What is the most useful Great Person?

Which of the Great People do you like most?

  • Scientist

    Votes: 32 14.8%
  • Merchant

    Votes: 14 6.5%
  • Engineer

    Votes: 107 49.5%
  • Prophet

    Votes: 21 9.7%
  • Artist

    Votes: 42 19.4%

  • Total voters
    216
Depends on the situation, today I played a game in which two cities had reached legendary status, but my third one had 10.000 points less. So I desperatly needed an Great Artist, but I always got Great Prophets. In the end I had to wait around 25 turns till the city finally reached legendary status.


Imo Great Engineers are the best, if you have a WW to build with them, but as I usually go for cultural victories on Monarch, i voted for Great Artists.
 
While all the GP have uses, I have become a big fan of the Great Merchant. The food they give often allows one more hill/plains workshop to be used in your production city or cottage in commerce city or a specialist in a GPP city. Since my production city gets the financial building to help in health and happiness, the gold output doesn't go to waste. Merchants are easy to get with the Great Light House and Colossus wonders in a coastal city.
 
I say the prophets. Shrines are great to have at the start

But then scientist comes in second (academies)

Engineer third because he can rush stuff
 
Scientists -- +50% research is HUGE :) Without a half dozen academies I don't think I'd be able to leap ahead of the AI on the really hard difficulties.

Engineers are great in the early game, but it's tough to get them. Most of the wonders are unreachable, so the only way to get engineers is with a forge and 1 specialist...takes a loong time.

They aren't really useful in late game, if your empire can produce 3000 gold per turn (go financial!). The 3GD costs something around that to complete. I save any late-game GP's other than artists for a golden age :)
 
1)great scientist- i can keep well ahead of the AI even on the middle difficulties (eg, prince, monarch) through academies and super specs.
2)great prophet-the great shrine and super specs are really great in the early game when you can use all the gold you can get and with them you can sometimes run at 100% research and still be getting gpt.
3)Great engineer-the ability to rush wonders has many a times saved me from not getting an important wonder and when combined with the oracle ( hard but possible) they discover a tech of your choosing and you get the culture from the oracle
 
Every week someone makes a poll about this, and every week the engineer wins. STOP REPEATING POLLS!
 
At the proper time, each can be a significant asset. The scientist seems the least useful to me, though.
 
engineers are strong early if you manage to get pyramid/garden combo in a city you can use the 1st to rush the GL ie, but if so, and as your gold prod capacity grows they become more and more useless, finishing merged in spacepart building cities and wiped into a golden age. Since they don't fall under castesystem availablity they are hard to get when they would be usefull so do not overestimate them.
GS imho are more usefull early on for academies and tech rush (they pull out more beaker than over GP in tech discovery)
Merchants btw are very usefull to merge in late game in your globe city because of the +1 food, early on they are merely useless.
Prophet are pointless if you have no shrines to build or no holy city (without shrine) in target to conquer, i think they are the most useless.
Artist on the other way are very strong, for cultural vic they are simply mandatory to level the culture of your 3 cities. In late game, they can be used as a military unit, capture a city, raze any other too close to that city, culture bomb and poof immediate available city. Btw early on, they have too few uses, mainly tech discover or ressource hooking.

So let's say :
early game is for : GS, GE, GP
mid-late game is for artists and merchants

As final decision i think GS are better than engineer game wise (i mean taking in consideration the capacity to get a specific people)
 
Seems most people don't use the merchants properly. Running some merchant specialist in your GP Farm and planting the great ones ther too combined with market, grocer, bank and wall street, they allow you to run at 100% science and thus use your commerce cities properly. Before you start making merchants you should make scientists for academy in all commerce cities.
 
I like the prophets because the income the holy cities will bring in but i also think the engineers are helpful aswell:)
 
Not too many people for Prophets. Having Holy Cities is essential to my strategy. My religions spread quickly, then with the Holy City - Money. Every Missionary I build becomes +1 income for me. I'm not too into the "Cultue Bomb" thing, I'm slow and subtle.
 
If I was only going to get one type, I'd pick scientists.

Engineers are up at the top too, being able to get a wonder without worrying or slap versailles/forbidden palace in a new city is pretty handy.

Great Prophets I either need badly or are useless; if you have a holy city then you need one for the shrine, and sometime they help with a tech, but I've gotten one in the late game and had nothing to do with him.

Great artists aren't bad, I usually use them as super specialists in a bordy city to fight off those % owneds from others.

Great merchants provide a nice chunk of change, I love having one when it's time for a major upgrade. They can also scout out jerks who won't open borders to you.
 
I used to favor Great Engineers the best. Still do kinda, but I would say the most "useful" is the Artist for me. If I am going for the cultural victory, he is great as a specialist. You just cant get enough of them. If not then when they pop in the work good for a "secret weapon" to a war effort where you are trying to claim territory.

Then I would say Scientist. As the academies they build help you all game long. 50% boost in a city is a very nice help in tech lead.

Then followed up by my favorite which is the engineers. I mean, you gotta love a guy that can ensure you a specific wonder.

Prophets and Merchants for me tie as they usually end up as specialists to help me balance cities that need food or hammers.
 
Engineers are useful early on later when there are no more useful wonders their value decreases.
 
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