What is your favorite Great Person?

[blitzkrieg1980]

What's your fav and why?

I didn't include Great Generals because the mechanics are different, their uses are all war related, and the methods to get them are different.

EDIT: Re-posted to include Great Engineers, moderated requested to remove the old poll.

 

[assass1n]

GE-for Mining Inc. and Rushing a wonder

 

[carl corey]

Great Scientist. It's just too easy to abuse them to get Liberalism. Most times I try to get exclusively GSs for quite a while. Maybe an Academy, Philo pop, Paper pop, double Education pop, maybe Liberalism pop. You can even go down the Scientific Method line, with Physics and Biology. Later on many great persons will be used simply for a golden age so I don't care what type they are.

 

[Hereditary Rule]

In my opinion:

Best: Scientists, Engineers

Most Versatile: Merchant

Most Fun: Spy, General

One fun trick with a spy is use him to fully explore your continent if you know you'll eventually infiltrate and don't need to points right away.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I picked Great Prophet because you can harness them pretty well (IE farm them specifically without too much GPP pollution) and they're the most versatile. Earlier ones can be used to found religions, build the shrines. Later ones I always settle in one city (usually a solid production city which doubles as a gold city).

I mean, who can argue with +2 +5 and +3 from each settled prophet. Once I had a shrine city that was running 8 priests and had settled 9 prophets and had Angkor Wat. Just my religious specialists/prophets were netting me 34, 53, and 51 without modifiers!

Most Versatile: Merchant

Really? You think the Great Merchant is more versatile than the Prophet?

 

[oyzar]

prophet is the least versatile... scientist is the most versatile...

 

[Soirana]

You need at least three GS to grab liberalism, while one prophet can bulb Theology which can be converted in AP win even in tech deficit...

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

ver·sa·tile (vûrs-tl, -tl)
adj.
1. Capable of doing many things competently.
2. Having varied uses or serving many functions

Scientists can bulb, build academy, and settle for +9

Prophets can found religions via bulbing (for diplomacy purposes), build shrines (great for gold), and when settled bring 5 (only 1 less than settled merchants), production (2 like an engineer), and a good portion of science (3 ) meaning they have more uses and serve more functions (that of science, wealth, AND production)

 

[Soirana]

they give three beakers only under representation.

 

[Wurth]

Granted I do not have much experience playing civ as of yet, but I have to say that the great artist is the GP I have the most fun with. I build an advance city near 2 rival cities and culture bomb. After 20-50 turns, I can usually get both of them to flip to me.

 

[carl corey]

Scientists can also found religions by bulbing, see Philosophy. And while one religion + shrine could be cool, there's a cost to founding and spreading many religions, so I don't see that as a net benefit.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

they give three beakers only under representation.

... yeah? Why would you not want to run REP when you have it?

Ahhh,... I see. I'll edit my post about Great Scientist.

 

[carl corey]

Why would you have it?! On most starts you won't have the Pyramids, so you won't run Representation until Constitution. That's quite a long period of time.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Why would you have it?! On most starts you won't have the Pyramids, so you won't run Representation until Constitution. That's quite a long period of time.

You can capture the 'mids sometimes if you can't build them. But Representation is mid game and comes right about when a boost to science is welcome. Besides, without rep, GS only give +6 which doesn't add to versatility. Simply the nature of the settled GP makes it more VERSATILE as per the dictionary definition of doing a variety of things well.

 

[Soirana]

Honestly i do not want prophets after constitution. Well, may be as Golden Age fodder...

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Wow... well. That's a personal choice. I personally have no idea why you wouldn't want a 10 per turn (with buildings) boost with a 2 boost to production and a 5 (with buildings) boost to science every turn. Gather up enough of them and you can double your production in that city, and run an extra 10% on your sliders

 

[gfm]

Really? You think the Great Merchant is more versatile than the Prophet?

A Great Merchant can :

1. Found one of the Corporation (Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills)
2. Be settled to feed half a pop and bring you a lot of over time (yield is +1 +6)
3. Complete a trade mission that amounts to a huge amount of

1. and 2. allows more versatility than any other Great People, since what you do with your population is up to you (you can convert it to more , , , , etc.). The obtained from 3. can allow you to :

1. Research at a deficit
2. Bribe another AI
3. Trade tech more efficiently
4. Upgrade an army

Thus, it seems to me that the Great Merchant is the most versatile (hell, they can also bulb techs ). The Great Prophet is not that versatile, not until Representation comes around. And no, you can't always build or capture the Pyramids. Even then, the +3 doesn't break the tie since it is applied to all settled specialists and super-specialists.

 

[carl corey]

Simply the nature of the settled GP makes it more VERSATILE as per the dictionary definition of doing a variety of things well.

Ah, but we didn't agree that it does them well. Or well enough to surpass GSs. That's the problem, not the simple fact that a settled GP makes both money and production. And if you take versatility as simply "doing several different things" without the value of those things, then I'm not interested by it.

As for the Pyramids, I think the problem here is that we're not talking about a specific level or map. On Emperor and above even with stone you might want to skip the Pyramids for other objectives. Without stone or Industrious it would take a miracle for me to want to build them. And then on continents/hemisphere/big and small etc. maps chances are the Pyramids are on the other continent, so no way to capture them in time to make a difference with Constitution.

 

[azzaman333]

My favourite is great spies, but the best are great scientists.

 

[carl corey]

Wow... well. That's a personal choice. I personally have no idea why you wouldn't want a 10 per turn (with buildings) boost with a 2 boost to production and a 5 (with buildings) boost to science every turn. Gather up enough of them and you can double your production in that city, and run an extra 10% on your sliders

How about a 9 + 210% boost? Library 25% + Univ. 25% + Academy 50% + Oxford 100% + Free Religion 10%. Then you get Observatory (25%) and maybe some Monasteries (10% per building).