Where do Great Person Improvements get placed?

Rekk

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My default playstyle is to maximize the number of workers I put out in the field with high yield tiles. To me, this means avoiding placing great person improvements on resource tiles. Recently, forum threads have been leading me differently, but I don't really understand why.
 
My default playstyle is to maximize the number of workers I put out in the field with high yield tiles. To me, this means avoiding placing great person improvements on resource tiles. Recently, forum threads have been leading me differently, but I don't really understand why.
There are two situations it is an advantage to put a great person on a resource. I'll use grassland stone vs a flat grassland tile as an example, because its generally stone is good resource to put a great person on.

The first, if a farm is more valuable than a quarry. If I put a great person on a stone, I lose a quarry. If I put it on grassland, I lose a farm. So basically, is a farm better than a quarry? I think the answer is often yes. If the farm was part of a triangle it would have earned 2 food, and possibly boosted its neighbors. So just in raw yield count, the farm earned more than 2 yields of the quarry. Note that a stoneworks boosts stone itself, not quarries.

The second is you end up in a situation where you don't work the stone later on. Basically if in the future I choose to work something (probably a specialist) over the quarry, I lose a couple yields. Either 1 hammer per turn, or 3 hammers per turn if I have a stoneworks.

There are situations where planting the resource is better, sometimes its not though. Generally stone is good to plant on, and non-freshwater non-fealty pastures
 
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Only that this example is outdated. Quarries are enhanced now by Castles and Cathedrals.


EDIT. But basically the question is this. How many tiles do you think your city is going to work late game? Because in the previous three releases, a Tradition capital ended up working just 3-4 tiles. Normally those with huge food (wheat in a farmed cluster, bananas in jungles, towns). So, those 3-4 GPTI that I placed near capital to enhaced it, were mostly wasted.

Secondary cities make better use of those tiles, because it's not so easy for them to work on specialists, but the rule still applies: If a specialist give more raw yields than the field tiles, city switch to work on food tiles and specialists, ignoring your other yields.

Now, consider that Tradition finisher adds +1 food to all GPTI. This makes a GPTI worthier to be worked, and if you place it over a resource, the benefits of making sure that this tile is going to be worked are better than the yields lost for the other improvement.

EDIT 2. Oh, and food has been drastically reduced in the last two releases, so it could be that now it's not that easy to work on specialists.
 
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Only that this example is outdated. Quarries are enhanced now by Castles and Cathedrals.
I'll edit the part about cathedrals, but the rest still stands (in a situation such as a tradition capital I'm not prioritizing a castle). Also sometimes its like 3 food vs 3 hammers, which has a decent argument for the food if you are specialist focused (which if you are planting lots of great people, you most likely are)

Also you can sometimes gain a yield by putting a great person on non-fresh water tiles, because the fresh water improvements tend to get buffed earlier
 
I first noticed this because the AI was doing it, making 'super tiles', as the resource + GP improvement offers huge yields - and larger yields from fewer tiles creates greater pop efficiency, and more space for specialists. In VP, a developed farm network is the only clear cut example where I'd try to avoid planting a GP improvement - as clearly laid out by @CrazyG.

All I can add to what others have written above is that you do have to be careful of the choices you make regarding bonuses you get from pantheon/buildings/tech/etc, as they are either to the improvement (e.g. pastures) or the resource (e.g. iron). It's not very efficient to pick a pantheon that boosts an improvement type if you then replace the improvement with a GP improvement. That said, the tradeoff is usually (certainly by late game) in favour of the GP improvement - in my opinion. Why do I think that? Basically because after a point, food/hammer yields are the only resource still best harvested from tiles rather than specialists or buildings - especially if you consider the opportunity cost of not accruing GP points.

I rarely ever play wide though, so I'm not sure these arguments apply as well when you are less specialist focused...
 
I put GP improvements on those tiles where I cannot put a farm with adjactency or a market. These tiles are few, but you don't need so many.
GMs you want to place on a road, because itenhances them further.
 
It just seems so weird that a specialist would be better than resource+improvement, to the point that it would be better to work an engineer/merchant + resource w/ GPI instead of an improved resource + grassland w/ GPI, especially late game and high specialist food costs.

Maybe I don't know the value of +3 GPP compared to the other yields. Is 1 GPP = 1 hammer? 1 science?
 
It just seems so weird that a specialist would be better than resource+improvement, to the point that it would be better to work an engineer/merchant + resource w/ GPI instead of an improved resource + grassland w/ GPI, especially late game and high specialist food costs.

Maybe I don't know the value of +3 GPP compared to the other yields. Is 1 GPP = 1 hammer? 1 science?
Few versions ago, it was really the case. In end game, you preferred working a specialist was better than working a GP improvement on a non ressource tile.

So you were working as much specialist as possible.

For tradition capital, it is still the case, but for other cities, it is less the case. But still, in early game, putting a GP improvement on a ressource:
1) Is instantaneous, so you have the ressource connecter faster
2) Gives more yield (you work a limited number of tiles, so you want them as good as possible)

Don't put GP improvement on a tile were you want to put a farm (for adjacency) or a trading post (half of the roads). Don't put it on a crappy tile (desert, ...), and then, either the city as few good tiles, so put it on a non ressource tile. Either the city has a lot of ressources, si put it on a ressource.
 
So I understand that a GE's wonder rush ability is increased based on the number of manufactories that have been created. Does it only count manufactories that are within working distance of the city which is building the wonder or all manufactories in your empire? I ask because I would like to spread out my great person tiles between cities (tradition capital can't work specialists AND a ton of great person tiles) but not if it then makes my engineer rush ability weaker.
 
So I understand that a GE's wonder rush ability is increased based on the number of manufactories that have been created. Does it only count manufactories that are within working distance of the city which is building the wonder or all manufactories in your empire? I ask because I would like to spread out my great person tiles between cities (tradition capital can't work specialists AND a ton of great person tiles) but not if it then makes my engineer rush ability weaker.

All in empire.

G
 
In my experience the best use for GPI is to place them in flat desert tiles, while I myself never really build cities in a desert the AI does, capturing these cities allows you to create the improvements which to me seem more usefull than the single use option of the GP (with the notable exception of a Prophet) making the tiles actually usefull while not loosing any tiles you could instead by using on farms, mines, quarries etc.
 
They are improvements, you want them to improve your cities' yields. Unless your city has completely run out of unimproved tiles to work, a GPTI on desert/snow is strictly worse than one on any other terrain that has a base yield. Even if you do have a city that runs out of non-desert/snow tiles to work, the fact that you can put GPTI on empty desert tiles doesn't improve the potential of that city placement, because you could just place the GPTI in some other city.
 
Yeah, I avoid placing them on desert/tundra for the same reason. You'll almost always want to be working your GPTI but unless you're working every Grassland/Plain/Hill you're arguably throwing Food/Production out the window by placing that GPTI on a tile with weak base yields.

Other things I keep in mind are placement of other improvements (ie try not to place non-Town GPTI on your city connections and still leave room for Farm triangles), locations of other Civs (they will absolutely try to steal GPTI with Citadels if you let them). Placing them on top of a resource is fine especially if you don't have many better locations.

Planting them on Forest/Jungle is also nice since they clear it instantly.
 
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