great people mechanics

[wodan11]

Here is the number of GPP required on normal speed.

0-1000: +100 GPP
1000-3000: +200 GPP
3000-6000: +300 GPP

Here's a chart which says the same thing.

# GP GPP req'd
1 100
2 200
3 300
4 400
5 500
6 600
7 700
8 800
9 900
10 1000
11 1200
12 1400
13 1600
14 1800
15 2000
16 2200
17 2400
18 2600
19 2800
20 3000
21 3300
22 3600
23 3900
24 4200
25 4500
26 4800
27 5100
28 5400
29 5700
30 6000

Wodan

[DrSpike]

Which seems to confirm the formula.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
In the long run, it doesn't matter where you generate GPP. Even a city with only 2 GPP/turn will eventually produce a GP.

That's not true. Remember that the cost of a GP goes up each time you generate one. So it's very easy, especially late in the game and even more especially on big maps, to get in a situation where a few cities that each generate a lot of GPPs work together to drive up the cost of GPs faster than a city with just two or three GPPs per turn can catch up. It's even possible to drive the cost up so quickly that a city generating six GPPs per turn can't keep up with the ever-increasing cost of GPs. And GPPs generated in cities that will never be able to catch up are completely worthless.

(For those interested in abstract mathematical theory, if the game were infinitely long, the price of each great person would eventually grow so high that the high-GPP cities could no longer keep up the rate needed to starve low-GPP cities out. But since the game is not infinitely long, that abstract theory generally makes no difference in practice.)

Also note that the later in the game a city starts producing GPPs, the more GPPs it will need to produce per turn in order to make up for its late start. So when deciding whether to configure a city for specialists for GPP production or to use the city in other ways, it can be useful to consider whether or not there will be time to actually generate a great person - taking into account the fact that the cost per great person will probably be significantly higher by the time the city catches up.