Best Specialists

What specialist(s) do you tend to use most?

Scientists #1
Engineers #2 (almost as valuable as scientists)
Merchants #3
Finally artists bring up the rear.

Engineers #1 (Big-pop cities with lots of specialists usually have less production)
Merchants #2 (Always need gold with this mod)
Scientists #3
Artists #4 (By the time you can use Great Artists usefully all the important civics/cultural borders have been established. Culture is only an early game concern for me.

#1 Engineers/Scientist, depending on the leader & surrounding.
#2 Merchants, I rate them higher than Artist. But in practice, I generate neither of them. There is plenty of gold flying around anyway.
#3 Artist, never use them. If I have a culture city, I spam it with holy sites for the late faith specialist purchase.

FYI, I play Marathon.

Engineers and scientists now look too weak to me in 1.11.2 at 2 yield and 2 GPPs.
And I don't see that Merchants need higher yields.

I think yields of 2 are good, but then they should go back to 3 GPPs.

I suggest:
2 science/production/gold for scientist/engineer/merchant
3 culture for artists.
And 3 GPPs for all specialists.

I think 2 yields (except Artist with 3 and/or better great works) and 2 GPP is worth a try. There are a lot of easy to get modifiers to GPP like garden (50%), Tradition-finisher and National Epic so an increase to 3 would be heavy. If it feels too week after some games an increase could be done.

Is it possible to make the "free" GP really free (not making the next one more expensive)? I think that would be better than now.

Bernd-das-Brot said:

Is it possible to make the "free" GP really free (not making the next one more expensive)? I think that would be better than now.

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I prefer the current arrangement myself. Without that free GP cost increase, Mayans would be much more powerful in the middle part of the game as they could have GPs from faith (with a good UB for that), GPs from their UA, GPs from policies/wonders, and GPs from normal accumulation running all at once. Right now 3 of those interact with each other to slow them down some.

Even discarding the Mayans UA, I think it's imbalanced to be able to pop a free GP with liberty and then continue to accumulate one naturally at no increase of cost versus the slight boost given by tradition to GP accumulation. It seems easier to balance this way.

@Ahriman
I'd be willing to change specialist-vs-wonder balance if we keep overall great person rates steady by increasing costs. I started a poll to check how people feel about overall great person availability.

I don't think we need more than a modest increase in the overall rate of great person production, but I think specialist GPP yield could be boosted and things like the Garden could be nerfed.

Increasing GP expenses is the best way to alter specialist-vs-wonder balance with the fewest side effects.

I like fun games, and choices and complexity are important for that. Making gardens weak while buffing base yields causes a domino of side-effects leading to either A) less fun for everyone by removing early specialists, as Firaxis did, or B) less fun for 35% of people by removing the value of specialists in most wide cities. I like the third option I found where specialists are useful to different empires in different ways.

I know we won't ever convince each other on this topic, but I do feel we agree on more things than we disagree about.

Increasing GP expenses

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Do you mean the number of GPPs needed to get a great person?

Changing GP income would lead to a cascade of balance issues

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Keep in mind that you have already made a number of dramatic balance changes. Reducing specialists to yields of 2 is a large cut in specialist power. It is justifiable, but probably requires that GPPs be increased to compensate. Otherwise you are probably making specialists too weak.
These are the yields in vanilla.
I am of the opinion that specialists should be the main way in which great people are achieved.

leading back to Firaxis' decision to remove specialists entirely

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I don't know what you are referring to here - do you mean the general lack of specialist slots in the early game?
Honestly, I would prefer moving back in that direction. I think GEM has too many specialist slots overall, to the point where they are not rare. I wish that specialists were used more to specialize cities, that specialist slots were more rare and that specialists were therefore more meaningful. At the moment, specialist slots are so easy to come by that they are rarely binding, so there is not an interesting decision, and I can basically ignore specialist slots when choosing which buildings to construct.

Specialists should not be a direct alternative to working tiles for yields; that system makes tiles, improvements and yields much less interesting. Specialists should be about customizing cities, and you should need to choose which buildings to construct in cities to get multiple specialist slots so as to be able to use multiple specialists of the same type so as to gain great people more efficiently. So using specialists sacrifices yields in the short term, but is investing in a larger payoff later from the great person.

I don't understand why we need low GPP yields from specialists and then large modifiers like +50% on the garden. Markets, Banks, smithies, etc. don't give 50% yield bonuses.

1) Higher base GP
2) Lower garden income
3) Too many early great people
4) Remove specialists from the first half of the game

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It is possible to reduce the number of specialist slots in the early game without removing them entirely.
This would also help to make specialist slots from national wonders more meaningful.

I would suggest that as a rough baseline there should be:
No specialist slots from ancient era.
1 slot from Classical era.
1 slot from Medieval era.
1 slot from Renaissance or industrial era.
1 slot from modern/atomic/information era.
Plus up to 2 additional slot from particular National Wonders, and possibly one from Faith buildings.

Plus *maybe* one more slot from a niche building somewhere that doesn't otherwise need to be built or has some extra terrain requirement. But this probably isn't needed.

The current design has 5 slots for engineers, 5 slots for merchants, 4 slots for scientists, 5 slots for artists, plus more slots on national wonders and some Faith buildings.

Some of these slots could easily be dropped, such as the shrine and mint. [We talked before about making the shrine give either 2 faith or have zero maintenance cost, to make it more interesting.]

I'm also not a fan of the engineer slots on military buildings.

Ahriman said:

I'm also not a fan of the engineer slots on military buildings.

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Agree. It might have its reasons but it just doesn't feel right. I moved it to the water mill in my own modmod. May not be perfectly balanced but it belongs more there.

\Skodkim

skodkim said:

Agree. It might have its reasons but it just doesn't feel right. I moved it to the water mill in my own modmod. May not be perfectly balanced but it belongs more there.

\Skodkim

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I agree it doesn't feel right, But from a game perspective I don't want it on the water mill due to the river requirement.
What other early building can we stick it on? Walls? That would just feel slightly better IMO.

Naeven said:

What other early building can we stick it on? Walls? That would just feel slightly better IMO.

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Considering that the original engineers were mainly siege engineers and defensive design specialists, walls seem to make a lot of sense from a flavor standpoint. Can't say good or bad from a gaemplay one.

Naeven said:

... But from a game perspective I don't want it on the water mill due to the river requirement.
What other early building can we stick it on....

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I'd like it on the watermill. One of things I like less about CIV is how it makes all map locations too equal. I want to be able to explore a new continent and say 'wow! what great cities I could build there!'. At the moment, all locations are so balanced I never feel this. One of the problems is that now we can build every building in every city and all specialists make all cities exactly the same. Anything that provides any difference (for example, by encouraging engineers in river cities only) is a bonus for me.

One of things I like less about CIV is how it makes all map locations too equal.

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I agree. VEM and GEM tried to change this through the resource-specific bonuses on buildings, but given that the bonuses are small and that production levels are high enough to want to build most buildings everywhere, these don't really end up managing to make locations feel very special.

jacktannery said:

One of things I like less about CIV is how it makes all map locations too equal. I want to be able to explore a new continent and say 'wow! what great cities I could build there!

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I agree in theory, in practice, I probably would just reload untill i get the "to good" spot I want, and the AI probably wont.

VEM & GEM have really reduced my reload time, while giving the AI a better chance as well. But maybe I'm just a cheater

Naeven I agree re: starting locations. However I would prefer it if locations for subsequent cities were more variable, and that the LANDSCAPE affected my decision to go wide or to go tall. At present, the landscape does not come into the equation, which is a shame I think. I recognise that increasing landscape variability will lead to less balanced starting locations even if the starting city radius is balanced.

In any case, that's a different mod as it goes against what Thal is doing here, and on the whole I prefer Thal's mod to anything I could come up with or find elsewhere.

jacktannery said:

In any case, that's a different mod as it goes against what Thal is doing here, and on the whole I prefer Thal's mod to anything I could come up with or find elsewhere.

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Amen! We greet thee, oh great Thal, Modder of GEM, who causes the sun to rise and the Nile to flow.