I have made a strange observation regarding Super-Specialists:

Aiming for a Culture Victory, I put all my Great Artists as Super Specialists in my culture-weakest of the three Culture Cities.
All went well until I had 6 Artists as Super Specialists.
Then I got another GP, a great Prophet this time.
I used him as Super Specialist as well, and then made the observation in the City Screen that one of my Great Artists had vanished!:eek: :mad: :cry:
There were only five Artists and one Prophet.

So, is there a limitiation of six super specialists per city???:confused:

Or is the super specialist perhaps still there, but only invisible because the citiy screen is only able to show six super-specialists?

Or is the super specialist perhaps still there, but only invisible because the citiy screen is only able to show six super-specialists?

It's still there but it doesn't show up. You should be able to check that, just by comparing the culture increase per turn that your city receives, to the things in your city that generate culture.

Why didn't you have those artists create great works?

Its better to use Great Artists as super specialists early in the game. They add 12 culture per turn as a specialist, or 4000 instant culture as a great work. It takes 334 turns for the specialist to match the 4000 culture, so it seems the great work is the obvious choice. However, the culture from the specialist recieves any civic or building culture bonuses that city recieves.

For a culture game, you will almost certainly be running free speech, getting you +100%. Of the +100% wonders you will also build at least hermatage, and possibly others. You will have concentrated on spreading as many religions to your culture cities as possible to build cathedrals, each netting you +50% culture.

So for a typical culture city:

Base of 12 + 100% for civics + 100% for hermatage + 150% for 3 cathedrals = 54 culture per turn for each super specialist. It now takes only 74 turns for the super specialist to beat the great work.

In short, early and mid game you should use those artists as specialists to get the maximum amount of culture out if them, and late game use them for great works.

Because long-term, the artists might actually generate more culture. Artist culture points are increased by civics and culture buildings so an artist creating a base 12 cpt might actually start generating, say, 36 cpt after free speech and 2 cathedrals, or 48 with the Hermitage (56 if you have Sistine).

So a timely artist might earn you a good 5-6000 culture as opposed to the Great Work's 4000, and earn you several hundred gold at the same time.

edit: heh, beaten to it.