Uses of Great People on tiles

[Crimson13]

Neither, use the merchants for trade missions and the engineers to rush wonders.

Did you even read the question?

 

[anthropophage]

Yes. Use Merchants for trade missions and engineers to rush wonders, The fact that you can use great tiles to connect luxuries doesn't change much, you'd still be better off not planting merchants or engineers.

 

[Polisurgist]

Regardless of what else the great tile improvement gets you, the fact that it connects a resource for you is not the right reason to plant it; that's only there because you don't start the game knowing where all your strats are and it would suck to find out once you get Fission that you put an Academy over your only source of uranium. Therefore, you get the strategic. There's no need to do this with luxuries because there are no surprise luxuries.

Building an actual improvement or a city is always going to be the best way to get at a strategic resource. Everything else is based on baseline yield; putting an academy or holy site onto a flood plain makes sense because you get the +2 food in addition to the science or faith.

 

[joncnunn]

Building an actual improvement or a city is always going to be the best way to get at a strategic resource. Everything else is based on baseline yield; putting an academy or holy site onto a flood plain makes sense because you get the +2 food in addition to the science or faith.

I would normally avoid flood plains for great people; here the great person takes away either 2 food if you would have farmed it (Flood plains can only appear on a river) or in the event of a massive food surplus in which a trade post would have been built instead then it starts by taking away 1 commerce, growing to taking away 2 commerce + 1 science)

The sites in which it only takes away one food (pre Fertilizer) are much better.

 

[Polisurgist]

I would normally avoid flood plains for great people; here the great person takes away either 2 food if you would have farmed it (Flood plains can only appear on a river) or in the event of a massive food surplus in which a trade post would have been built instead then it starts by taking away 1 commerce, growing to taking away 2 commerce + 1 science)

The sites in which it only takes away one food (pre Fertilizer) are much better.

...true. I was just trying to throw out a tile that has decent food output as a baseline.

 

[beetle]

Thanks for the clarification. I rarely plant GP except for early GS. And if I do so, I do it on a grassland no riverside, so I was doing it optimally

I am glad to read that I was doing it correctly as well, just because I hated wasting a resource, and planting GP on tundra or desert also seemed like a problem!

I found one better than non-riverside grassland: non-riverside marsh! (Pretty rare, but the GP converts the marsh to grassland for the two food.

 

[joncnunn]

I found one better than non-riverside grassland: non-riverside marsh! (Pretty rare, but the GP converts the marsh to grassland for the two food.

Yup, if not the Dutch, free clearing of a marsh in that tile without fresh water is an excellent use of a Great Person. That's a massive number of turns you've saved clearing that marsh.
This is also why using a Great Person on a flat plains tile with forest but without fresh water is popular. (Free forest chop; and you get the same hammers you would have it you had sent a worker to chop first.)

 

[Big J Money]

OOC: why not non-forested plains? (assuming there are no forest plains around or you have lumbermills you'd like to keep)

 

[Catan_Settler]

Plains are "ok" for academies and such, but because they only give 1 food, the tile is not self sufficient. It will need an extra +1 food from somewhere else, to properly staff the academy. And because of the fact that your raw science output it based on population, again your strategy when placing these things is to maximize food to keep your city growing AND working the academy tiles. Which arrives us at:

Best place: Food resource (wheat/deer/cow/etc) (more than 2 food base)
Second best: Grassland w/o Freshwater (2 food base)
Third best: Grassland w Freshwater or Flood Plains (2 food 1 gold base, opportunity cost -2 food from not having a farm there)
Fourth best: Plains, tundra, basically anything else that is less than 2 food.

 

[Calouste]

Plains are "ok" for academies and such, but because they only give 1 food, the tile is not self sufficient. It will need an extra +1 food from somewhere else, to properly staff the academy. And because of the fact that your raw science output it based on population, again your strategy when placing these things is to maximize food to keep your city growing AND working the academy tiles. Which arrives us at:

Best place: Food resource (wheat/deer/cow/etc) (more than 2 food base)
Second best: Grassland w/o Freshwater (2 food base)
Third best: Grassland w Freshwater or Flood Plains (2 food 1 gold base, opportunity cost -2 food from not having a farm there)
Fourth best: Plains, tundra, basically anything else that is less than 2 food.

Nope. Settling on a Deer or a Cow costs you 1 that you would have gotten from a Camp or Pasture, settling on a Grassland w/o Freshwater costs you only 1 before Fertilizer. And of course no Camp or Pasture means no effects of certain Pantheons you could get (and in BNW possibly no Stable effects).

Of course, the assumption is that you are already working all your worthwhile tiles (resources, fresh water, hills), which tends to be true unless your are playing Babylon or Maya.

 

[IAmOzymandias]

I tend to play tall empires, so I'm often not wanting for worked tiles. I suppose if I needed to get a city up quick, You could build a manufactury on wheat cattle or sheep for the extra food bonus for the first person, while still maintaining a high production bonus.

Other than that I don't see much use for it in a tall empire.

 

[Unresolved]

I tend to play tall empires, so I'm often not wanting for worked tiles. I suppose if I needed to get a city up quick, You could build a manufactury on wheat cattle or sheep for the extra food bonus for the first person, while still maintaining a high production bonus.

Other than that I don't see much use for it in a tall empire.

Well, generally by the time your city can work whatever tiles it wants, it's probably too late to be planting GP's. Early in the game, when it's a good idea to be planting, putting a GP on a useless tile is a bad idea because it will hurt your growth.

 

[SirPepsi]

-I place Great Scientist's on Desert Tiles - I feel that some use has gotta come outta them
-I use Great Artist's on Food Tiles.
-Great Merchant's go on Luxuries.
-And though I rarely use Great Engineer's for Tile Improvements (I love Wonder boosts), I will sometimes place 'em on coal, oil, or aluminum.

 

[Deau]

Nope. Settling on a Deer or a Cow costs you 1 that you would have gotten from a Camp or Pasture, settling on a Grassland w/o Freshwater costs you only 1 before Fertilizer. And of course no Camp or Pasture means no effects of certain Pantheons you could get (and in BNW possibly no Stable effects).

Of course, the assumption is that you are already working all your worthwhile tiles (resources, fresh water, hills), which tends to be true unless your are playing Babylon or Maya.

Settling GSs on non-luxury resources doesn't net out anymore loss if you treat food=hammer=gold.

resources don't "double dip" in improvements, they still only receive +1 whatever until the mid-game tech that increases the bonuses from that type of improvement. The only time(s) they do is via a special building such as stables or stone works. However, most of those improve the tile regardless, they only require at least one such tile-type to be improved somewhere in the city radius in order to be built. Thus, it is not necessarily bad to settle a GS on a resource tile. In particular, in my Babylon petra starts when I was working on sub 200 deity victories, I would settle the GS on a riverside hills sheep as it was already a tile I was working and not one that had substantial improvements. I preferred it water-farmable tiles since farms would get bonus @CS instead of significantly later in the game. The net tradeoff was 1 food from no pasture and the lost possibility to build stable. The net gain is that for 20 or so turns in the super early game, I wasn't giving up on working a strong tile (1f 2h 1g) because I didn't have the pop to work my 2 wheat + wherever else I could've put the GS.

 

[Calouste]

Settling GSs on non-luxury resources doesn't net out anymore loss if you treat food=hammer=gold.

resources don't "double dip" in improvements, they still only receive +1 whatever until the mid-game tech that increases the bonuses from that type of improvement. The only time(s) they do is via a special building such as stables or stone works. However, most of those improve the tile regardless, they only require at least one such tile-type to be improved somewhere in the city radius in order to be built. Thus, it is not necessarily bad to settle a GS on a resource tile. In particular, in my Babylon petra starts when I was working on sub 200 deity victories, I would settle the GS on a riverside hills sheep as it was already a tile I was working and not one that had substantial improvements. I preferred it water-farmable tiles since farms would get bonus @CS instead of significantly later in the game. The net tradeoff was 1 food from no pasture and the lost possibility to build stable. The net gain is that for 20 or so turns in the super early game, I wasn't giving up on working a strong tile (1f 2h 1g) because I didn't have the pop to work my 2 wheat + wherever else I could've put the GS.

Well, food, hammers and gold are not equivalent. And what you describe is exactly the exception I mentioned.

 

[Meshakhad]

I make a point of working as many tiles as possible. So it often works out that desert, tundra, or snow tiles are the best places to drop GPs.

 

[Bei1052]

Probably suboptimal, but my favorite tile to plant a GM is on a riverside horse. Same for a GS.

 

[I was NC]

Agreed that non-river grassland is the best for academies; the long-term benefits far outweigh bulbing until fairly late. In one recent game a single academy produced 27 science towards the end. The key is this tile will always be worked and so being food self-sufficient is good.

Same concept for GAs in the Hermitage city, although the golden age can be a viable alternative (especially with Chichen Itza). GMs are always for trade routes, never the tile improvement.

GEs are the most interesting. Rushing early wonders is often not good since they can produce more hammers than the production cost. What I like to do when possible is place a manufactory on a non-river plains tile which is shared by two cities. That way I can use micro managing to pick which one (if either) needs the five hammers.

 

[atreas]

Just one funny case that you might (or might not) encounter. I happened to capture a Great Prophet of another religion during war. Try putting it on a plantation luxury (like sugar, etc.), particularly if it is on marsh or jungle, in a puppet city. The point is that you save the turns for building the plantation and the puppet city is guaranteed to work on the tile, giving you faith, since it has gold output.

After all the Prophet was completely useless to me - but became useful.

 

[Unresolved]

Just one funny case that you might (or might not) encounter. I happened to capture a Great Prophet of another religion during war. Try putting it on a plantation luxury (like sugar, etc.), particularly if it is on marsh or jungle, in a puppet city. The point is that you save the turns for building the plantation and the puppet city is guaranteed to work on the tile, giving you faith, since it has gold output.

After all the Prophet was completely useless to me - but became useful.

I'm pretty sure GP improvements don't give you luxury improvements. Only strategic improvements.