In what situations would you want to settle a great person in a city? It seems like thats just a generally bad option relative the others.
Great General: Settling these as military instructors in your best production/military cities makes a lot of sense. In fact, until Military Science comes along and opens up Military Academies, it's the best use of a GG once you have your super-medic. Yes, you can use GGs for super-units, but having several units with an extra promotion out of the gate (
without having to change civics) is much more useful than having one or two units with 3 or 4 promotions--especially since there's still a very good chance that you could use them. Bonus: when you run Representation, those settled GGs contribute 3
each.
Great Prophet: Settling a GP is definitely an option. Their best use is building shrines, but if you don't have a holy city and aren't likely to acquire one, you don't need him for that. Most of the techs they'll lightbulb are either cheap (Meditation, Monotheism) or relatively useless (Divine Right); Theology is a definite exception, though. Settling him provides a boost in both
and
, which can make a huge difference, especially in the early game. Building Stonehenge and/or playing as Egypt will often generate an early GProphet, and settling him will often be your best use for him--you could save him to build a shrine or to lightbulb Theology, but that's a lot of turns to keep a GP sitting around when he could be doing something useful, like boosting your research slider thanks to that extra income.
Great Merchant: Lightbulbing, trade missions, and founding a corporation are all better uses of a GM, but if you have a strong Wall Street city then settling a GM there can be very powerful--not only for the extra
, but also for the +1
. I sometimes do this if I have a poorly-placed shrine city (for a very popular religion) that's short on food and good cottage tiles, especially if the shrine income justifies making it my Wall Street city.
Great Scientist: If you happen to earn a very early GS, long before he can lightbulb anything useful and expensive, you'll probably get more use out of him by settling him. It might be tempting to build an Academy instead, but early in the game you'll probably get a bigger boost from a settled GS than from an Academy. Of course, over time that will gradually inverse; also, you might prefer to save the GS until he can lightbulb something, even if it's a few (or several) dozen turns away.
Great Artist: Unless you're playing for a cultural victory, GAs are relatively useless, especially compared to the other Great People. Saving them to start or help start a Golden Age is usually the best use for them. However, if you have a city under cultural pressure and don't want to fight a war to correct the issue, settling a GA there is better than culture-bombing it, as the GA provides constant +12
that can gradually turn tiles your way. A culture bomb may gain you more tiles immediately, but its effects are one-time only and will diminish over time.
Great Engineer: For most of the game, you're better off using these extremely-valuable and hard-to-come-by Great People to rush wonders. They also lightbulb some extremely useful techs. Late in the game, however, their usefulness diminishes--in which case, settling them in your best production cities (Ironworks, HE) for the extra hammers is the best use of them.
Great Spy: If you're in need of espionage, building Scotland Yard in a good specialist city, followed by building all the espionage boosters there and running spy specialists, will yield a lot of
. If you generate any more GSpies after building SY, settle them in this city. If you build the Great Wall and generate a GSpy very early on, you may want to settle him for the huge early-game
boost; you'll be generating 16
when most civs are only managing 4 (the
boost that early in the game is nothing to sneeze at either). You'll have to weigh the benefits of that against running an infiltration mission followed by tech-stealing. Usually settling is better if you have several neighbours, as you'll likely be able to achieve tech parity through careful tech trading.