The illusive great prophets!

[MagisterCultuum]

The Code of Junil also gives Great Engineer points, although Great Prophets or Great Commanders would make more sense there.

 

[phoulishwan]

On a side note note for those who like going for Altar victories, Svartalfar is also a great civ to get an altar victory with. Their recon units get a special ability, it will very likely cause quite a few wars but when it's successful the pay off is HUGE! Kidnapping settled Great People from your opponents cities! Success rate seems dependant on the level of the recon unit attempting to kidnap, once I got Alazkan up to 150+ xp he's never failed on me yet, although perhaps this is pure luck, I haven't looked at the code involved so I don't know the facts. Check all your opponents cities to see if you can use the ability, if you can they have 1 or more settled GP's. Most often they tend to be Prophets, the early Prophets you sometimes get, the AI's will settle because they don't really have anything better to do with them, often times checking capitals, especially of Evil & Good civs, will net you a Prophet or two. Failure does mean war however which can be costly, but if you're going for an Altar victory quite well worth the risk, as long as you're prepared ahead of time of course.

 

[Sarisin]

This sounds like a very good strategy as I have noticed that the AI mostly uses Great People for Golden Ages. After using one, you need two, three, etc. for that Golden Age, so you will see them saving GPs in their cities until they get enough for their next Golden Age. I find the Balseraph do this often.

Of course, you would be able actually see what cities they are in, and that might be a trick.

I've never used the Svartalfar ability mentioned, but it sounds like this would be a quite good strategy.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

It's hard to get great people in FFH in general, but great prophets should be really easy though.

a) altar victory: simple enough. You can assign one priest from pagan temple to get your first one. You then capture a city with a religion, then trade/research the tech (probably FoL or RoK) to build the religious temple. Build your first altar with your priest, and now you can get 3 priest specialists. Your next three will lightbulb philosophy, priesthood and religious law. Then you switch to theocracy and get as many as you want.
b) Religious techs: because philosophy is placed pretty high, you can only get the first three religions and their unique techs. Also, you need to avoid two of mining, fishing and hunting if you want the first lightbulb to hit the founding tech, the second to hit the next religious tech and the third to hit the holy shrine. If it's FoL, get your bard from the drama tech.

 

[zup]

If you start near gold or play Hannah near a nice ocean, research mining and then go RoK asap. After that grab FoL. You should beat even Khazad and Ljosalfar to both. Without the two, it gets ridiculously easy. (Not on high difficulties but I am not talking about that.) Then get OO to the mix. Now just grab Empyrean and Order. Remember to run religion civic and spread all religions to all cities and build temples. You get lots of happiness for specialists before social order (especially with access to incense) and a huge number of priest slots. All of your cities are literally impossible to take with culture. You also deny your enemies the access to religious victories and get shrine mana. Build a courthouse and a basilica in your city and Code of Junil. You pay an enormous 15% usual maintenance. 10% if your civ starts with law mana. No need to run city states to reduce maintenance anymore, you will hardly feel it. Go theocracy and you are settled.