I'd like to offer another way of thinking of the multiple abilities of the various Great People that lends more credence to strategic choice and variety than we have currently. What I'm referring to are things like, for example, the Great Scientist - whereby you have the choice of an Academy (which produces science) or bulbing (which produces science): the mechanic behind making the choice between the two isn't really one of strategic choice at all, but just plain mathematics of what gives the higher yield after all factors have been considered. Such is not true for all Great People abilities, but it is true that there are several abilities among them where there is only ever one "choice" at any given time - one choice is generally the superior one, and one is the inferior, barring particular exceptions.
I would like to offer a revision of some of the yields or effects of various Great Person abilities that will incline the player (and hopefully the AI) to more strategic choices - where there really *isn't* a comparison between the two options, and you can gear your game plan in more than one way. While I'm hoping to have everything fit a proper them, I will admit my bias right now: my bias is towards game balance and internal strategic depth, and less so regarding theme, though I will certainly take this into account. Thus, I'm going to present all the Great People and my assessment of them, thoughts about adjustments, and a commentary on how my adjustments fit the theme.
THEME 1
Great Generals and Great Admirals
I'll start off by mentioning these two, as they're not designed to be super-interesting Great People I don't think, but nevertheless seem perfect just the way they are, so I'm holding them as examples of Great People with interesting options available to them. An Admiral is useful for exploring, but the extra happiness can come in handy, you obviously want to have one with a fleet, but sometimes an insta-heal is just the cat's meow. Great Generals help the army, Citadels are strategically valuable and can be worth the sacrifice of the General even if you don't have one to spare, but if you do, Citadels, while not generating the highest yields for a GPI, still offer better yields than usual and are worth building in the right places. There's lots of options for these GP, so I give them a thumbs up.
THEME 2
Great Musicians
The issue I find with Great Musicians is that the Concert generates massive Tourism, while the Great Works offer...significantly less Tourism; so much less in fact that I cannot justify using a Great Musician to make a Great Work for the sake of the Tourism. For Cultural/Trade tactics, hitting the best Culture-Civ with a Concert just makes things easier. The Culture generated from the Great Works also is nothing special. The one redeeming quality for Great Works from a Great Musician is that the theming bonuses are actually pretty decent. So let's run with that.
Suggestion for Distinction: Leave the Concert Tour as-is; change the Great Work of music to provide ONLY Culture. Thus one has a choice: strong Culture generation with good theming bonuses, or strong Tourism at a key target.
Thematic Comment: It makes sense that Music at home is part of the Culture, and bringing it on a concert is touristy, so I see no problem here.
Great Writers
I'm inclined to say that the two abilities of a Great Writer *seem* distinctive, but overall actually aren't. The Tourism from the Great Work will certainly help in the Tourism department, particularly early-on, but the Culture from a Great Work will never come close to that from a Political Treatise. But more to the point - the Culture bonus from the Political Treatise is so much that it will yield in the long run those extra policies that you need to do all kinds of things - which includes getting the mega-Tourism bonuses out of Ideologies...and thus, Tourism from the Great Works don't really offer as much as they seem to - Political Treatise has that taken care of as well. Of course, you usually need Great Works of some kind in order to increase Tourism - however I'm finding that with all kinds of other ways of gathering Tourism, it's not that difficult to get a Culture Victory having never produced a single Great Work!
Suggestion for Distinction: Going off on a different kind of tangent here - my suggestion is to make the primary yield for the Great Work of Writing to be Science, with a lesser bonus in Tourism; dump the Culture bonus on it. This pushes the player to consider long-term bonuses of Culture or long-term bonuses of Science, while keeping some Tourism around to support the Science and the buildings that come from it.
Thematic Comment: The cultural implications of GW of Writing can simply be contained within the Culture generated from Political Treatises - and let's be honest, many plays and comedies are in fact political treatises in a disguised form! However, from philosophers to scientists, a brilliant work of writing offers much to learn from, and the fact that we peel through such things even today benefits our own understanding and helps us learn new techniques in our own scientific endeavors. And while a piece of parchment is less "Touristy" than other things - certainly people to come to see such works, so we can leave a marginal bonus of Tourism behind for the sake of that. The theme fits in my opinion.
Great Artists
Again, I would say here that there seems to be a distinction between GW of Art and the Golden Age - but in reality, not really. The bonus Culture from a Golden Age makes up from the Culture gained from the Great Work; and extra Culture out of a Golden Age tends to boost Tourism in cities - and this is besides the production bonuses that are being invested into all kinds of different things that benefits the civilization as a whole. I don't see enough of a differentiation here.
Suggestion for Distinction: Dump the Culture on the Great Work, and make it 100% heavy Tourism. Thus there's a much clearer choice: push for a Golden Age, or get an awesome Tourism bonus.
Thematic Comment: Culture generated from Works of Art is captured within the Golden Age. Otherwise, seeing Great Works of Art is *definitely* touristy, and I think the suggested change reflects this nicely.
Regarding Theme 2 as a Whole
What I offer within Theme 2 as a whole isn't merely that each individual Great Person has two useful choices, but that within this set of Great People, one can aim for a much grander strategy: with all three Great People, you can make a mass Culture investment (Great Works of Music, Golden Ages, Political Treatises); on the other hand, you can make a mass Tourism investment (Concert Tours, Great Works of Art, Great Works of Writing), or you can have something in-between. This is much more well-inclined towards global strategies than the current system - and the AI could certainly make use of it as well.
THEME 3
Great Engineers and Great Scientists
As described above - Great Scientists suffer from the fact that they're just strategically boring: you pick the better option between an Academy and Bulbing, and that's about it. Not very exciting.
Great Engineers I find to be one of the fairly balanced options of all the Great People - both the options offer production, but in ways that are different enough to be meaningful. A Manufactury will enable a city to generally produce everything faster or build itself up; while speed production is of course useful for getting a Wonder done quickly. Both good options with good reasons to pick either. However, for the moment, I'm going to suggest a change anyways for the sake of Great Scientists.
I have two versions of this suggestion.
Suggestion for Distinction #1: Swap the Great Improvement Tile generated by Great Engineers/Great Scientists. This means that Great Engineers would make Academies, and Great Scientists would make Manufacturies. Thus you'd have options of balanced general production/science, or tons of science, or tons of production power.
Thematic Comment: Less convincing than the others, but when you think of something like CERN's Large Hadron Collider for example which is used to make scientific discoveries, its existence depends so massively on Engineers - I can't see why the same couldn't apply to an Academy. On the other hand, the Manufactury's great production would be dependent on new and resourceful methods of production, made most appropriate through the knowledge and ingenuity of a Great Scientists.
Suggestion for Distinction #2: In this suggestion, we swap the Great Scientist's Academy ability with the Great Engineer's fast-production ability. This makes the Great Scientist into a unit that makes things happen quickly: fast science, or fast production; whereas, the Great Engineer is a unit that builds mega improvements with long-term effects: Academies or Manufacturies.
Thematic Comment: Again, less convincing than others, but still within reason: Great Scientists that know their stuff make stuff happen more quickly - they develop the cutting-edge techniques in the factory to build that Wonder more quickly, or work with the typical scientists to finish off that next set of research. Whereas, the Engineers are being Engineers at their best: making a big building that either produces the best of science or the best of production.
Regarding Theme 3 as a Whole
Basically, I'm setting this section up so one can focus either on both science and production, push science heavily, or push production heavily. All good options with their benefits and drawbacks.
THEME 4
Great Merchants and Great Diplomats
Great Merchants make for an awesome tile, but I find at some point (if not sometimes immediately...) that the food and gold benefits of the tile need to be weighed against the food and gold benefits of We Love The King Day, with the latter becoming more and more favorable as the game progresses on. This is much like the Great Scientists problem, where there's not really two options, but just one mathematical calculation.
Great Diplomat abilities are pretty distinct, although here I tend to judge usefulness and realistic implementation. Embassies can't be made twice, so if you don't make one, you may lose it forever - and those extra votes in the late game are quite valuable. On the other hand, an extra ally is useful - but I really do side for the votes early-on, with there being nothing left but alliance-making later on. Again, sort of a boring choice.
Suggestion for Distinction: I want to suggest swapping the Merchant Trade @ City-State ability on the Great Merchant with the Influence Conversion @ City-State ability on the Great Diplomat. If given the choice between an Embassy and WLTKD and tons of gold early-game, I actually might think twice about it - because both are very meaningful choices. On the other hand, the option between a Great Improvement tile that generates good Food and Gold and an extra ally amounts to an interesting choice at any stage of the game, depending on what exactly is going on.
Thematic Comment: I admit that this one is probably the least sensical. Though, making a Diplomatic incursion with a City-State where that City-State offers gold and all their stuff to your empire on account of diplomacy to make your people love you sort of makes sense; and a Merchant's bribing a City-State to make them like you and hate others makes sense, too. So maybe it does make sense.
Regarding Theme 4 as a Whole
A more subtle differentiation here affects your Empire as a whole in long-term or short-term, or directly and indirectly. Either way, I think the options are more meaningful the way I've set them up.
Theme 5
Great Prophets
These are in a category of their own, and I think their two abilities are distinctive enough, anyways - the issue is their power relative to other Great People, which isn't really the point, here. For that discussion, head to the "Holy Sites" thread.
And that's it - what do you think?
I would like to offer a revision of some of the yields or effects of various Great Person abilities that will incline the player (and hopefully the AI) to more strategic choices - where there really *isn't* a comparison between the two options, and you can gear your game plan in more than one way. While I'm hoping to have everything fit a proper them, I will admit my bias right now: my bias is towards game balance and internal strategic depth, and less so regarding theme, though I will certainly take this into account. Thus, I'm going to present all the Great People and my assessment of them, thoughts about adjustments, and a commentary on how my adjustments fit the theme.
THEME 1
Great Generals and Great Admirals
I'll start off by mentioning these two, as they're not designed to be super-interesting Great People I don't think, but nevertheless seem perfect just the way they are, so I'm holding them as examples of Great People with interesting options available to them. An Admiral is useful for exploring, but the extra happiness can come in handy, you obviously want to have one with a fleet, but sometimes an insta-heal is just the cat's meow. Great Generals help the army, Citadels are strategically valuable and can be worth the sacrifice of the General even if you don't have one to spare, but if you do, Citadels, while not generating the highest yields for a GPI, still offer better yields than usual and are worth building in the right places. There's lots of options for these GP, so I give them a thumbs up.
THEME 2
Great Musicians
The issue I find with Great Musicians is that the Concert generates massive Tourism, while the Great Works offer...significantly less Tourism; so much less in fact that I cannot justify using a Great Musician to make a Great Work for the sake of the Tourism. For Cultural/Trade tactics, hitting the best Culture-Civ with a Concert just makes things easier. The Culture generated from the Great Works also is nothing special. The one redeeming quality for Great Works from a Great Musician is that the theming bonuses are actually pretty decent. So let's run with that.
Suggestion for Distinction: Leave the Concert Tour as-is; change the Great Work of music to provide ONLY Culture. Thus one has a choice: strong Culture generation with good theming bonuses, or strong Tourism at a key target.
Thematic Comment: It makes sense that Music at home is part of the Culture, and bringing it on a concert is touristy, so I see no problem here.
Great Writers
I'm inclined to say that the two abilities of a Great Writer *seem* distinctive, but overall actually aren't. The Tourism from the Great Work will certainly help in the Tourism department, particularly early-on, but the Culture from a Great Work will never come close to that from a Political Treatise. But more to the point - the Culture bonus from the Political Treatise is so much that it will yield in the long run those extra policies that you need to do all kinds of things - which includes getting the mega-Tourism bonuses out of Ideologies...and thus, Tourism from the Great Works don't really offer as much as they seem to - Political Treatise has that taken care of as well. Of course, you usually need Great Works of some kind in order to increase Tourism - however I'm finding that with all kinds of other ways of gathering Tourism, it's not that difficult to get a Culture Victory having never produced a single Great Work!
Suggestion for Distinction: Going off on a different kind of tangent here - my suggestion is to make the primary yield for the Great Work of Writing to be Science, with a lesser bonus in Tourism; dump the Culture bonus on it. This pushes the player to consider long-term bonuses of Culture or long-term bonuses of Science, while keeping some Tourism around to support the Science and the buildings that come from it.
Thematic Comment: The cultural implications of GW of Writing can simply be contained within the Culture generated from Political Treatises - and let's be honest, many plays and comedies are in fact political treatises in a disguised form! However, from philosophers to scientists, a brilliant work of writing offers much to learn from, and the fact that we peel through such things even today benefits our own understanding and helps us learn new techniques in our own scientific endeavors. And while a piece of parchment is less "Touristy" than other things - certainly people to come to see such works, so we can leave a marginal bonus of Tourism behind for the sake of that. The theme fits in my opinion.
Great Artists
Again, I would say here that there seems to be a distinction between GW of Art and the Golden Age - but in reality, not really. The bonus Culture from a Golden Age makes up from the Culture gained from the Great Work; and extra Culture out of a Golden Age tends to boost Tourism in cities - and this is besides the production bonuses that are being invested into all kinds of different things that benefits the civilization as a whole. I don't see enough of a differentiation here.
Suggestion for Distinction: Dump the Culture on the Great Work, and make it 100% heavy Tourism. Thus there's a much clearer choice: push for a Golden Age, or get an awesome Tourism bonus.
Thematic Comment: Culture generated from Works of Art is captured within the Golden Age. Otherwise, seeing Great Works of Art is *definitely* touristy, and I think the suggested change reflects this nicely.
Regarding Theme 2 as a Whole
What I offer within Theme 2 as a whole isn't merely that each individual Great Person has two useful choices, but that within this set of Great People, one can aim for a much grander strategy: with all three Great People, you can make a mass Culture investment (Great Works of Music, Golden Ages, Political Treatises); on the other hand, you can make a mass Tourism investment (Concert Tours, Great Works of Art, Great Works of Writing), or you can have something in-between. This is much more well-inclined towards global strategies than the current system - and the AI could certainly make use of it as well.
THEME 3
Great Engineers and Great Scientists
As described above - Great Scientists suffer from the fact that they're just strategically boring: you pick the better option between an Academy and Bulbing, and that's about it. Not very exciting.
Great Engineers I find to be one of the fairly balanced options of all the Great People - both the options offer production, but in ways that are different enough to be meaningful. A Manufactury will enable a city to generally produce everything faster or build itself up; while speed production is of course useful for getting a Wonder done quickly. Both good options with good reasons to pick either. However, for the moment, I'm going to suggest a change anyways for the sake of Great Scientists.
I have two versions of this suggestion.
Suggestion for Distinction #1: Swap the Great Improvement Tile generated by Great Engineers/Great Scientists. This means that Great Engineers would make Academies, and Great Scientists would make Manufacturies. Thus you'd have options of balanced general production/science, or tons of science, or tons of production power.
Thematic Comment: Less convincing than the others, but when you think of something like CERN's Large Hadron Collider for example which is used to make scientific discoveries, its existence depends so massively on Engineers - I can't see why the same couldn't apply to an Academy. On the other hand, the Manufactury's great production would be dependent on new and resourceful methods of production, made most appropriate through the knowledge and ingenuity of a Great Scientists.
Suggestion for Distinction #2: In this suggestion, we swap the Great Scientist's Academy ability with the Great Engineer's fast-production ability. This makes the Great Scientist into a unit that makes things happen quickly: fast science, or fast production; whereas, the Great Engineer is a unit that builds mega improvements with long-term effects: Academies or Manufacturies.
Thematic Comment: Again, less convincing than others, but still within reason: Great Scientists that know their stuff make stuff happen more quickly - they develop the cutting-edge techniques in the factory to build that Wonder more quickly, or work with the typical scientists to finish off that next set of research. Whereas, the Engineers are being Engineers at their best: making a big building that either produces the best of science or the best of production.
Regarding Theme 3 as a Whole
Basically, I'm setting this section up so one can focus either on both science and production, push science heavily, or push production heavily. All good options with their benefits and drawbacks.
THEME 4
Great Merchants and Great Diplomats
Great Merchants make for an awesome tile, but I find at some point (if not sometimes immediately...) that the food and gold benefits of the tile need to be weighed against the food and gold benefits of We Love The King Day, with the latter becoming more and more favorable as the game progresses on. This is much like the Great Scientists problem, where there's not really two options, but just one mathematical calculation.
Great Diplomat abilities are pretty distinct, although here I tend to judge usefulness and realistic implementation. Embassies can't be made twice, so if you don't make one, you may lose it forever - and those extra votes in the late game are quite valuable. On the other hand, an extra ally is useful - but I really do side for the votes early-on, with there being nothing left but alliance-making later on. Again, sort of a boring choice.
Suggestion for Distinction: I want to suggest swapping the Merchant Trade @ City-State ability on the Great Merchant with the Influence Conversion @ City-State ability on the Great Diplomat. If given the choice between an Embassy and WLTKD and tons of gold early-game, I actually might think twice about it - because both are very meaningful choices. On the other hand, the option between a Great Improvement tile that generates good Food and Gold and an extra ally amounts to an interesting choice at any stage of the game, depending on what exactly is going on.
Thematic Comment: I admit that this one is probably the least sensical. Though, making a Diplomatic incursion with a City-State where that City-State offers gold and all their stuff to your empire on account of diplomacy to make your people love you sort of makes sense; and a Merchant's bribing a City-State to make them like you and hate others makes sense, too. So maybe it does make sense.
Regarding Theme 4 as a Whole
A more subtle differentiation here affects your Empire as a whole in long-term or short-term, or directly and indirectly. Either way, I think the options are more meaningful the way I've set them up.
Theme 5
Great Prophets
These are in a category of their own, and I think their two abilities are distinctive enough, anyways - the issue is their power relative to other Great People, which isn't really the point, here. For that discussion, head to the "Holy Sites" thread.
And that's it - what do you think?
If anything, Golden Ages from Artists probably need to last even less time.
1
from Great Works of Writing,
all at once is obviously superior to getting 50
Great Works of Music never appear in single slots (i.e., theming bonus or bust).
