New Ideas For Specialized Citizens

Since CIV 1 there have been only 3 types of specialized citizens: entertainers, taxmen and scientists. I'm thinking the logic behind having these three is because they have an effect on each of the 3 different rates that you can control, i.e. luxury, tax and science rate.

But what's to prevent the game from offering other kinds? I can think of a few right off the bat that would be interesting to have and not necessarily unbalancing. Some you could use right away like the original ones, others would be tech-specific, age-specific, or evolve according to these criteria or whatever criteria we can think of.

For example:
- Religious. (what follows are different version of same specialty).

Medecine man(right away)/Shaman(after mysticism)/Priest(after monotheism)/Cardinal(after monotheism but prerequisite: cathedral in the city)...
Base medecine man makes units in town defend as though they were more experienced so conscript defends at regular, regular at veteran, etc (him doing his war-chant... note that I put defend, so barracks is still useful).
Shaman is same as medecine man but also cities with shaman do not lose shields to corruption when building religious improvements and wonders that have an effect on mood (Oracle, TOA, etc... except woman's suffrage: a city with a religious worker cannot build that wonder ).
Priest same as the first two plus; buildings and/or wonders which reduce unhappiness also reduce corruption (a bit like courthouse).
And Cardinal same as the first three plus corruption reduced at greater efficiency (puts animation in city display where citizens kneel to kiss his ring ).

- Military. available after warrior code but evolves.
ancient age: your 2 strongest units in town defend as though it were an army. Middle ages: your 3 strongest units in town defend as though it were an army. Industrial age: your 3 strongest units in town defend as though it were an army and when you draft, mood penalty cut 10%. Modern age: your 4 strongest units in town defend as though it were an army and draft mood penalty cut 25% also two units drafted in a single turn instead of one.

- Civil servant. available once a city reaches size 12 and after corporation (or create new tech named bureaucracy). Wasted food (when a city grows) is carried over in the food box, also wasted shields (when a project is completed) are carried over to the next project (woohoo less micromanagement later in the game ). Otherwise if no civil servant is present in a city size 12 and above, any time waste of food and/or shields occurs the amount of waste is deducted from the income generated by that city (example: a 10 shield waste upon completion of a unit or building would represent a 10 gold deduction to the income from this city on that turn).

So what do you think? Do you have similar ideas. Let's hear them...

The idea about having more specialists is good, but i dont think specialists should have impact on combat at all. They should gain economic benefits only.
Also, many of your ideas are too overpowered. Imagine religious and military together in modern age. Four veteran mech infs will defend as a 20/20 army.

ALso, many of htings are changing to much anyway. Theorjhetically I think combat will all be group combat, so no armies now. Also, they should allow roll-over to eliminate the MM advantages.

HOwever some culturally based or combi specialists are nto a bad idea. It worked well in SMAC.

Theoden said:

Imagine religious and military together in modern age. Four veteran mech infs will defend as a 20/20 army.

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Yes conquering another city would be hard, but not impossible, most people would use bombers and artillery anyway and the rules regarding military specialists I mention would not change that... Ok so maybe the bonus given to units by the religious guy should be limited to veteran status.

But all this is just in good fun and I haven't tought all this through, after all I'm no game designer. I would just like to know other ideas about this. Also can rules regarding different citizen types be modded in Civ 3? If not, then that would be nice to have in Civ 4 .

With that civil servant one, I can see people turning a guy into a civil servant for only the turn in which something will be completed. Woohoo! MORE micromanagement.

Also, most of these ideas do not give extra benefits for having multiple specialists, unlike theexisting ones.

The only specialist I think does deserve to be added is the 'engineer/factory drone' guy, adding to shields produced. And he should add to military production too, to avoid the MM issue of changing him around when you start building units.

Personally I kind of agree with fdtori...instead of "building" units, maybe units should be citizens...this is not as stupid as one might think if you consider that units require people, and if those people are in the army, they aren't working the tiles or entertaining people or doing research...therefore, each "troop" citizen would represent the number of people recruited to the army...of course, each citizen would allow for more than one unit...

I like the idea! Very good to have more specialists .. indeed, if you think about it, most towns now are full of specialists not people 'working' the land ... that's the whole point of having cities!!

Agree that your ideas might need refining though.

For example, Civil Servant might be used to reduce corruption and waste by 3 trade/shileds - this would mean, as your empire grows, you need more administration, sounds quite reasonable, and also means you don't have cities which can't do anything.

Also, I think you would need something like a Vice Roy or somesuch specialist (max one per town, only on towns that are overseas from your capital) which would reduce corruption by 30% or something, to make your new colonies not totally useless.

I like your idea for specialists effecting combat, perhaps a specialist known as 'militia', could add 1 extra health to the first unit defending in town (need nationalism), and to stop people from MMing, it gives 2 health and +1 def if left for more than 10 turns.

You could also have the specialist 'secret police' which would reduce unhappy face by 2, but also decreases growth rate (perhaps a 5% or 10% penalty in food box) - this penalty could vary with govt type, so democracy would get a bigger penalty than communism

there are so many possibilities!! like artisans (increase shields for certain buildings) or tradesmen or lawyers etc etc etc etc ...

I think that specialists should naturally form according to certain city specific factors. For instance, if your city is surrounded by terrain that produces LOTS of shields, and you have a large number of production improvements, then this city will become a specialized industrial city-with a high proportion of labourers. If the city were surrounded by tiles which produced lots of food, and you had lots of agricultural improvements, then the city would become a specialized 'bread basket' city, with a large number of farmer specialists.
Of course, you COULD adjust the number of specialists in a city-up or down-but if you adjust it too frequently (i.e. MM) then you might pay a penalty with a decline in the city's happiness. Also, the longer you leave a specialist setting in place, the greater the amount of benefit you recieve from it (up to a certain limit, of course)!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I agree Aussie, there should be bonuses for stability ...

I think however that certain specialists should be player appointed, and I really would love to see corruption reducing specialists, whatever they are called ... I just want my colonies to actually be useful dag nab it, otherwise, how will I ever beat the British Empires record?

fdtori said:

Since CIV 1 there have been only 3 types of specialized citizens: entertainers, taxmen and scientists.

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Surprisingly, doesn't look like anyone has said this yet: In Conquests they added the Policeman and the Engineer.

rhialto said:

The only specialist I think does deserve to be added is the 'engineer/factory drone' guy, adding to shields produced. And he should add to military production too, to avoid the MM issue of changing him around when you start building units.

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There is an Engineer - and the reason it only adds shields to buildings is to help balance it out. If warmongers can simply turn all of their conquered lands into "factory workers" that produce units even faster, that's what we call the snowball effect: build units -> conquer lands -> conquered lands produce more units -> conquer more lands. And so on.

Albow said:

I think however that certain specialists should be player appointed

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Maybe I never was the micromanaging jock possible, but I never found it necessary to micromanage specialists apart from entertainers to keep cities from rioting. I like them automatically being appointed to best serve the general function of the city (set by the City Governor?). Seems to me that the general national slider for science vs commerce, etc. handles that task just fine. Am I missing something?

I think that specialists should be a mix of player and automatic appointments.
So, as I mentioned above, you might have a city which produces around a dozen shields (from only 3 squares), and you also build a few production improvements to take advantage of these shields. Together, this might result in around 50-60% of the cities population being 'labourers'. However, a player COULD go in and manually adjust this up to, say, 70 or 80%. The only downside, though, is that this will cost your city money (wages) and also potentially take away from any other specialists your city might have (unless you have a pool of 'unemployed' citizens there).
Another way it could be done, in conjunction with the method I just mentioned, is via your national budget. So, for instance, you pump your 'Resource and Industry' budget by around 10% which will, in turn, boost labour specialization in your cities by 10% (so, in the case of my example city, the number of specialists would increase from 60% to 67%), this would, of course, deliver a comensurate benefit in production to these cities.
Another issue, though, is that if the city in question cannot pay for either the wages of the specialists OR the maintainance cost of the improvements that produced them, then you will have a certain % of specialists who are essentially unemployed (i.e. they still exist, and are still specialists, but have no work). They not only don't deliver any benefit to the city, but they could also reduce the happiness of the entire city (imagine, for instance, an industrial city which, for whatever reason, can't maintain its factories or Mfg. plants. This might well leave a % of your labourer specialists 'on the breadline'-something which can have a host of negative effects on your city, and possibly even nation!) This is another place where a player could manually adjust specialization, as he reduces the number of labourers, and instead redeploys them elsewhere. Hope that all makes sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

One restriction I think ought to be made on specialists is that only happy citizens (before you make anyone an entertainer) can be a non-entertainer specialist. This reflects the idea that a high degree of expertise in anything requires a particular kind of nurturing - unhappy and poor housholds are not breeding grounds for scientists (lack of financial opportunity, peer pressure, social mobility/class, etc).

this would also prevent the warmonger approach of making everyone in a conquered city into engineers to churn out more military units - they're too unhappy with teh status quo to make useful productive engineers. Consider that despite Hitler's germany making the Czechs into a factory state, the ball bearing factories (for example) purposely made them at the extreme ends of the specs, resulting in the ball bearings almost never matching their intended use.

Well, I still hope that pop-heads will be to some extent abandoned in favour of a better happiness and population system. I think, though, that happiness could restrict your specialisation capacity-in several ways.

1) The % of additional specialists-of any kind-which you can create in a city is restricted by current happiness levels. So, if your city has a 50% happiness rate and about 30% of the population were scientists at the time, then you can only increase the science specialisation by 15% above the current level. Different specialist types, though, might be more or less effected by the happiness factor.

2) Every happiness point below 50% will reduce all specialists output by a similar degree, and (100-happiness) equals the chance that one of your specialist groups will go 'on strike'-thus denying you all their benefits.

3) The # of points below 50% is equal to the extra cost of your specialists. So, a city with 40% happiness will have the cost of supporting these specialists increase by 10%.

4) Of course, if a city goes into revolt, then all specialists are lost until such time as the city has been restored to normality.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Military citizen----as early Civil Defense or gives defending units in the city +1/hit points per specialist.

Religious citizen----generates extra culture. +1 or +2.

Scavenger/Fisher Citizen----causes city +2 food (no trade) if it has a harbor (would only help marginal desert/tundra territories).
This would explain nomads having a 'poor', but cultured geography, if not a true civilization, without needing 'Barbarians'.

Upgrades to Entertainer over the eras.

Upgrades to Research worker over the eras.

I know this is a bit a stale topic.but i know what I want to see ,a Health specialst.Maybe something like Medicine man,availble with Mytscism automaticly changes to monk with monotheism .the MM would reduce the chance of disease by 25% and the monk 50%.

Too overpowered IMO.

How is it overpowered?

I don't think it is overpowered. However, I also don't think it works in the context of a city specialist. What's the benefit in having more than one?

Personally, I rarely use specialists in my cities because, never fail, once the city grows, every is reallocated and they go away.

If that didn't happen, I'd be more willing to use specialists.