How strong city specialists realy are

[Denkt]

The things described here is on standard speed.

Enginner: 2 production per turn and 3 great enginner points per turn.
Merchant 2 gold per turn and 3 great merchant points per turn.
Scientist 3 science per turn and 3 great scientist points per turn.
Artist 3 culture per turn and 3 great artist points per turn.

If you look at them they may not have strong direct yield: E och M do give less yield then normal tiels outside the city and S A while they give resources which is not as common as production and gold they do not give much either. The strength of each specialist is not the resources it yield but the great person points. Lets take a look:

The first great person cost great person points 100, second 200, third 300 and so on. Each great person do have their own pol but each great person generated do increase the cost of all great persons which is generated by great person points. Now what do each great person do:

Great enginner: can add upp to 300 + 30 * city pop of production then you are building a wonder. This ablilty does not give overflow. Great enginner can also build a manufactory which gives the tile 4 proudction before chemistry and 5 after.

Great mercahant: can do a trade mission in a city state which gives 30 influence with that CS and gives gold depending on your era, the later era the more gold. It can also build a manufactory which produce 4 gold and 5 after economics.

Great scientist: can give the last 8 turns of science direktly on the tech you are resarching and can build an acadamy which give 8 science and 2 more for each of these tech: scientific theory and atomic theory.

Great artist: can give you a golden age for 8 turns (influenced by things that influence golden age length). A golden age give you 1 gold per tile that produce at least 1 gold, a 20% production bonus to cities and 20% extra culture towards social polcies. Artist can also build a landmark which give 6 culture.

Know how powerfull is specialist then the add great persons to the caculation:

Enginner: if you are going to use the great enginner to rush 500 production then each great person point (GPP) is worth 500/great person point requried (GPPR). if GPPR = 100 then each (GPP) is worth 5 prodcution. If (GPPR) = 1000 then each (GPP) is worth 0.5 prodcution. If a enginner produced 3 GPP only and the GPPR is 100 you could say that the enginner produce 15 hammer which is very very powerfull. If its the same enginner but now the GPPR is 1000 the enginner only produce 1.5 hammer which is very weak. Using this template we can easly se how powerfull specialist realy are. You can do similar caculation and se how strong they are. I haven't even talked about GPP modifiers and things that boast specialist but these make specialist even stronger. As does things that boast great people.

A trick to get as much as possible out of specialists is to micro so that you will get all 4 great people on the same turn which means for exaple if you need 100 GPP to get a great person and you get all 4 finished at the same time you only pay 100 GPP or each of the 4 which saves you 600 GPP.

[pollock]

thank you for the information

[EEE_BOY]

The power of specialist comes with the right social policy. Your analysis did not include SP. also different specialists unlock by different tech. It's hard to sync them. Plus you will get super delayed fifth GPeople. Playing Maya will save the pain trying to sync the GPeople. Otherwise no point micro that hard.

[Monthar]

Originally Posted by Denkt

A trick to get as much as possible out of specialists is to micro so that you will get all 4 great people on the same turn which means for exaple if you need 100 GPP to get a great person and you get all 4 finished at the same time you only pay 100 GPP or each of the 4 which saves you 600 GPP.

The problem with getting all 4 to pop on the same turn is it increases the cost of the next great person 4x. So while those 4 only cost 100 each, the next great person will cost 500 gpp. Sure you get a nice immediate gain, but it does make it much more difficult to specialize. Thus if you're going for a cultural, scientific or diplomatic victory, this trick will actually make it take longer to achieve those victories.