New Great People Thread

[JackRudd]

Re: Thanks for this

Originally posted by couerdelion
Of course, there's still more information I need and I realise that there is one piece that I forgot. It's basically a question of what to do with Great Prophets. It seems like a useful early GP but may have a much lower value if there is no shrine to create.

In some circumstances, a Great Prophet will be able to discover a religion-unlocking tech. That can be a useful ability.

[trumbo]

My first two GPs are usually prophets because I tend to build Stonehenge and the Oracle. I normally use these folks to found Code of Laws and Theology, then build a shrine in the holy city if I get a third before switching to science buidings and specialists. Oracle is used for metal casting or CS-slingshot I've been lucky. Only done it as high as prince, however.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Hauptman
Also what you need to consider, 5 gold is worth 50 commerce at 90% tech towards paying the bills.

I don't agree with this. The tech/culture rate is set based on financial requirements in most games. A prophet specialist generating 5 gold at a 90% tech investment rate does not also generate 45 science!!!!

Originally posted by Yuufo
I don't like the farmer/specialists comparisons. Quite often, at high levels, your city has enough food to keep growing but there are unhappiness/unhealthiness problems. Fixing a guy as a priest reduces food production.

My comments here are based on a system without constraints where it is easier to make direct comparisons between culture, gold, production, food, science and GP points. The existence of constraints can change matters and, in the early game, will be significant.

Originally posted by JackRudd In some circumstances, a Great Prophet will be able to discover a religion-unlocking tech.

This is what I thought might be the case. I would argue that this is the key value of your first Prophet which I guess would lead to Christianity or Taoism. Allowing for the gold saved on the tech itself, I'm thinking that this has to be worth around 1500-2000 gold!!! (I'll admit this is just a guess)

But only god knows how I'll work out the value of a religion itself. This is only of the more interesting calculations in the game, namely that of winning a production/tech race. Since the important consideration in the game is "relative strength" the advantage of having something that your opponent can't, has a value in itself.

There are many more questions that I am now asking myself.

1) How do the GP point targets change as your GPs arrive. So far I've only seen step changes of +100 but I believe that this may jump at a later stage. For those of you who have had 50+ GPs, what happens as you get more GPs.
2) A more complicated question is whether or not the GP point value needs to allow for the expected decrease in value of other GP points you have when you get a Great Person. Let’s suppose that GPs are worth 1000 gold (often worth more) and that you have yet to produce one. Each GP point might be considered to be worth 10 gold since the target is 100.

This last point raises a very interesting paradox. If you have a city which gains a GP while cities 2, 3 and 4 have 80 GP points, then you have gained the 1000 value from the GP but your GP points in your other three cities have halved in value (from 800 gold to 400 gold). Total value gained = 1000 – 1200 or a loss of 200 gold from getting a GP!!!!

Obviously there is some flaw in the argument here but I have yet to find out where it is.

I have an interesting situation at the moment (current tech investment is gunpowder) where I have one city generating 18 GP points and it is around 65% of the way towards producing a great person (18 turns). It is also around 20 GP points behind another city producing GP points at the same rate – ie the other city is one turn ahead. By some perverse combination of GP points in other cities, I estimate that the first city will not produce a great person for 113 turns – and nearly 50 turns after the second city.

[couerdelion]

Chaging value of GP points

As usual, my unit of currency is the gold and equivalent to the gold (not commerce) from the game. For conversion rate purposes I assume

1 gold = 1 science
1 gold = 2 culture
3 gold = 2 production

Having had time to carry out some work – although it will depend on the way the GP cost accelerates – I am not starting to think along the lines that sometimes (and particularly in some cities) GP points may be considered as worthless. The situation and circumstances in a game may be such that a certain city may never generate a Great Person because some other city may always get there first.

Given that I am currently seeing tech investment rates for Great Merchants and Scientists around 1700-1800 investment, then any GP points that end up acquiring the next Great Person is worth 2 gold to me. So the idea that some of these GPs have much lower value to me is important in deciding how long I should maintain one of the finest civic combinations ever conceived (Mercantilism/Pacifism).

At first sight, the free specialist from Mercantilism in each city could be thought to be worth 3 gold + 6 GP points (+100% for mercantilism) and at 1 GP point = 2 gold, this makes a fine sum of 15 gold per city which should easily pay for the lost commerce – not gold - from international trade and pay for the extra military costs. But with nine cities now with getting a free specialist, the idea that more than half of these would lose 80% of there value certainly makes the civic combination less appealing.

The problem will emerge in larger empires where several cities might employ specialists. Some will be larger than others or employ a lot more specialists and there will be some that you could be almost certain that they would never generate a Great Person.

By continuing this line of thought, the GP value is dependent on the expected time (and GP point price) of the creation of a Great Person (also dependent on the value if this changes). The paradox I mentioned earlier does not arise because, in that case, the lower investment cities were never actually investing in the first GP but in the second or later one. This also leads to the idea that increasing GP investment in one city will almost always reduce the value of current GP investment in other cities.

[DirtyMartini]

Slightly off topic --

I remember seeing a post late last week with a printable cheat sheet regarding specialists -- what improvements allow specialists, what wonders add great people points, etc.

I wanted to take a look at it again, but I can't find my way back to the post , can someone point me in the right direction?

[gentle]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
Slightly off topic --

I remember seeing a post late last week with a printable cheat sheet regarding specialists -- what improvements allow specialists, what wonders add great people points, etc.

I wanted to take a look at it again, but I can't find my way back to the post , can someone point me in the right direction?

odds are good you mean this one by common sensai:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147074

[Martinus]

The more I play, the more I am convinced that generally, the best way to use Great People is adding them to the city as a super-specialist, especially in early game. The only other thing I normally do is founding a shrine with a great prophet or building an academy with the first great scientist I get in a city. Otherwise, I may use a great artist to create great work or a great engineer to speed up a badly needed wonder in some circumstances, but I think it pays off much more to have them added as a specialist normally.

[couerdelion]

Specialist settling down

Do they consume food? I seem to remember this to be the case.

Also, there seems nothing in the benefits to suggest that they generate GP points but in the game I am playing, my 99 GP points in Karakorum are from 11 specialists at +200 (Pacifism and National Epic). It is a little confusing with three free specialists (Great Library and Mercantilism) but from my science, I know that I have 10 specialists plus the super specialist and can therefore presume that GP points are generated (or perhaps I missed some building GP points)

In general, I find the settling great person to be very disappointing though may work out well as a very long term investment

[uberfish]

I have the opposite experience from Martinus - the more I play the less I use super specialists, because the short term payoffs from quick wonder building in a shield-poor city or cutting the research paths to one of the big midgame techs such as chemistry or liberalism down by 10 turns can be huge.

That being said an early prophet or scientist specialist if academy/shrine are built already are very nice.

[couerdelion]

MY own current view

Originally posted by uberfish
I have the opposite experience from Martinus - the more I play the less I use super specialists, because the short term payoffs from quick wonder building in a shield-poor city or cutting the research paths to one of the big midgame techs such as chemistry or liberalism down by 10 turns can be huge.

That being said an early prophet or scientist specialist if academy/shrine are built already are very nice.

Don’t forget the third option to use the special skill.

I think your Great Prophet should first found a Shrine ahead of settling and if not, try to rush a tech to get a religion.

Similarly, the first Great Scientist should found an Academy.

It seems that all other decisions are all a choice between a long term pay off versus an immediate boost (to culture, gold, tech investment, production). In most cases, the aggregate return on the longer term option will be better but the one thing not taken into account here is whether value can be accrued from other things earlier if the immediate gain is made.

With Wonders the gain is also turning a probability of winning the race into a near certainty and there is a clear value, not just from having a Wonder, but from stopping another nation from getting it.

Similarly, certain tech leads can give significant advantages, which can give significant value over the course of the game. One key “value” tech is Compass. The first to get this should be the first to meet the rest of the world and early options to trade before a resource runs out could add 2-6 points to happiness over a long period. You get first option on other tech trades and your Great Merchants may become more valuable sooner. You have the best chance of discovering new prime real estate and also the highest chance of getting the +1 movement bonus for being the first to circumnavigate.

[couerdelion]

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that, post Printing Press, you really should start switching from Farms to Towns.

Pre-Biology, the price for an extra specialist is to farm two plains squares. Let's say your on Representation and you are then generating 6 science/3 GPP (6GPP with Philosophical or with National Epic). Once your GP price is up to 2000 then the value of GPP starts to fall below 1 Gold/GPP and this is also a "post-multiplier" effect.

If those farms were towns we'd lose the specialist but would gain 10 commerce (and 14 under universal suffrage). We also lose one unhappiness and one unhealthiness.

Post, biology, there remains a very small advantage of farms and specialists vs one grassland town but only in cities which are fully specialised.

[Just_Matt]

I'm continually amazed and the insightful and well-reasoned discussions here. This really is the best forum I've participated in (and I've been on-line for 15 years).

I've done a bit of informal testing "reload a save game, try a different option and let it run for a dozen turns, repeat." I just don't see the value proposition in Super Specialists and Special Buildings, especially once the mid-game starts. The first Great Engineer will usually found his academy. After that I use them exclusively to discover technology. It seems to be the only way to keep up with the AI on Prince level.

The only number I remember off the top of my head is a Great Artist will create 6,000 Happy points. If I culture bomb in an edge city I can push the borders a square or two and maybe alter some of the influence percentages. Match that against discovering 1/3 or 1/2 of a new technology (again, GA's don't show up until mid-game) and I've probably cut 8 turns off of a new technology. If I can push one city to rush great people (with bonuses and the GP wonder) I've been able to give birth to a Great Person about once a technology; so I start researching something with a 4 or 5 turn head-start. Maybe they don't always provide a research bonus where I want them to, but I'll just trade it away for something better anyway.

For discussion, I also don't think that Golden Ages are worth it either. +1 hammer and +1 gold per worked square for eight turns?

YMMV, IMHO, and IIRC all apply here!

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by uberfish
I have the opposite experience from Martinus - the more I play the less I use super specialists, because the short term payoffs from quick wonder building in a shield-poor city or cutting the research paths to one of the big midgame techs such as chemistry or liberalism down by 10 turns can be huge.

But are you really gaining ten turns? By the time you reach Chemistry or Liberalism, the same number of beakers that would have taken you ten turns to obtain earlier in the game likely won't take nearly as many turns to make up. Of course being farther along in the tech race can provide intermediate benefits because you can start doing whatever the new techs allow you to do a bit sooner. But even so, using great people to speed up research does not provide nearly as many turns' long-term advantage in the tech race as it might appear to at first glance.

[nbarclay]

Just_Matt, a twelve-turn test won't even begin to show the power of Super Specialists and Academies. Super Specialists and Academies are at their best when created early in the game when they will be able to continue producing benefits for hundreds of turns.

[nbarclay]

One trick I've experimented with for using Great Engineers and Great Prophets is to create a city with high production to get a leg up on wonders later in the game. Take a city that already has relatively high production and add some super specialists that increase its production still farther, and you get a real production powerhouse.