Kael said:
I tend to disagree with this and don't think Arete is underpowered.
Arete:
+20% great person
Cheaper military unit support.
Medium upkeep.
Can buy with cash (which every non-default civic in that column, other than slavery, can do).
Am I missing something? This looks meh for the category, let alone compared to the other religion-specific civs.
GPP is the only "unique" thing about this civic in the column -- and the benefits of GPP is limited by the blowup in great people cost as you get more and more of them.
Religion specific civics:
Slavery: You lose gold purchase, but get "slave" units. Unique and interesting at the very least. Hard to compare, because it is such a strange benefit.
Leaves: Massive happiness and health. I've had an empire built around this civic -- early game size 20 coastal city, kept happy with forests. Forests are currenty the
best production terrain in the game (+3 shields over the base terrain), and with Leaves you get massive happiness from forests as well. Large production-monster cities result.
Order: Competator is "Consumption". About -1/2 happiness per city, +10% military unit production, -10% gold compared to consumption.
Viel: Compared to "no healers" (the other two health civics are rather weak for their cost): +15% gold.
Arete: compared to "caste system", +20% GPP, cheaper military support
vs 1 free specialist and +2 culture per specialist. Or vs the military one: +20% GPP vs -25% culture +15% unit production.
Am I just massively undervalueing GPP? I notice that most of the +GPP civics cost have massive negatives attached to them.
Assuming you do the "GPP contentration" trick, if your GP city generates 10000 GPP (with a base GPP cost of 100) makes 13 great people.
If it generates 20000 GPP you get 19 great people.
Doubling your GPP gives you about 40% more great people because of how their cost grows.