Great Persons

[Yuufo]

I would like to establish kind of a ranking for the Great People, from useful to useless. Since the importance of GP differs in, say, ancient, mid-game, and late eras, I would propose this:

Ancient era:
1 Prophet
2 Engineer
3 Scientist
4 Merchant
almost no artist these times.

Mid game:
1 Engineer
2 Scientist
3 Artist
4 Prophet
5 Merchant

Late game:
1 Engineer - Scientist
3 Merchant
4 Artist
5 Prophet

Does anyone follow me?
ANd why is there no great general like in CIv 3?

[Melboz99]

Great Artists should be ranked higher.

When they drop 4,000 Culture points on a city that borders a pretty cultureless civ, you can flip a few of their cities to your side.


GA's can also be used for Culture Victories, I got 4 of them in my last game and ended up with a Cultural Victory in 1965.

Dan O.

[Drachasor]

The value of great prophets depends greatly on how many cities that are the origin of a religion you possess and how many of those cities have their special prophet-based building. One should probably build these buildings with prophets until you have one for each religion you founded (or took the city for). Spreading your various religions then becomes a great way to make money (which is good in any era).

In most games after the first 3 or so prophets, the rest are usually only good for being superspecialists. It would be great if they had some sort of supermissionary ability.

-Drachasor

[Artuero]

In my recent game I tried to use the great prophets that I generated to get a tech in the later game after all the religions have been founded. It did not seem to me like I got anything in exchange for them. The light comes out of the sky and all, but no message was generated. I tried to look at the tech tree to see if I got something but could not tell.

Does anyone know if great prophets max out to a point where using one for a tech is not worthwile?

[Jcg316]

It probably just put a certain amount of beakers into a tech instead of getting it outright. Great People choose the tech based on flavor rating and what you can get. Flavor ratings are like religion/culture/military and things of that nature. What flavors they pick in what order I don't know but a Great Prophet will always choose say Monotehism, Theology if they are available and you don't have them.

[Melboz99]

Originally posted by Artuero
In my recent game I tried to use the great prophets that I generated to get a tech in the later game after all the religions have been founded. It did not seem to me like I got anything in exchange for them. The light comes out of the sky and all, but no message was generated. I tried to look at the tech tree to see if I got something but could not tell.

Does anyone know if great prophets max out to a point where using one for a tech is not worthwile?

You can get a free tech with any GP.

The trick is to look at what it says in the tip box when you hover over the free tech button.

IIRC, it's written in Green letters what the tech will be that you will recieve.

It's usually not the same tech as you are working on, and no, it won't pop up with the Leonard Nimoy voice over.

Dan O.

[Kekkonen]

Originally posted by Melboz99
Great Artists should be ranked higher.

I agree. In fact, if I could get only one type of GP throughout a game, I'd probably pick Great Artists. The culture bomb is very versatile -- flip cities, pacify recently conquered ones, get the cultural victory.

[CDK]

Great Prophets who join a city as specialist also contribute gold to your coffers. This may allow you to keep expanding when the maintence cost might otherwise force you to stop. Which is a good reason for ranking them highly in the ancient era. I know most folks probably avoid them, but I want as many as I can get as quickly as possible.

[Hayden]

If you have a good read of the Discover Tech flyover it tells you how many beakers are put towards the tech. Most of the time its around 2000, late game techs are around 10,000 beakers so this wont even get you close to a tech. For that reason using them to discover techs late in the game is kinda pointless, or atleast less useful.

[Yuufo]

Another use for Great Prophets in early part of the game is to get a religion:
suppose you don't have a mystic civ, try to get Judaism while building Stonehenge for border expansion. If you fail to get Monotheism first, just wait for the Great Prophet from Stonehenge and get Theology with him, found Christianity and switch to Theocracy if you like.

[baboon]

I'm currently trying to get less Prophets. In my last game I only have founded two religions, and the second one is Islam, which came pretty late.

The second Prophet wasn't really useful, I had the Shrine and he could research Meditation which was a one turn tech for me. So I made him super-specialist, which is not a very sexy option imho.

[Snotty]

super specialists are great. My last game I tried to get as many GLs as I could and so most of them went into super specialists. All the added hammers and beakers was insane

[LDiCesare]

Early great artists are great imo. 4000 culture or +12culture / turn (and 3 gold to boot) really helps expanding borders.

[joncnunn]

I find the best function of each great people to be their special building. (Or trade route in case of Great Merchant)

So, Prophets are indeed most worthwhile in the early portions of the game.

The Merchants value will generally increase over the course of the game, but may come crashing down if the AI chooses the wrong civic choice.

Scientists are always great, you can't run out of cities that would benifit from a free academy.

Great Artists are always good for placing in cities near opposing civs cities.

Free Great Wonders with Enginners are useful until all have been built.

[Azuarc]

My .02

Prophet = good early and Golden Age fodder later
Merchant = usually not too helpful for me
Scientist = academies if it isn't the end of the game, and trash later
Engineer = wonder bomb, I try to save one of these for that thing I need pronto (like Eiffel Tower when going for culture)
Artist = most versatile and overall most useful