What do you think of the Civ VI great people?

I like a lot of the Great Person system. In general it gets a thumbs-up from me.

I do think it's missing a few things though. I think there should be more Great People overall, and I think they shouldn't necessarily be lost if a couple of Civs are past the era the Great Person is from. I also think they should have alternate uses--honestly, I'd just lift Civ IV's Golden Age mechanic wholesale here, let you expend a Great Person to start a Golden age (and each successive golden age requires additional Great People of differing types to trigger--the first one costs one, the second costs two of different types, the third costs three of different types, etc.). That'd give an easy and quick alternate use for Great People, though a specialized "general" use for each type would also work (like allowing a Great Scientist to settle in a Campus district to create a special building or something, or create a Campus district in a city without counting towards the district limit). Many of the other suggestions in this thread are also workable.

I'd also like to see Great Prophets expanded upon. They could have a significant impact on theological combat, and I don't like how Great Prophet points become useless after founding a religion (or failing to found one).

Edit: Though one more thing I'm not necessarily a fan of is how buildings generate Great People points directly. I thought tying GPP generation to specialists was more interesting, as it involved a trade-off to generate Great People. As is I feel like specialists have kind of lost their niche and are almost exclusively just filler slots now.
 
I forgot to mention: I wish for a whole bunch of more GP. There should be at least 10 per era for each type. Not that I want them all in one game - but I think there should be a rather large pool from which the game chooses the next possible GP the moment one is earned by a civ. As of now, I'm not even sure there is variety at all. I seem to get roughly the same GPs every game, or at least I see the same GPs on the screen. If I go for a science victory, I don't want to be sure that Carl Sagan will be there and if I save up, I can just buy him. I want only a 10% chance that he will be recruitable in this very game. This would of course make the game a bit more random. But I can't really see a bad side if it would be like that.
 
Whoever says that Generals are a waste of time, it's because they never used their retire ability. You can have early access to powerful units with promotions and maybe a corps or amy out of it.

For example, combining all Medieval Era GG, you end up with a Knight Corps and 25% combat bonus for mounted units. 4 movement and 72 strength is nothing to sneeze at, especially that early in the game. But you need to invest almost everything into it: early Encampments in all cities and running Encampment projects instead of infrastructure. High risk, high reward.

As for the number of Great People, there's only 3 of each type for every era (except GWAMs, which have varying amounts per era). Now that you mentioned, it'd really be nice if you had, say, 7 GP from each type available to choose from, but you could only have 3 or 4 from each era (except GWAMs, which you could choose, say, 5 out of 10).
 
Great Writers
As is, Great Writers, Musicians, and Artists are rather bland. They all do one thing and one thing only; they generate Great Works of Writing, Art, and Music, respectively. To break up this homogeneity I'd replace Great Writers with Great Philosophers. Great Philosophers would be to culture and government what Great Scientists are to research and technology. Some would trigger inspirations for civics, some would generate lump sums of culture, some would produce envoys, and others could add government policy slots. I'd still have some - your Platos, your Hobbes, etc - create Great Works of Writing, but overall there would be much greater variety and far more interesting decisions to be made than what we're getting from Great Writers.
One way of addressing the Great Writer blandness that I have been thinking of is that they should come in different categories like the Artists. The categories could be Plays (for theaters), Novels and maybe Scientific/Philosophic texts. Currently, the fact that any writer is equal to the others makes them rather boring. (Musicians have the same issue but come into play so late it's less of an issue.)
 
I'd like the great artists/musicians/writers to have some form of passive or alternate abilities, similar to what they had in Civ 5
This would help out immensely when playing as Russia.
 
There is a competition for GP now. Then how about introducing some trade opportunities too?

E.g. I don't have the Art Museum, so can I swap my Artist for someone else's unneeded writer? Or hire another player's general for my little war (I can hire CS troops, so if I can also hire a commander for them, wouldn't it be an ideal model for mercenaries)? Since they're undead, there's no real risk. Those things also do happen historically all the time.

Or we could even trade GP points, or just promise to pass on a particular GP in exchange for something.

Overall, I like the new system with the competition, just feel it could be made deeper :)
 
They did a great job with GP - I really wouldn't change it much at all. I think there are a lot of other areas they should refine before this.
 
Secondly, as you pointed out, the fact that when you capture great people they mystically return to the owner's capital seems totally dumb. Surely you should be able to capture them?

It isn't just Great People.

I'm was the Americans and popped over to the Roman continent for some conquest. After signing a peace treaty the neighboring Romans were spawning rebels...and by rebels I mean hordes of mechanized infantry. These rebels attacked one of my air bases that contained three bombers. The air base was taken and I was annoyed that I hadn't bothered to defend it with ground troops.

The next turn, my bombers re-appear. They had flown back to America. I had mixed feelings. If I was attacking an airbase with ground troops, I'd hope to be able to destroy the planes. On the other hand, I was pleased to not lose my bombers.
 
I really like the GP mechanic in VI. I like some of the above suggestions, and we'll probably see some of these in either an expansion or patch. I don't like the suggestion that we pick from a pool. The whole concept of GP is that here is someone who comes along that is unique, a special ability, an unusual insight. The timing of that is never certain. The only thing I'd suggest, if it's not already the case, would be that the order not be static. Also, after a certain period of time, if you pass on a GP and nobody else has taken it, then you could have the option of now selecting that person. This would eliminate the problem mentioned several times about passing on one, and then being locked out "forever" because nobody else is generating that type of GP points. I do think some of the alternative uses could be good and fit in with the overall mechanic. But even were they to never change the system, it's still the best one they've had so far.
 
But if the game selects the next GP from a pool every time, they do become more special and more unique imho. As it is now, they are not that unique, since they pop up every game. It could be like it is with natural wonders and city states - different ones chosen every time.
 
Whoever says that Generals are a waste of time, it's because they never used their retire ability. You can have early access to powerful units with promotions and maybe a corps or amy out of it.

For example, combining all Medieval Era GG, you end up with a Knight Corps and 25% combat bonus for mounted units. 4 movement and 72 strength is nothing to sneeze at, especially that early in the game. But you need to invest almost everything into it: early Encampments in all cities and running Encampment projects instead of infrastructure. High risk, high reward.
Considering you can win all early wars with a few archers and one or two melee orcavalry units, it's a waste of time.Later on, the AI is so hopeless that you don't need the bonus either, so they are underwhelming.
 
I don't see how the new Great People are all that great. I find that they are very situational and their special ability is often quite useless if you're not going for a particular victory condition.
Great Generals: are tied too much to their particular era and are pretty much useless later on (or earlier on if you get them prior to getting the units from the era they are for). The special ability may or may not be ok.
Great scientists, merchants etc: are too situational. Some are good (those that give additional policy card slots etc), but many aren't. The player shouldn't really be in the position of having to 'pass' on something or to slow down production of something (points, tech, whatever) just to avoid getting something the game is trying to push that just isn't worth getting. I don't like having to do some gamey workaround to avoid something in game that should be a good thing, but isn't really.
Great writers, etc: no comment since my culture was never really good enough to compete with the AI. I never go for a cultural victory, so this entire part of the game just doesn't work for me. And I don't see the piddly little bonus +2 (or whatever) culture a Great Writer's work can give as being useful for anything much.
Great Prophets: totally useless. They found a religion but have absolutely no use later on - and are in fact disabled while still having a slot for them in the Great Person screen. I don't like one-trick pony types of units (the so-called 'Naturalist' is another example of this). Why bother having something like a Great Prophet when their only use is to found a religion - and once done, they are gone forever. Makes no sense. May as well just not have them in the game at all and allow the Civ to found a religion without having to go through the motions of shuffling a unit around to do it.

I would like all Great People to have more generic abilities that are valuable and will assist the player regardless of the era they are in and regardless of whatever special ability they may possess. Civ 5 Great People were more useful in more situations. Civ 6 Great People also shouldn't just run out. This just ends a game play mechanic prematurely that doesn't really make much sense and there's nothing to fill the void left behind. It's like the entire ranged unit class suddenly becomes irrelevant at some point in the game - oh wait, I think this actually happens too.

Also, re: Great People, this has been reported in the Bugs section, but I'm finding that the Great People screen isn't working for me anymore past a certain number of turns. I would click on it and get the page-turning sound effect, but nothing pops up - hence this removes the entire Great Person mechanic for me - which is why I haven't played Civ 6 in a few weeks. I may get around to testing this out without mods at some point (just in case it's one of them), but something like this does tend to dampen enthusiasm for getting back into the game without a bug fix patch being released.
 
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Thread of the week. Nice to see well thought out critique (pro and con) from all sides.
 
Great Prophets: totally useless. They found a religion but have absolutely no use later on - and are in fact disabled while still having a slot for them in the Great Person screen. I don't like one-trick pony types of units (the so-called 'Naturalist' is another example of this). Why bother having something like a Great Prophet when their only use is to found a religion - and once done, they are gone forever. Makes no sense. May as well just not have them in the game at all and allow the Civ to found a religion without having to go through the motions of shuffling a unit around to do it.
I have to disagree with this part. I don't necessarily like the new Great Prophet vs. Apostle schism, but I think the system is consistent in itself, so I don't think your criticism is accurate. The whole point is a race for religion, and the current system achieves that.
 
Considering you can win all early wars with a few archers and one or two melee orcavalry units, it's a waste of time.Later on, the AI is so hopeless that you don't need the bonus either, so they are underwhelming.

Ah, the obligatory AI complaint.

But the GG usefulness isn't the combat bonus, it's the +1 movement. Faster units, faster conquest
 
I wish there were hundreds more, each with subtle differences.
 
I don't see how the new Great People are all that great. I find that they are very situational and their special ability is often quite useless if you're not going for a particular victory condition.

Well, some time or another you'll shoot for one of these particular victories (unless you're going for a Score Victory), so one type or another will eventually become relevant.

And for those that say that the AI is rubbish in combat, well, you're right. But a GG makes trampling over them much faster. Most of them also gives a free unit (which may be more advanced than what you have available, depending on how you've been developing), a free promotion (use to get a tier 3 or 4 promotion without the XP grinding), or form a Corps/Army (many before you unlock Corps and Armies). It's not that useless as many say.

I never pass on any GP anyway. All those small advantages end up snowballing. It's also an advantage the AI can't use against me. I'll probably win the game, but I may win that much faster.
 
I never pass on any GP anyway. All those small advantages end up snowballing. It's also an advantage the AI can't use against me. I'll probably win the game, but I may win that much faster.
The AI will likely get a GP even if you don't pass, since there are several to choose from, so the AI will have a different advantage if you don't pass, but they will have it. Passing is not very interesting, though, because it's done blindly and you don't know what you'll get. I wonder if anyone ever uses this mechanism?
 
The AI will likely get a GP even if you don't pass, since there are several to choose from, so the AI will have a different advantage if you don't pass, but they will have it. Passing is not very interesting, though, because it's done blindly and you don't know what you'll get. I wonder if anyone ever uses this mechanism?
I frequently pass. Any Great Merchant before industrial era is pass because you will always want to save up points to grab Adam Smith. I pretty much always pass on great engineers that provides housing and amineties. Great Scientist also often pass.
 
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