Placing a Great Person on a poor tile?

[snoochems]

I have just watched the Ustream video of 2K_Greg getting whipped by the Nappy.

During the play, Greg received a great person (scientist i think). He said it will give +5 science on any tile. He chose to place it on a tile that was weak. I do not understand this thinking.

Wouldn't you want to add it to a tile that was already strong? A tile that you already would want to work in almost all situations?

Is there something I've missed regarding this game concept?

 

[rastak]

I have just watched the Ustream video of 2K_Greg getting whipped by the Nappy.

During the play, Greg received a great person (scientist i think). He said it will give +5 science on any tile. He chose to place it on a tile that was weak. I do not understand this thinking.

Wouldn't you want to add it to a tile that was already strong? A tile that you already would want to work in almost all situations?

Is there something I've missed regarding this game concept?

I guess it wipes out the rest of the tile....not sure.

 

[Earthling]

It removes other improvements. And especially nearby he had farms giving +2 or +3 food or something, so getting rid of a farm wasn't worth it.

In general I have no clue how the balance of various uses of great people will be, building improvements instead of city buildings is interesting though.

 

[snoochems]

It removes other improvements.

Serious? Sif not put them on one of those many Sahara tiles then...

 

[Earthling]

Yes I think it was pretty clear it would remove those farms if placed on any of them, even said "-2 food" or something under "build academy." I couldn't verify if it goes for every single improvement in the game but I'd expect it would be similar for most if not all, and about what was on that stream that's what we saw.

 

[2K Greg]

Yep, it's an improvement, so it would wipe out whatever is already there. What I was mainly looking for was a tile that I had build a farm on that wasn't adjacent to a river.

 

[PawelS]

You will be very unlucky if you place one of them on an undiscovered strategic resource

 

[homan1983]

I think you guys are reading way too much into Greg's strategies. He's certainly not a ciV guru. In fact watching the stream, having never played civ 5 even i cringed when his scout moved past the ruins (goody guy) before the guy next to him mentioned it.

Also several times he would move his warrior on a hill ending its turn during exploration.
Furthermore when the barbarian camps were discovered he didn't beeline to them with nearby units to capitalize the German bonus and he mentioned he's never played Germans before which kinda demonstrates the casual level of his experience.

[Edit: no disrespect meant, i guess it kind of sounds rude reading it but my point is that he's a PR guy not a balance tester or game designer.]

All in all it was a very informative and incredibly interesting stream but I would wait and try the game.

 

[rastak]

I think you guys are reading way too much into Greg's strategies. He's certainly not a ciV guru. In fact watching the stream, having never played civ 5 even i cringed when his scout moved past the ruins (goody guy) before the guy next to him mentioned it.

Also several times he would move his warrior on a hill ending its turn during exploration.
Furthermore when the barbarian camps were discovered he didn't beeline to them with nearby units to capitalize the German bonus and he mentioned he's never played Germans before which kinda demonstrates the casual level of his experience.

All in all it was a very informative and incredibly interesting stream but I would wait and try the game.

Ecspecially since he wasn't distracted......

 

[DalekDavros]

Also several times he would move his warrior on a hill ending its turn during exploration.

Well, this is often a good thing due to the increased sight range on hills. Of course, better yet is to plan things so that the last movement point is the one that gets you on the hill.

 

[2K Greg]

I have played a lot of Civ V, but doing the broadcast at the same time is surprisingly distracting! I wasn't taking any time to really think about any of my moves because it would be boring to sit there watching me think about each and every decision like I do when I play normally.

 

[homan1983]

That actually makes a lot of sense considering you did fairly well in an immortal level.

I have one question that keeps pestering me; may I ask what kind of empire size I should expect to have by the medieval era?

I noticed you had 5 cities as Japan and I personally like to have more cities to control - the feel of having an empire. What really stuck in my mind was that you went down the liberty social policies tree which is built for expansion.

Does this mean a civ without liberty would have even less cities? Or is the small size mainly due to the difficulty level and what I imagine was a long drawn-out war with the french in the period before the save-game.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

You will be very unlucky if you place one of them on an undiscovered strategic resource

Yep, guess you'd have to tear it down and build the mine or whatever. Oh well. You got the benefits of the GP improvement while it lasted.

 

[Zhahz]

During the play, Greg received a great person (scientist i think). He said it will give +5 science on any tile. He chose to place it on a tile that was weak. I do not understand this thinking.

Looked like it was +5 science, -2 food (~31 minute mark in the video, had to double check ), which was why he wanted to put it on a lower yield tile. And yeah, it's like a tile improvement so you wouldn't want to wipe out a high yield tile, IMO.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Looked like it was +5 science, -2 food (~31 minute mark in the video, had to double check ), which was why he wanted to put it on a lower yield tile. And yeah, it's like a tile improvement so you wouldn't want to wipe out a high yield tile, IMO.

-2 food is due to removal of Farm.
If it would be placed near the river, where farm gives +1 food after some tech, that would be -3.

 

[Zhahz]

-2 food is due to removal of Farm.
If it would be placed near the river, where farm gives +1 food after some tech, that would be -3.

Ah, that's not so bad then. The tile wouldn't be totally devoid of food with the science improvement.

 

[homan1983]

Does anyone else think this is quite a small bonus?

A normal tile improvement will give a 2-3 bonus itself, so the net bonus of this ability is 2 or max 3 extra yield.

This seems paltry compared to civ 4 (which gave the city I think +1hammer +6 science).

Whats more, you have to have a citizen working the tile (hence feeding it) whereas in civ4 the super citizen didnt need to be fed or use a population from the city to work.

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Does anyone else think this is quite a small bonus?

Yeah I thought that too. Compared to a 50% bonus to science in the city (for an academy). However... I think (from what I've seen and heard) that GP's will pop more often in V. Just a guess though.

 

[bhavv]

I really dislike the idea of placing GP improvements when you might get a resource on that tile later on :x

 

[Churchdown Yank]

I really dislike the idea of placing GP improvements when you might get a resource on that tile later on :x

That's a good point I hadn't thought of. You're right - that would suck. Especially since the later revealed resources (uranium, oil, etc.) tend to appear on low yield tiles.