What the light bulb yields (great people question)

[Yooka]

You know what I think would be a useful and fairly easy-to-generate resource on these forums? A simple ordered list of the technologies that great people rush. It seems that there is a linear pattern to what tech the light bulb button will give you that doesn't change with the direction you are taking your civ. Obviously, Prophets suggest/provide different technologies than Scientists, so this would be a thread with several lists. But I was just wondering if anyone might want to make these lists, so that people could have them, and plan a tech advance in greater detail - IE - know exactly what NOT to research in anticipation of a great person offering exactly that tech.

Did I describe that well? Feels like a difficult notion to articulate for some reason. Anyway, it's just a thought. With all the crazy graphs and chart resources on these boards, seems like an easy enough thing to make in comparision.

 

[Aramazd]

Each Great Person gives a tech that relates to its specialty (i.e. Great Prophets give religious techs). I don't know what they give spefically, but I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Prince David]

Near as I can figure, you would get wahtever is "next" as you move up the tree (within the proper category). The problem comes if you have an old tech that you have not bothered to get because it's not important to you. It's a real drag to discover that you are eligible to get Meditation for free when you're otherwise up around compass/currency.

 

[BlackMage]

It tells you when you get the GP what tech he will rush.

 

[MyOtherName]

Did I describe that well? Feels like a difficult notion to articulate for some reason.

Apparently not. (Assuming, of course, I understand you correctly! )

The original poster (and me too, actually) would like a list that looks like:

Great Prophet:
#1: Meditation
#2: Polytheism
#3: Priesthood
...

so that if we wanted to use a great person to research a particular tech, we could easily look up what we need to research first so that it will be available.

It would also be nice to simply know what is available! One game, I checked the light-bulb on a great scientist on a whim... and it said, "Philosophy!" It made sense after the fact, but I had always thought of it as a religous tech, because of taoism.

This probably isn't something I'd do often, but knowing about would allow me to aim for it when it would be useful. (And it was quite useful that game!)

Or, the other way around, if you've set yourself up for great people, and you're not sure what to do with them (darn it, I built the colossus and great lighthouse again! I still haven't figured out the best use for my great merchants. ), then having this list handy would be helpful for making better use of your great people.


Now, I'm sure I've seen a thread that has such a list, but I don't recall where. Maybe it's in the strategy articles forum? Anyone have a link?

 

[Kilroy]

I think they just research whichever is the most expensive (and researchable) in the applicable category,

 

[ekanata]

In Civ4UnitInfos.xml there's FlavorType entry for each kind of great people. In Civ4TechInfos.xml there are some value being associated with some FlavorType entry in every technology. Has someone found the relationship of those values ?

 

[MyOtherName]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952&highlight=great+list+discover

A start towards the answer.

 

[Hamato]

I just tried to find out but there is no ultimate answer! I'll explain this.
I just started a new game and used the world editor to get rid of any starting techs and then create many great prophets to see what techs they give and write the order down.

This way I got up to liberalism in a long line and then the next great prophet gave me masonry! After that of course followed monotheism which is an early tech with the possibility of getting a religion so it should have been discovered by the prophets way earlier I thought BUT the problem was masonry!
After having a look at the link supplied by MyOtherName I see that monotheism has value 10 (of 10) for great prophets so is highest priority. However, masonry is prequisite and is only of value 1, equal to liberalism (don't know why liberalism was chosen over masonry though). This means the order of technologic advancement by great people depends heavily on techs you will surely have gotten in another way (or can you imaging getting to liberalism without getting masonry first in a real game? )

In conclusion, to find out what tech a great person will give you, you have to look through the list in MyOtherName's link and search the highest rated tech that you have the prequisites for but have not yet discouvered. If there are several techs with equal rating I don't know If there is no tech available with a rating of at least 1, the great person will not discover any tech.

 

[Charles 22]

I just tried to find out but there is no ultimate answer! I'll explain this.
I just started a new game and used the world editor to get rid of any starting techs and then create many great prophets to see what techs they give and write the order down.

This way I got up to liberalism in a long line and then the next great prophet gave me masonry! After that of course followed monotheism which is an early tech with the possibility of getting a religion so it should have been discovered by the prophets way earlier I thought BUT the problem was masonry!
After having a look at the link supplied by MyOtherName I see that monotheism has value 10 (of 10) for great prophets so is highest priority. However, masonry is prequisite and is only of value 1, equal to liberalism (don't know why liberalism was chosen over masonry though). This means the order of technologic advancement by great people depends heavily on techs you will surely have gotten in another way (or can you imaging getting to liberalism without getting masonry first in a real game? )

In conclusion, to find out what tech a great person will give you, you have to look through the list in MyOtherName's link and search the highest rated tech that you have the prequisites for but have not yet discouvered. If there are several techs with equal rating I don't know If there is no tech available with a rating of at least 1, the great person will not discover any tech.

IIRC you can see the tech that will be bought into when mousing over the lightbulb. The solution to them not having anything on there, if that ever happens (personally I would think the lightbulb would be greyed out in such an instance), is to have them sit around until something is available. I wonder if they count towards the unit cost?

 

[Hamato]

IIRC you can see the tech that will be bought into when mousing over the lightbulb. The solution to them not having anything on there, if that ever happens (personally I would think the lightbulb would be greyed out in such an instance), is to have them sit around until something is available. I wonder if they count towards the unit cost?

I know that you see the tech by tooltip but I think the thread starter meant knowing what a certain great person will give you before you having great person (perhaps to know what gp to focus on with specialists).
The lightbulb is not greyed out (iirc from my test) but not even there. And yes, gp count towards unit cost (I had -5gpt in my test through 20 or so great prophets).