which GP's do you shoot for (philosophical)

[aelf]

I've read the article on GMs before. IMO, though, the merchant city is difficult to set up. GMs don't come easily the way the GP or GS do. The lateness of this strategy's flowering is also a detriment as you wouldn't have been benefitting in the early to mid game period, which is the most important time to seal your victory. Burning a GS on Education, for example, might let you win the Liberalism race and allow you to get cavalry much sooner than the AI gets riflemen (a game winner), while merging a GM to a city will only give you a marginal increase in commerce each until you have enough of them (less likely to have an impact on the game).

I feel that on the higher levels, lightbulbing techs with your GS is much more important than merging it. The marginal increase in beakers each super scientist gives you is much less powerful than getting techs like Education and Physics much sooner than the AI (which is not something common on those levels due to the AI's bonuses).

In the early game, though, the GP is potentially more powerful. And considering how important the early game is, I think the GP is a contender for the most important great person title. +5 commerce makes it almost as powerful commercially as a GM and +1 hammer makes it almost half a GE. Hammers and commerce are very important early on, when you have enough food to grow your cities to their limits but have a need for science and productivity. Moreover, the money a shrine or two can bring you projects the power of the GP into the mid and late game period. All in all, it's a good deal.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Great prophets are nice at the begining, but dang it do they get annoying once you have all the important religious techs and no religious capitals...

Two Words: Angkor Wat (hmm, I think I've had this converation before...)

2P/5g super priests are a wonderful addition to an Ironworks/Wall Street/Shrine super city. It takes a bit of care and management to get the conditions just right, but Saladin can go nuts with this sort of goal.

 

[shivute]

Gotta love Great Priests - as the above posts state they are superb at the start of the game and can have a major impact. The 5 commerce when added to a city can be very important in the early game + for shrine.

I don't like them after the middle ages though, here I prefer the scientist for his academies.

The cash the merchant brings is good for upgrading units especially handy upgrading all those city raider units to grenadiers and riflemen - whoops now its game over for the AI!

The engineer - if you research for forges early, they can be exceptionally useful in building early wonders. They are also useful for building buildings such as nat wonders and cathedrals in cities where you don't want production tied up.

The artist is essential for culture wins and the "bomb" can be very useful.


Ultimately the priest wins due to the impact he can have on the early game.
Then the scientist. I feel the other 3 are more specialist for specific uses.
I try not to burn great people for techs as I think they can be used better.

 

[InFlux5]

I feel that on the higher levels, lightbulbing techs with your GS is much more important than merging it. The marginal increase in beakers each super scientist gives you is much less powerful than getting techs like Education and Physics much sooner than the AI (which is not something common on those levels due to the AI's bonuses).

Exactly. I was saying, in my last game as Mao I was isolated for a while, and when I finally encountered others they were ahead of me by 6 techs or more (this is on Monarch.) I was able to catch up mostly because of light-bulbing and trading (plus the fact that I had a large island to myself.) The Great People were the only reason I stayed in the game. That one really cemented my appreciation of Great People.

It's interesting that several people are so keen on merging Great Priests in the early game. I am going to have to try that. In my mind the GP is for a shrine, or for founding a new religion. The extra hammer did always look kind of nice, but I have yet to merge one early. The 5 gold is obviously welcome, but if you can spread your religion to more than 5 cities the shrine will bring in more income. Still, I always hate tying up production to build missionaries.

 

[NaZdReG]

Just played through a prince, pangea, domination victory.. during the game I built the great library in the capitol, and used it along with several specialists to crank out great scientists. pop for techs etc.

my question related to this is:

how do you specifically allocate your capitol? it usually ends up a hybrid due to the game giving you a mix of food and production resources.. but do you allocate it specifically to
production
science
commerce
gp farming

or??

would love the input thanks in advance

NaZ

 

[Sisiutil]

Just played through a prince, pangea, domination victory.. during the game I built the great library in the capitol, and used it along with several specialists to crank out great scientists. pop for techs etc.

my question related to this is:

how do you specifically allocate your capitol? it usually ends up a hybrid due to the game giving you a mix of food and production resources.. but do you allocate it specifically to
production
science
commerce
gp farming

or??

would love the input thanks in advance

NaZ

It really depends on the surrounding tiles. I used to always make my capital the science city, but lately, I've been avoiding that. Instead, my capital tends to build several early wonders that generate Great Prophets (Stonehenge, Oracle, maybe Angkor Wat). In fact, aside from being one of the main wonder production centres, my capitals don't specialize as much as other cities anymore.

I rarely found an early religion, so another city (captured or built) well have a shrine and therefore be the best commerce/weath-generating city.

My second city is usually built to claim copper and often ends up becoming my military (Heroic Epic, West Point) production centre.

Another city with lots of farmable land will become the GP farm. A city with a good mix of cottagable and farmable land becomes the science city, for commerce and specialists. Often they're one and the same.

A mid-game city with lots of river and either grassland or floodplains tiles will build the ironworks, have watermills and workshops everywhere, and become the late-game wonder workhorse.

The capital is usually just a really good, all-purpose city, so I don't tend to specialize it, because it can serve so many functions.

 

[NaZdReG]

sisuitil,

thanks for your input once again! always helpful to improve my insight to strategies that help us all be more successful.

thinking of using qin shi (ind + fin) for next game
with the capitol being a wonder building focus, would it be a good idea to attempt the pyramids if you get stone (yeah for once not thinking of the cs slingshot) then drop a library in there on the way to techs leading to the great library. once the GE spawns, use it to get the library for free.

the debate at that point would be weather or not to send the GE over to a nearby city to spawn the great library, assuming you have a nearby city covered with cottages in order to maximize long term science output. if the wonders are seperated, then we'll end up with a great scientist to drop an academy in that city, but probably never see another GE from the capitol unless we get a forge in there and assign someone to keep up with the 2 free scientists.

if the capitol has enough gold output to be a good science city, then we might as well combine the wonders into the same location, to maximize all GP points. honestly a GE or a GS are fine as far as techs they can pop for, so either one would be great.

thoughts?

NaZ

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

In my mind the GP is for a shrine, or for founding a new religion. The extra hammer did always look kind of nice, but I have yet to merge one early. The 5 gold is obviously welcome, but if you can spread your religion to more than 5 cities the shrine will bring in more income.

It's a question of timing. If you've got a holy city that's going to be an important financial center, of course you want the shrine there eventually. But it that the best play now?

The Shrine gets you gold per converted city, doubles the chance that the religion will spread on its own to a connected city without religion, and gives you some slots for running more priests.

In the early going, it isn't clear that these are much better than attaching the priest to the right city. The number of cities your shrine is connected to isn't very high (until you unlock the trade route techs), you don't really have the spare production for missionaries, you probably haven't converted many cities yet, so the income is low, etc. So do you need to build the shrine now?

A good counter question to ask at this point: if you are planning to attach the GP to a city, isn't that a good indication that you are targetting the wrong type of GP?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

the debate at that point would be weather or not to send the GE over to a nearby city to spawn the great library, assuming you have a nearby city covered with cottages in order to maximize long term science output.

I don't believe cottages really have anything to do with it. Yes, if you are going to be running high science in the modern era, then cottages are going to be featured at your best science cities, so the Academy you build to accelerate the bonus from the Great Library will continue to be useful later, and Oxford will stack well with it.

On the other hand, having a science city driven by GS means that you don't need to run the slider on maximum, but can instead use a more even division. Now you don't need so many academies either, and your science doesn't go into the tank when you want to buy rush something. If that science city is your GP farm, then rushing the Great Library there accelerates the production of GS.

Choices choices choices.

 

[aelf]

I usually use my first Prophet on the CS slingshot and attach the second. At that point, the additional 5 gold in the capital is great and the extra hammer certainly helps. I will only build a shrine with my 3rd Prophet, at which point shrines begin to become profitable enough.

 

[Marguerite Ming]

Great prophets are nice at the begining, but dang it do they get annoying once you have all the important religious techs and no religious capitals....

I usually save them later on in the hopes of a great merchant (equally useless in my book...) to start a golden age so i don't have to sacrafice someone important....

So merge them into a city as a super-specialist. Two hammers becomes 3 with forge and OR, per turn. On Marathon speed, an early GP can be worth almost 3000 hammers. Later, with factories and power they are worth 4 hammers each, per turn.

 

[Strickl3r]

Hmm, the Thread is so old, most people who posted here have already died of natural causes.

Also your approach has proven not to be best by far.
But funny to read the Thread, i guess that's how content developes

 

[Izuul]

This thread is fully decomposed.

 

[urborror]

The great scientist's academy really makes a difference in the early game when you might only have a few cities. I put academies in the best commerce cities, later, while using the other great people for golden ages. Not sure if that's the smartest use of them. Having a Great Engineer to rush wonders can be great, though.

The super-specialist could give large rewards over time, but there are critical windows of development in the early game where boosts make the difference. A 50% boost to science in a cottaged capital could increase your tech rate by 30% in the BCs, depending on your empire. Once you've got 25 cities, a few super-specialists aren't going to win or lose the game. It's the early snowball accumulation that counts.

That's why I used to like Suryavarman of Khmer (expansive/creative), since you get cheap libraries, granaries and workers at the beginning of the game. I don't think he's particularly popular, but early game benefits can be key.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Hmm, the Thread is so old, most people who posted here have already died of natural causes.

I don't want to go on the cart.

 

[Crispy007]

You'll be stone dead in a moment

 

[plastiqe]

Wa-wa-what avoid masonry for a CS slingshot?
Oh, 2006.

 

[aelf]

Ah, the memories.

 

[Olson]

Hmm, the Thread is so old, most people who posted here have already died of natural causes.

Also your approach has proven not to be best by far.
But funny to read the Thread, i guess that's how content developes

I was active on CityData.com for a long time and every once in a while a new member would resurrect an old thread by responding to the OP. We'd all be on it, responding to the OP, until someone noticed it was years old and the OP was asking ie. "should I move to Denver or Colorado Springs?" Hilarious.

 

[noto2]

7 year necro, wow, that's impressive