Why Can't I Capture Great People???

[holywar]

For some reason, the game will not allow me to capture great people except for great prophets. I want to enslave, I mean naturalize/assimilate all of my enemy's great people, and make them serve my civilization. But when I attempt to capture these prodigies, they vanish.

First of all, a civ should not be able to preemptively destroy a great person by a sneak attack DoW. It rarely happens to me, but when it does it pisses me off.

At the same time, great people should be captureable. They are capturable in real life. Like how the Americans captured Einstein and made him build the bomb they dropped on Germany. The game should be like that too.

I think the game should be changed so when an enemy unit comes into contact with the great person, it is automatically transported to the nearest friendly city. Then, upon capturing the city, you get whatever great person is in it. (There would be no way of knowing which city the great person is in, you find out after the city falls.)

That way great people are not lost from the game due to war. It is a tragedy to waste such great minds.

 

[CaptainPatch]

What I'd like to see is a way to ransom GPs back to their own civ. Likewise for missionaries and workers.

 

[Scarpa]

I agree it would be nice if you really could capture and use enemy great people. But I am posting to say you really should educate yourself about Einstein and the making of the atomic bomb. The real story is far more interesting.

Edit: Selling back GP or integrating them with espionage, like trying to cause defections would be awesome!

 

[PrimoXanthous]

For some reason, the game will not allow me to capture great people except for great prophets. I want to enslave, I mean naturalize/assimilate all of my enemy's great people, and make them serve my civilization. But when I attempt to capture these prodigies, they vanish.

First of all, a civ should not be able to preemptively destroy a great person by a sneak attack DoW. It rarely happens to me, but when it does it pisses me off.

.....

That way great people are not lost from the game due to war. It is a tragedy to waste such great minds.

especially when your unit moves to Da Vinci, what a waste that should be Mona Lisa.

At the same time, great people should be captureable. They are capturable in real life. Like how the Americans captured Einstein and made him build the bomb they dropped on Germany. The game should be like that too.

Americans didn't handcuff Einstein when he flee to the US, so they don't capture him and he is not a prisoner. I think he is visiting the US before the Nazi wage war on Europe. And because he is a Jew, he never came back to Germany and became a US citizen on 1940.

He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the U.S., becoming an American citizen in 1940.[7] On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential development of "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" and recommending that the U.S. begin similar research. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project. Einstein supported defending the Allied forces, but largely denounced using the new discovery of nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

source: Wikipedia

P.S Einstein didn't make a bomb, never. But his Theory of Relativity became the basis for making the A-Bomb.

 

[Dr. D]

At the same time, great people should be captureable. They are capturable in real life. Like how the Americans captured Einstein and made him build the bomb they dropped on Germany. The game should be like that too.

LOL, please tell me this is not what they are teaching in schools these days!

At any rate, just pretend that when you capture Mozart, he isn't free to create his masterpieces but rather is enslaved to serve as the minstrel in your court for your entertainment only.

 

[Callonia]

Uh but in Civ 5 you can't settle great people, you only can do that in civ 4.
So that means there isn't any great people for you to capture.
They all become ashes after building a hex improvement or doing something.

Only exception to this rule is the great general/admiral who tend to stick around for long time but they become ashes after building a citadel or healing few ships.

 

[chazzycat]

laughably incorrect ideas about Einstein aside, I agree that there should be some kind of option to do something with them other than just delete them. I like the idea to ransom them back. Taking them as your own GP, I would be against. That would just be another advantage against the AI.

 

[weregamer]

There is a mod for exactly this in the Workshop.

 

[bcaiko]

laughably incorrect ideas about Einstein aside, I agree that there should be some kind of option to do something with them other than just delete them. I like the idea to ransom them back. Taking them as your own GP, I would be against. That would just be another advantage against the AI.

I agree. Even from a realism standpoint, it doesn't make much sense. You think if North Korea were to have kidnapped Steve Jobs, he'd have led them to a consumer economics golden age? Great People represent the epitome of YOUR civilization's thinkings, and the way they came to their ideas was driven by your civilization's society.

 

[Beaver79]

You can, you just have to capture the city that they are residing in. It's my favorite way to get GA, GW, and GM.

I love wonder spammers and civs going after a culture victory. They are usually weak and are basically asking for me to take their cities. I like these things too, I just don't like to build them.

 

[civ54lyfe]

it's quite realistic for realism's sake. the U.S. gained control of many dozens of top 3rd Reich scientists (Operation Paperclip) after WW2, and the U.S.S.R. got quite a few of them as well.

as a game mechanic i can't immediately see anything wrong with it either.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

There is a thread in the idea forum asking/demanding this be implemented, started by yours truly.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=514366

 

[cpm4001]

For some reason, the game will not allow me to capture great people except for great prophets. I want to enslave, I mean naturalize/assimilate all of my enemy's great people, and make them serve my civilization. But when I attempt to capture these prodigies, they vanish.

This is intentional. Don't ask me why, but it is.

At the same time, great people should be captureable. They are capturable in real life. Like how the Americans captured Einstein and made him build the bomb they dropped on Germany. The game should be like that too.

*History major bangs head against desk*

 

[holywar]

You can, you just have to capture the city that they are residing in. It's my favorite way to get GA, GW, and GM.

Is this true? Seems like I tried doing that before and it didn't work.

I like the idea to ransom them back. Taking them as your own GP, I would be against. That would just be another advantage against the AI.

Ransoming them would also be an advantage too, right? Also, when you capture a city, you get the manufactories, academies, and customs houses in it. Isn't that virtually the same thing as getting the GPs? What's wrong with taking them alive?

You think if North Korea were to have kidnapped Steve Jobs, he'd have led them to a consumer economics golden age? Great People represent the epitome of YOUR civilization's thinkings, and the way they came to their ideas was driven by your civilization's society.

Of course not. The North Koreans would have made Jobs build a state-of-the-art customs house so they could levy taxes on American goods. They would not have experienced a golden age until Bill Gates was deported to their country from Hong Kong.

Some of you people need to brush up on your world history.

 

[holywar]

Also, once an enemy unit comes into contact with the GP, there should be no using them until the war is over. They go into "hiding" in the nearest city until peace returns. The only exception would be for great generals and admirals, who could be captured on the battlefield and ransomed as high value POWs.

If the great general/admiral is captured when the unit he is stacked with is destoyed, there would be a 66% chance the GG/GA is killed and a 33% chance of capture.

Great generals and admirals could also be executed in lieu of ransom, but there would be a diplomatic penalty with all other Civs.

GPs who do not come into contact with enemy units would not be affected.

 

[Socratatus]

This is why games should not just entertain, but also educate. Young people spend most of their time playing games, so why not help them learn as well?

Anyway on topic, I suppose great people could be `captured`, but only worked for you if you could be nice to them somehow. say, if the person `captured` had the same ideology he`d work for you, but if the ideologies were starkly opposed he wouldn`t - An influx of proportional cash would also be required to sweeten the deal and take him fully away from his original Civ. I could see it working.

 

[Wojciech Rodzik]

At the same time, great people should be captureable. They are capturable in real life. Like how the Americans captured Einstein and made him build the bomb they dropped on Germany. The game should be like that too.

Jesus f* Christ!

IS that what you people teach children in US?

 

[Shaleghi]

Yes i agree to caputure, and if they are the same ideology then you keep them. If not you could use them as a specialist in one of your buildings. ... Or put then in the police station as prisoner.... he he he....

(Could also trade GP ,,, like they trake soccer players from one club to another. )

 

[chazzycat]

Ransoming them would also be an advantage too, right? Also, when you capture a city, you get the manufactories, academies, and customs houses in it. Isn't that virtually the same thing as getting the GPs? What's wrong with taking them alive?

well I was thinking the ransom would just be a bit of gold, like 100 or something. That's a far cry from free great people. Just one or two scientists or engineers captured over the course of the game would be very beneficial...and with a careful watch on many civs you could probably get more. And yes a live GP is much better than the improvement, because you have both options, and often the bulb/rush is the better one.

It could even change the entire strategy for science games, to be more based on warmongering, which I am definitely opposed to. Especially since warmongering penalties have been mainly moved to city capturing, you could capture GPs and make peace over & over with impunity.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Sorry, but I feel I need to step in and correct this misconception about Steve Jobs being great: he was nothing but a flashy con man, a salesman, a psychopath who stole from and cheated anyone foolish enough to trust him. He was member #1 in his own cult of personality, he used his charisma to convince people to buy his inferior products at higher prices than his superior competitors charged. I'm so sick of people acting like he was the Tech Messiah, while having no idea who Wozniak is. If you are one of those people, Woz is the man who invented a computer small and cheap enough to fit on a desk, i.e. the guy who did all the work. Jobs was in charge of sales.