No. In most cities, i have no specialist whatsoever. Even an engineer specialist is inferior to a cottage, so i'd rather have the cottage.
What about with representation/philosophical/pacifism? I played a game where I had about 10 cities producing 60 gpp/turn. My capital was cranking around 160. They would leapfrog each other getting GPs. In the late game on marathon I was averaging about 1 GP/15 turns.
I built 6 religious shrines.
I built Eiffel tower and space elevator with engineers.
I built 3 academies.
I culture bombed 3 cities to take over enemy cities. I had always peaceful set, it was the only way, I took 6 cities on culture during the game, including the US's capitol, which started on a penninsula and I blocked him off early.
I added 4 GMs to my capitol, for more food, which let me carry more specialists.
I added about 3 engineers, 4 artists, and 12 GPs as specialists to various cities.
I won a cultural victory without ever moving the culture slider off of 0, in 1866. Yeah, I know, I could have won much earlier, (I had 6 cathedrals, broadcast tower, and either hollywood/rock 'n roll/broadway in my 3 culture cities, +500% culture with free speech) but I was having fun. I had 1 turn to go on the last spaceship part for about 50 turns before that. I was playing around with diplomatic when my 3rd city reached legendary. Diplo is still the one type of victory I've never achieved, dunno how to get them folks to vote for me.
And I wasn't creative or philosophical, I was playing Qin.
Still, you see my point, this game works best with synergy. When you work something, apply all the bonuses possible, and it becomes really powerful.