original Great Scientist from Physics to Chemistry to get Chem up to the 2-trick threshold, so I think we can move this one as well.

Fusion is one of three techs with a double-digit trick count, thanks to all the fusion ships. Most of them require another technology but Fusion is not a prerequisite for those other techs, so it counts as a major trick for both. I think it's terrible for one tech to have so many tricks, so I think this is a very easy switch to make.
 
That sounds sensible.
 
I'd like to do a few more Great Person shifts to help balance out the trick counts between techs. I think 4-5 tricks per technology is the sweet spot where it feels like getting a tech is a real achievement. 6 or more tricks is the top 20% of all techs, and I'd like to bring them down if it's plausible. Some techs are always going to have more tricks; Masonry is going to be required for a lot of Wonders because it represents a civilization's ability to build ANYTHING large, while Fusion is going to be a requirement for all the Fusion ships as well as Fusion Power Plant/Power Receiver. Great Person shifts are really easy to do and would help balance things.

Great Spy: Optics to Cartography
Optics has a trick count of 7.5. It has a Great Spy, Caravels, Marco Polo's Embassy, Glassblowers' Guild, Whaling Boats, +1 sight over water, Sentry I promotion, and the later units Brigantine and Sloop (both require Metallurgy which is Renaissance Era but not on Optics' path). This is a lot for any one tech. Cartography only has Map Centering, Map Trading, which is only with other civilizations that have Cartography, and the "Fast Move Peaks" ability, which is so unlikely to make a difference in actual gameplay that I'm just going to cut it completely. That reduces Cartography to 2 tricks and I think the Great Spy would really help it out.

Great Spy: Communism to Guerrilla Warfare
Communism has a trick count of 6, since it has Planned/Planning Office, Intelligence Agency, Kremlin, and Permanent Alliances plus the Great Spy. Guerrilla Warfare is a tough tech to find things for; I'm fairly sure old versions of RoM had Guerrilla units here, but Hidden Nationality is so problematic that I don't want to go back down that route. I specifically created the National Redoubt to keep GW viable. If GW is not going to feel tacked on, it needs more help.

Great Diplomat: Imperialism to Propaganda
Imperialism started out with just two Wonder tricks in Crystal Palace and Reichstag. Since I added it, we have done a lot more with it; giving it the Redevelopment civic, Safari Hunters, and a Great Diplomat. That gives it a current count of 6. Propaganda has a trick count of 3 (Advertising Agency, Propaganda Net, Cult of Personality) and I think it could benefit more from having the Diplomat.
 
Well, I know it's traditional to give out a Great Spy from Communism, but I don't disagree with any of your ideas.
 
Well, I know it's traditional to give out a Great Spy from Communism, but I don't disagree with any of your ideas.

They were moved in my last build. We already broke the traditional assignments when I moved the Great Scientist at Physics to Chemistry and the Great Engineer at Fusion to Megastructure Engineering. I definitely needed to get Chemistry above the two-trick threshold, and Fusion had (and still has) a lot of stuff.
 
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