I'm going to give a walkthrough on playing a specialist economy from beginning to end. This type of economy may not be better than other versions, but the point is to showcase how it works.

This idea is a bit different from other versions of specialist economies which highlight their war-mongering capability followed by a transition to a CE (this may be the surest path to winning). The difference from Obsolete's strategy is a much smaller reliance on wonder building. This fits into the sandbox style of play.

The main strategy
Run lots of specialists and settle most of them in capital.
Build national park/oxford in capital and turn it into a super science city with as many forest preserves as possible in the BFC.

Stuff you need
A capital with forests around it
Lots of water for farming

Main techs
Writing - for libraries
Code of Laws - for Caste system
Civil Service - for chain farms and bureaucracy
Biology (kicker) - extra food and national park

Preferred civics (depends on Civ and circumstances)
Representation
Caste System - keep this as late as possible
Bureaucracy, Free Speech alternative
Environmentalist, Free market alternative
Pacifism, Free religion alternative

Guidelines
minimum cottages
minimum lightbulbing
minimum warfare

I play pretty slowly so this will take at least a couple of weeks to finish. Any tips on a better presentation would also be appreciated.

This game will be played as Pericles of Greece (Creative/Philosophical)

Immortal level
Small Fractal map with standard settings.

Starting point

Not too bad. River and lake for fresh water and some helpful resources. Only problem is that there aren't many forests for the NP/Oxford trick.
Move 1E and settle there to be on the river and have levees. Also opens up the 3S3W square for another city.

The build order in the capital was a worker followed by some archers while the capital grew followed by a settler. The worker farmer the rice, built a couple of mines and went off to build camps. Important thing is that you do NOT chop forests in the capitals cross. We want as many as possible for forest preserves.

Second city established north. Would have preferred to go 1N1W more, but that area was already taken by Hannibal. We are going to priorize our expansion northwards.

Planning out future cities is important as well as their order.
1. 1E1N of horses on the east side (get fast, farmable with CS)
2. 3S3W of capital for gold square (farmable with CS)
3. 5E of capital for clams and 2 dyes. (farmable with CS)
4. 1S of copper on west side to try to culturally fight for that copper mine.

We've done more exploration with our valiant scout and seen a lot of jungle land west. We'll send a settler that direction an establish a city 2S of gems and 2N1E of horses. Only problem is that this will be a hard city to farm. The main idea is to try and establish a decent territory for our empire and fill it in later. Quick exploration is very important for this, and the early scout helps a ton if he survives a while.

Next thing we see is that we have our 1st scientists. Lightbulb mathematics - no way! Happily settled in capital. Eventually, the hammers from these guys will add up. Sparta is building another settler to go eastward and get the second rice/horse and fish spot.

We now have our initial territory. We don't have either marble or stone so no wonder building yet. We haven't even bothered with pyramids, and failed miserably at getting the oracle.

Corinth is building the great lighthouse to boost our science and we are researching aesthetics to try to go for the Shwagodan Paya in Sparta. Argos is building a library and we will run more science specialists over there. Athens is running 2 specialists and we will grow it after we get our second scientist, who will settle again (The third scientist will prolly go for the academy). We have no cottages yet (yippee) but we will have to cottage around Corinth for lack of fresh water.

We have successfully blocked in Hannibal to the north and conceded a pretty large territory westward to Cyrus. We are building some military units to defend ourself. We will convert to buddism in the near future to be pals with Hannibal and to try and run pacifism to get even more super specialists (woohoo!).

Next in line is mathematics and calendar to improve our terrain followed by code of laws. We are behind in tech (don't have metal casting, alphabet or polytheism). We will also not bother with the Uber library as we don't have any bonuses towards building it.

I forgot to put a savefile at the beginning so here is the latest.

Reserved for future use

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