Start game with 1 great person, which kind and what to do?

[civvver]

Ok so you are cheating. Let's just say like you're playing two difficulties over your usual level and as a handicap you get to choose 1 free great person at turn 1. What do you choose and what do you do with that gp?

I think I probably choose a scientist and settle them. I play with mods all the time so I don't remember what they give in normal bts but it's 6 beakers a turn? Whatever it is, it probably doubles your science for the first ~30 turns or so.

Other choice would probably be a great engineer and settle if I saw stone in my city radius and then rush masonry and build pyramids, or if no stone rush masonry and build pyramids with the great engineer since without stone I won't have enough production to get.

A person to pop tech (scientist or engineer usually) is really useful too, but early they aren't worth that much tech until you research some stuff to get to a harder one, and then you lose all that early game advantage. Like a scientist teching alphabet or an engineer getting metal casting is nice but many turns later.

 

[Windsor]

GE to rush a wonder seems like the obvious choice. Settled GS is 6 science and a hammer, so basically a free gems mine. That's great, but not amazing.

edit: Great Artist to really fudge with a neighbor seems like it could be fun too.

 

[Lexicus]

Would a settled Great Merchant be very strong?

 

[InovA]

Great Scientist for the Academy in your capital or the city you think you'll have the highest science in. The exception would be if you have enough room to build a large empire (16+ cities) without too much stress, because in this case your economy/tech is more reliant on all the cities revenue rather than a few strong ones.

Great Scientist/Prophet to bulb would still be good. If you plan on spreading a religion where you own the holy city, build the Holy Temple in it with the Great Prophet.

Great Engineer to speed up a wonder like the Pyramids can be good, but you'd need a very fast Forge or Caste System for that. For any other wonders, I'd rather just properly chop/whip for them and use the GE for bulbing.

Settling GPs is pretty bad overall.

EDIT: I misread the title and went from there. Still, an Academy in the capital will start to outpace a great scientist as soon as you get at least 3 commerce being worked by other tiles. The settled GS generates +6/t while an academy boosts 50%. Your palace generates 8 along with 1 from the city tile, so once it hits at least 12 you'll generate 18 no matter which choice of the two you made. After 14, 21 Academy, 20 Settled GS. So unless the +1 from the GS is worth it to you early on for some sort of rush or game among 2 - 4 civs, Academy outscales it hardddd as you start to develop towns and move to Bureaucracy.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Anything is good since you can trigger a golden age.

But here's my list in no particular order

• GS- Academy >>> settled. But save for bulb IMO for maximum fun. Use your normal GS for academy. Imagine getting Writing and then immediately Alpha bulb in 3000bc. Or Math bulb. Wait better yet, save for Engineering bulb strat (you only need 2 more GS for this). Academy is the most efficient choice though. Settled is good if you plan on going Mids
• GM- settled gets food for fast regrow and whip while allowing city to work commerce or hammer heavy tiles. If you can settle capital on sugar and get another extra food, this combo would be nuts. Early gold collection while 100% research allows more REX or troops while still teching fast. Could save for trade mission after ToA built for a quick one time boost but that's less efficient IMO. Settled is the tits though even if you have 2 food sources. That just means you can food share with multiple cities and capital still has ridic food
• GE- SAVE FOR WONDER RUSH. Any of the big ones. Make sure to assess your situation before picking. Settled is less good but still powerful
• GPr- Settle. The combo of hammers and gold early on are great. Could save for bulbing for tradebait IE CoL or Theology but I don't think that's the better option

• GA- uh... Settle? Well timed golden age? Either will do. Settle gives some gold but really just golden age. I wouldn't pick this one personally

My choice would be based on the map. Like I said if there was a sugar resource near my Capital I might settle that and then plop the great Merchant in for super Food City that's 4 food without working a tile! But if there were stone or marble I might consider an Engineer to wonder rush Mids and go super settled specialist Wonder economy. Or maybe I'd hold off for Great Library. Perhaps I started with a Civ who doesn't have fishing and not near Ocean resources then I might go for the engineering Rush strategy. Too many combinations that are possible to mention here. Point is it's all map dependent which one I pick

 

[lymond]

Golden Age? not very good early

Settling any of them is probably best - Great Prophet very nice for this early. GE I'd rush the mids or GLH, which is best for map, although mids is always good. Ha..Great Artist I just really would not want unless going culture at the start since settling it would pay of from Turn 0, but if I had one I just save it for a much later golden age, although as someone mention an early culture bomb with your first settler could be interesting. Build settler..settle in someone face...bomb.

 

[ztrapon]

Great Engineer no question about it.

Rush Pyramids, get another Great Engineer, and bulb Metal Casting (or other way around).
Then construct a Forge, and work Engineer (for +2 hammers/+3 beakers), get a second GE birth and rush either Hanging Gardens or preferrably Great Library.

 

[Fippy]

I'll settle my Great Engineer on t0.

Me too
Everything comes so much faster with 3 extra hammers (and 3 beakers would also be great).
Turn 9 (or 8 with better city tile) worker, faster settler and so on.
Could research myst / masonry early, to make good use of that prod for something else than warriors while growing.

 

[lymond]

A recent BOTM had a free GE at the start

 

[Windsor]

A recent BOTM had a free GE at the start

Babe of the month?

 

[lymond]

Babe of the month?

lol..BTS Game of the Month..but Babe works too

 

[civvver]

I'm just wondering cus I'm like a prince/king player but dislike how bad the AI is late game so sometimes I like to turn the difficulty up to emperor or immortal but I need to survive early game so I cheat. But I like to have specific cheat rules in place! So I usually gift myself one gp and pick an obviously great start.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Sounds like settling a GE, GM, GPr or GS is the way to go in that case. It's a more natural game than popping wonders or bulbing to gain an advantage.

I personally like GM in your scenario bc early gold is usually the main problem for me and food is king bc you can convert it to anything. But 6 science 1 hammer from GS is pretty massive, too. And extra prod/science from GE is never bad. I just prefer food bc it's more versatile. There's a reason you improve food tiles first and not production.

I also think it's better for improving your game. Having an extra 6 beakers per turn from the start almost makes it too easy IMO.

 

[IIHAAETTEAAHII]

Definitely settling a GE. Three hammers and three beakers right off the bat is just so powerful. Just imagine the impetus it gives to any rush: if you manage to finish your stack at T65, you'd have six extra hammers in the same time frame. And that's not counting the cumulative effects from earlier settlers/workers or the beakers.

 

[ztrapon]

Definitely settling a GE. Three hammers and three beakers right off the bat is just so powerful. Just imagine the impetus it gives to any rush: if you manage to finish your stack at T65, you'd have six extra hammers in the same time frame. And that's not counting the cumulative effects from earlier settlers/workers or the beakers.

I'm trying my best to understand the reasoning behind settling a GE. It's +3 beakers and +3 hammer, that's it. At most you'll rush a neighbor a little faster with the extra hammers, something you're mostly perfectly able to do with or without a free Great Person.

I'm not saying it's bad, but compared to the alternatives? You can rush Pyramids -- a 500 hammer wonder! -- by round 15 or something, and within about 50 rounds have another, even better GE (or sooner than that if you construct a Library). So let's say you get your next GP birth at round 50, for simplicity's sake, here would be the two alternatives:

1) +6 culture, +2 GE points, Representation, either a GS or GE, and arguably the best wonder in game snatched from your rivals.
or
2) 150 hammers and 150 beakers, roughly equivalent to 3 Horse Archers and Polytheism on Normal speed.

I can get more value from a Great Spy stealing some expensive tech, than that.

Cumulative effects are irrelevant as, again, they wrongly assume you either settle GE, or get nothing. And these calculations are all Normal speed - on Epic/Marathon it's skewed even more in favor of Pyramids. (And a Philosophical leader would decrease the relative value from settling even further.)

Am I missing something here?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

It wont help him improve his game to have a free Mids IMO. Having a boost to capital stats helps most in early game but peters out as the game progresses. I thought that was the point of this thread (to help OP get passed the early game). Free Mids is a near game breaker and is a boon through most of the game

 

[Fippy]

It's about evaluating early advantages vs. a complete game
9t worker vs. 15t for example are 6 turns progress that are not possible without such a bonus.
If you are doing nothing but building your worker, every turn speed up is worth 1 full round of your Civ game.

You may think "but not much happens in those first 15 turns anyways?" but waaait, imo those are worth as much as 6t in 1AD, 1000AD and so on. Saying "my settled Engi just got me 6x300 beakers and 200 hammers during those 6 turns" would look more impressive at xxxAD.
If you get there x turns sooner that's exactly what he did thou. And we are not even at rushes yet as mentioned yup, just playing peaceful.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

To ztrapon's point, though, a free Mids blows away any of the other bonuses. Not just from saving hammers not having to actually build it, but also getting another GE that you could settle or rush another wonder. Mids themselves are extremely powerful allowing boosts to just about every approach to the game. Rep for early specialist science, forgo the ugly Monarchy path but still have HerRule and early for growing cottages / higher whip anger thresholds, police state for fast early rushing, and even univ suff if you can trade for a big bulk of gold and want to buy rush an army or buildings (not as common).

The reason I suggested settling a GP is bc I think it is more apropos for his idea of just keeping up in the early game. On higher levels, the settled bonus from 1 GP peters out around mid game. It's still an advantage, but it's effect is less impactful. Mids are really powerful right thru Constitution but even afterwards if going conquest or Domination for police state.

 

[Lexicus]

Wait, do people actually self-tech Monarchy? I pretty much always trade with the AIs for that one.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Me too but the prereqs for Monarchy are on a basically useless path unless you went for Oracle. There's still an opportunity cost when trading for techs. I'd rather trade for more useful techs. More importantly, Mids frees the player from being dependent on an AI to get that (usually) crucial boost to happiness.