What is your favorite Great Person?

[Stolen Rutters]

My favorite Great Person is Great Merchant, but I like GS early in the game. Since it is easier for me to get more Scientist slots pre CS, I push them hard (Academy and Philo pop) to help me win Liberalism, even though I would take a GM otherwise.

I prefer GS early, then GE and GM battle in the mid game, then GM is my priority once I get a GE for Mining, Inc.

 

[lilnev]

You can always hold onto the first GE you get for Mining Inc. (if you can afford to pass up a wonder).

That's the problem. You don't always get a "first GE". The options are, 1) Delay running scientists until you've got Metal Casting, built a forge, and run a lone engineer for long enough that your first great person is a GE. 2) Get the first two GSs from scientists as normal, then stop all GP production for a good long while so your lone engineer can build up enough points. 3) Generate the full number of great people, and just hope to get lucky.

I guess going for Pyramids and Hanging Gardens counts as an option, sometimes.

Basically, there's only one engineer slot before Steel (and good luck getting Ironworks built in your NE city in a reasonable timeframe). So the only ways to be sure of getting a GE involve some significant opportunity costs.

 

[Gumbolt]

Does no one love great artists? Cant they bulb divine right or music?

Probably depend on time in game for which i prefer. Great scientists are so easy to get if you build Glib. Early game probably prefer a great priest for shrines or religions

Mid game GS or GE. GS for teching of liberalism. Ge to build key wonders or add to cities.

Late game maybe GE for corps. Even a GA gives you a certain corp.

 

[Stewie0416]

I really like different great people at different times. in the beginning of the game i REALLY like prophets! Just the money boost itself is usually enough to push my slider up when i settle one, or i might get lucky and get a shrine going!

After, around maces and trebs, i really like GS. They easily get me to Lib and onto Rifling!

Around the time i get rifling i LOVE GM! I usually use the one from Economics to found Sid's and get another one to do a trade mission and upgrade all those maces.

And in the end game GE are pretty amazing. Just so many great wonders can be rushed AND Mining Co. can be founded!

For Great artists and spies, i really don't care very much. They both are OK but i use them for more specific purposes.

 

[Tephros]

The great spy is generally the best for settling.

Settled the base yields are:

Great Spy: +3 +12
Great Artist: +3 +12
Great Scientist: +1 +6
Great Engineer: +3 +3
Great Merchant: +1 +6
Great Prophet: +2 +5

Generally, it looks like the artist is the weakest to settle except when you're going for a cultural victory. Outside of future legendary cities, culture points don't add anything to your economy or victory unless it gives you your first border pop or makes the difference between having control over a tile. In that case, I say, why not declare war and take it by force? And when the AI builds cities 3 spaces apart, the instant, revolution-independent, multi-border pops aren't that big of a deal.

The way to make the settled great persons equal would be to assume that 1=1=2=2=4=4

Though even given that, the great scientist and great merchant are worse to settle than the great engineer, great prophet, or great spy.

But my next question is: Is really worth half as much as when you can get an equal or better research yield per point with ? Furthermore you can get better multipliers for with less investment, which I suppose makes up for having to build spies. It looks to me like the great spy has the best yields.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

fav.: ge... duh, mining is bordering overpowered... and a ge it's so dang hard to get.
best: obviously gs pre lib., gm post lib., but those thankfully are easy to get if you plan accordingly.

 

[gfm]

It looks to me like the great spy has the best yields.

Well technically, you have to factor in the spent on spies and the fact that there actually are other rivals around to steal techs from. But I guess your point is valid in most cases. Moreover, as can be spent either to hamper your rivals' progress (sabotage), to speed up your research (steal technology) or to conquer more land (city revolt), the spy can be considered fairly versatile.

Still, let's not forget that his usefulness is somewhat more dependent than other GP on the diplomatic situation (no fast techer around, isolated, etc.)

 

[Iranon]

I like them all apart from artists. Great Engineer slightly more than others.

Regarding super specialists: The raw output of scientists is actually the weakest (barring that of artists if we don't need culture...). In practice they're still good because we can get the best early modifers on science.
I still prefer Engineers to settle since my city with the highest beaker output tends to be a bloated Bureaucratic capital rather than a dedicated science city.

 

[carl corey]

Oh, I wasn't arguing that the settled GS has the best output. I'm arguing that it has a comparable output to the other great persons. And yes, how useful each great person is depends on the situation, but on Emperor+ I find that most of my games and most posted games include a GS-fueled run to Liberalism followed by war with Cuirassiers, Grenadiers, Cannons or Rifles. Thus I expect a lot of people to favor GSs. GEs are great, of course, but the low probability to get them makes me not very interested in them. Plus, in most games I will get them when I'm already Industrious and have wonder-boosting resources. I rarely spend the obtained GE on a wonder in that case.

 

[gfm]

Regarding super specialists: The raw output of scientists is actually the weakest (barring that of artists if we don't need culture...). In practice they're still good because we can get the best early modifers on science.

Very true : forges and markets come way after libraries (and cost 33% to 66% more in )

I still prefer Engineers to settle since my city with the highest beaker output tends to be a bloated Bureaucratic capital rather than a dedicated science city.

I never settle Great Engineers (partly because they're hard to come by early). I use them to build that Wonder I'm after (the Great Library or the Pyramids usually). I also tend to consider their settled output a bit on the weak side, compared to, say, Great Prophets. Maybe now I will consider settling them in my Bureaucracy Capital to make their output 4

 

[gfm]

Plus, in most games I will get them when I'm already Industrious and have wonder-boosting resources. I rarely spend the obtained GE on a wonder in that case.

Yeah sadly, the only way to rake in Engineer is to run an Engineer... or build Wonders (the Great Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens, the Hagia Sophia, etc.). If you can build so many Wonders, chances are you don't need an Great Engineer to begin with. Talk about synergistic

 

[carl corey]

You know, in Warlords with the Great Wall giving Great Engineer points a GE was my favorite great person on par with the GS. I had a game with Gandhi in which I got 10+ GEs during the game. I had GW, Pyramids, forge Engineer, Hanging Gardens all in one city, it got ridiculous really fast. I'd trade for a tech that AIs had researched long time ago (from an AI who wasn't building the wonder) and puff! instant wonder with a GE. How they must have hated me!

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

fav.: ge... duh, mining is bordering overpowered... and a ge it's so dang hard to get.
best: obviously gs pre lib., gm post lib., but those thankfully are easy to get if you plan accordingly.

Well, what about when you're playing a domination game and really NEED to run State Property (say on large or huge maps). You're not going to be able to run corporations, so that's very specific to a certain situation.

 

[UncleJJ]

Well, what about when you're playing a domination game and really NEED to run State Property (say on large or huge maps). You're not going to be able to run corporations, so that's very specific to a certain situation.

It is perfectly possible to invade other land masses with corporations (running FM or Mercantilism). You need to use vassals and colonies on the larger land masses. At the end of the game the colonial maintenance costs can be high if you keep a lot of cities but peanuts compared to the cost of the army and easily met.

State Property is great when invading other land masses but not essential, if you're smart (and rich) there are ways around it like moving your capital. The main advantage of SP is that it is simple and robust, you don't have to spend a lot of time on spreading corporations and building infrastructure to use food (for Sushi), instead you can just build a barracks and workshops and start making replacements.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

An excellent point. I have, indeed, utilized Free Market to run corporations while invading other landmasses, however, I was on lower levels. So I assumed it was near impossible on the higher levels of play. Clearly, I'm wrong

 

[SnowlyWhite]

you have:

- palace - 1 continent covered;
- fp - 1 continent covered; that's one of the reasons I often don't build fp fast in bts, since you can't move it, contrary to palace
- versailles - another continent covered if you didn't rush to build the fp.

and on large/huge, I assume mining is giving... 30 - 40 hammers? I got over 20 on normal. Simply by building wealth with factory/forge/plant and the bonus is sick. And besides, I don't have the machine for large/huge maps

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Gotcha on the cpu not allowing large/huge. That sounds like smart thinking. I guess if I'm invading other continents and plan on keeping the land, then I should be holding off on Versailles and Forgotten Palace which I'm not doing. I'll try this next time I go for a huge continents domination victory.

 

[UncleJJ]

Or, as I prefer to do, build the FP in the middle of your original continent and then when you capture cities on another major landmass move your capital there. That has an advantage if you're using spies as they return to the capital after their mission. By that time you won't be using Bureaucracy so the capital position is not important.

Versaillies is a wonder I never build, so find out where it is and make it an objective to capture its city. That continent is set up for a large number of your cities now.

But frankly if you are smart about how you use vassals and making a colony on a landmass (needs 2 cities) you can avoid most of these costs by gifting cities you don't want to them and just keeping the 3 or 4 best cities maximum. Colonial costs are not too bad if you only have a few cities per landmass. Once you're on you late game Domination run you don't have much time to do a lot with captured cities anyway so they may as well be gifted to your vassals so you can move on to the next target.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Vassals, eh? I guess I'm addicted to seeing my CIV's cultural color cover the map

 

[Solo4114]

For me it's entirely dependent upon the circumstances and timing.

Early in the game I love popping a prophet if I also have a holy city. That's free money, baby.

Later on, I love popping GSes to build academies in my science cities and just race away from the competition, tech-wise.

Sometimes I love popping a GE if I can use him to finish a wonder I need or grab a tech I want.


Great Spies I usually haven't found all that helpful, but I'm still getting used to really pushing espionage. Now that I know it can be used both for warfare (IE: no more need to bombard!) and research (IE: steal techs non-stop), I'll be putting more emphasis on it.

GAs are great for culture bombing, of course.