[GS] Are Specialists better than Projects?

[acluewithout]

Background. I usually only have 2 - 4 productive Cities by the mid-late game that are actually still producing anything valuable (i.e. Core Cities). For the rest of my Cities (Satellite Cities), their main role is to provide yields, trade routes and great people points via their districts and buildings, hold some great works, and maybe secure certain resources. I usually set these Cities to just run Projects (thank you Production Queue).

Question is, am I better off assigning Citizens in my Satellite Cities to Productive Tiles to boost the Projects I am running, or should I assign the Citizens to Specialist slots?

My thoughts. Campus and Theatre Square. A Citizen assigned to a Campus and Theatre Specialists Slots ("Specialist Citizens") provide respectively +2 Science and +2 Culture. I think a Citizen working a Mine, Quarry or Lumbermill (a "Productive Citizen") will give me something like 4-5 Production depending on terrain, resources and tech level. Campus and Theatre Projects produce 0.15 Science and Culture per Cog of Production, so a Citizen working a Mine etc. is giving me around 0.6 to 0.75 Science or Culture via projects.

Campus and Theatre Square Specialists therefore seem generally better than running Projects, although there's some nuance here. Some tiles, e.g. Iron Mines, actually give science increasing the Science yield of a Productive Citizen vs Specialist Citizen. Specialists also can't support themselves with Food, and Specialists don't generate Great People Points (but given the City is still running Projects and I'm still getting GPP from Districts, Buildings etc., query whether the slight loss in GPP is worth the smaller Science or Culture Yield). The use case then gets better if you also have Research Labs and Broadcast Centres (an extra Science and Culture per Specialist Citizen).

Commercial Hubs, Harbours and Encampments. Okay, let's treat these as basically Gold Generators given both their Specialists and Projects generate Gold. The catch is Habour and Encampment Specialists also generate other Yields. These Specialists net you between +4 (CH) to +2 (H, E) Gold Per Specialist, with the Commercial Hub Specialists going up to +6 with a Stock Exchange. Using the Productive Tiles give you roughly 4-5 Production, a Productive Citizen is giving you 1.2 to 1.5 Gold via Commercial Hub Projects (CH Projects give 0.3 Gold per Cog) or 0.6 to 0.75.

Again, Specialists seem better, particularly for the Commercial Hub. The complication though is that for Harbours you'll often have lots of good tiles that just produce flat gold which may be better than Specialists. At the same time, Harbour Specialists also give food (which supports their Specialists). The Sea Ports then make everything a bit weird - it boosts Gold Yields for all Tiles but also boosts Specialists Food yields for Specialists - so you just end up with Gold Tiles and Specialists being roughly equivalent (I think ... I haven't totally done the maths on that). Encampments are much more straightforward - Specialists also give Cogs, which increases with the Military Academy, and so you're just putting those Cogs into your Project which further boosts the attraction of Specialists. For all three districts, you also have the issue about Great People Points again. So, yeah, I don't know. For Gold producing Cities, I usually just select Gold Focus, and then I might manually select Food Tiles if I want the City to grow for some reason.

I haven't thought through how Coastal City changes impact this, but I don't think they really do so far.

Holy Sites. I think these guys are basically the same as the "Gold" districts, except it's faith instead of gold. You'll obviously prefer Holy Site Projects if you're rushing to Found a Religion. After than, I'm not sure. Specialists give +2 to +3 Faith and via Projects you get 0.15 Faith per Cog. I think Specialists are better again, but I don't know if the excess Great Prophet Points you generate via Holy Site Projects also convert to Faith which would change things if it did.

Industrial Zones. Okay, these guys are very different, because (1) you're now just comparing Cogs from Tiles to Cogs from Specialists, and (2) IZ Projects don't give yields, instead they just power your City. The power effect of IZ Projects is actually kinda weird when you think about it - you generate Pollution Free Power (Huzzah!), but because you're running a Project your City can't actually produce anything else (Boo!). So, what you're really doing is just Powering Tier 4 Buildings etc. to get extra Yields from those buildings. (Oh God... do I also need a Powered Tier 4 Buildings v Projects v Specialists Thread).

Anyway. Basically, I don't think it's meaningful to compare IZ Specialists and Projects. Instead, I think with IZ Specialists you basically just always choose Productive Citizens over Specialists (+4 to +5 production per Productive Citizen plus Food to support that Citizen, versus +3 to +4 for the Specialist). But, if you want cogs and you don't have any more good Productive Tiles, you can move Citizens to the IZ Specialists Slots to squeeze out more Hammers (e.g. if you've built an IZ in a High Food Flat Land City).

Other thoughts. I've limited this post to comparing like with like, e.g. Science Specialists v Science Projects, and I've only looked at Satellite Cities. e.g. I'm usually not running Projects in my Core Cities, so I don't usually have to consider Specialists v Projects. Instead, I'm usually tossing up between slotting Specialists and gaining some extra Science or Culture at the cost of some Production and Growth, or just focusing on building whatever I'm building. I usually choose the later (with the hilarious result that, in my biggest Cities, everyone is a Peasant working the land and a Middle Class Professional working in my Cities and Boroughs - go figure?).

I've also ignored Governors and Policy Cards. e.g. some Governors and Cards give +% yield boosts, so you may want to focus on Specialists even more in those Cities to leverage the additional potential Specialist Yields.

[note: no doubt I've got the maths and or numbers and or theory crafting wrong or made other mistakes. Be gentle. I'll try to update / edit if anyone spots any howlers.]

 

[Karmah]

I so felt a compelling urge to vote the third option
I resisted but barely

Your question is not complet. Are you better off *in order to do what?*

If you are just about yields, you are overlooking great people. Which would be a strong motivation to go for projects when a nice GP is available.
I don't micro on that level but if it turns out specialists provide good yields then I would switch from projects to specialist depending on the GP that are on the menus.

 

[acluewithout]

*in order to do what?*

I'm trying to win the game. For many Cities, there's nothing much worth building so I turn the Cities to Projects - whichever pushes me towards my ideal victory condition.

In that situation, am I better allocating Citizens to productive tiles to boost the project, or allocating them to a Specialist slot. Which gives me the best return?

 

[Victoria]

If your pop is just making food and you really are not fussed about growing then place them as specialists and run projects.
Projects primarily give you GPP (5+(production/5) and also give a little of whatever (15% of production) which typically is not a lot but can be. 40 production per turn=6 science/culture.
One specialist removes say 4 production at most but often less as good tiles are limited. 4 production = 0.6 science in a project but 2 science as a specialist.
... so
Use specialists instead of working crappy or food tiles and also run a project. I would not mock later engineers and if CV’ing later merchants are huge benefits... often with a longer CV I will run commercial projects because some merchants give huge benefits to a CV.

There is no ‘better’ option, you are missing the both choice which to me is a no brainier.

 

[acluewithout]

@Victoria I think the way I've put my question might be a bit artificial, but I was really just trying to tease out the differences between the utility of project yields and specialist yields.

I'm not sure others do this much, but I run projects quite a bit. Many Cities just don't have much else they can usefully do, and it's an efficient way to push Science or Culture or whatever I'm aiming for[1]. I get the "I can do both" - i.e. be running a project and also have Citizens in Specialists slots. The question is really, if I'm already running a project, am I better having Citizens work productive tiles to boost the project or am I better preferring citizens work specialists slots (with the project still running, but the Specialists citizens aren't really supporting the project any more).

I usually assume it's better to just throw as much at the project as I can, and only assign specialists that are working dead or useless tiles (e.g. all my productive tiles have a citizen, and now citizens are better working specialist slots rather than rubbish tiles) or if I want to stop my City to stop growing. The reason for this is that I assume the GPP points are better value than any increased yield I might get from the specialists.

I guess, perhaps obviously, it comes down to whether one values GPP or yields more in a particular situation. If I don't want a particular Scientist, I might be better slotting Science Specialists (and so reducing production) to slow down GPP generation (let some other Civ get that one), and then moving Citizens back to workable tiles if there's a Scientist I want and I need to increase Project speed.

Or, as you point out, I may as well always slot a Specialists if there are more Citizens than decent tiles to work.

Hopefully some of that made sense.

[1] I also deliberately don't build many Campuses to slow the game down / make it more challenging, and so I'm often running Science Projects to make up the lower Science yields I have.

 

[Bangau]

I couldn't resist option 3... Also, because the real answer I'd give is 'it depends'. When going for a cultural or science victory and are still in the phase where you have specific techs and civics you need: go with the one that gives the most needed yields. If you're near the point where most useful sciences/civics have been researched, than it's likely that GPP are the most valuable. For domination it's a bit different I think: when you get to the point where you have many cities and the travel time to the front gets too long you basically only need money and faith to buy all the units you want on the front-line. Just push the 'maximize gold (or faith)' button in the city and run gold or faith projects.

This is: the above is for discussing 'efficiency', some games I like to play more for fun. Once had a game where at the end there were no more great people to be earned. Was disappointed there wasn't an achievement for that... It was a Eleanor peaceful domination on a huge map, at a certain point you get multiple great people every turn!

 

[UWHabs]

Assuming the numbers in here are right, each cog of production when building a project returns 0.15 science and 0.2 GPP. Ignoring any other terrain yields (ie. not caring about growth or whether you're working a quarry and have "Stone Circles" pantheon), focusing only on production, then it really boils down to 2 factors:
-How many cogs do you get on the tile?
-What is the "value" of each GPP?

Personally I don't really know how much to value a GPP. In terms of buying them; it's 10 faith:1 GPP or 15 gold:1 GPP I think, so taking that value, then each cog of production on a project you could in theory value that at 2 faith (0.2 GPP * 10 faith / GPP) or 3 gold. thinking of it that way, that's actually a better return than I was thinking - if you routinely actually buy great people with gold/faith, then projects are a huge ROI towards them.

So, I don't know if that helps, since again you kind have to go back to how much you value faith/gold vs science (if we focused on campus projects). Also, it doesn't actually count the actual return of a Great Person, the value of those eurekas (plus incidental value, like city-state quests, preventing the AI from getting the great person, etc...), since maybe it's stupid to think of spending all that faith on a great person if they don't actually give you much science in return.

Personally, I tend to work tiles, although I am more of a builder, so even if it's going to take 40 turns, I'll still slowly plod my way through building that shipyard or university in a crappy city, even if in reality that's a horrible use of its production.

 

[Architect]

I think another option to vote for is "I play Civ 6 not Civ 5 and in Civ 6 every city is a core city." Seriously, 2-4 core cities is too little for me. I'm typically picking between 4-8 cities that have enough production to build a wonder in a reasonable time frame. In my games I have problems finding tiles to put things because there so much stuff on the map. In the late game I typically go through all my cities looking for ones that have free district slots just to keep on building things.

Specialist and project play is boring stuff. Why do it? Push the little buttons on the city UI to focus your city on what you need it to focus on and move on. You can have two or more active and it does a decent job assigning your citizens.

I'm going to win every game of Civ I play. Why try to win it 15 turns earlier when there's a whole segment of the population that can win it 100 turns earlier? IF you want to play for time based wins play for time based wins. Using their boring tactics in a "casual" deity game of Civ just make the game less fun no?

I do run projects to get a GP of course. That's the only time I use them strategically.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Use specialists instead of working crappy or food tiles and also run a project.

Yea, you can do both!

That's pretty much it, lol. I guess it comes down to whether or not we want the city to grow bigger and work certain tiles like production ones.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I rarely tries Projects. but 'd do it only when the civ is not at war nor a city subjects to a priority to generate either settlers or builders to improve other cities.
Does Holy Site project worths a prophet race at the early game? Especially if player cannot build Stonehenge or might not be able to finish it before the competitor does.

 

[Karmah]

I use projects a lot. I go as faraas saying that learning to use them is a mandatory step in learning optimization in civ6.
Now It has changed a bit tho. Before you would get multiple cities (that has not changed), get them two to three districts, but the upper tier building were so bad that you would not spam those and get your cities on project instead. Now I'm still assessing how good those buildings are with power. Probably someone with more playtime in GS can tell.
As for specialist, well,for a long while worker's yield were low in my concern. Projects and caravan gives tons of gold as well GP, then I buy buildings and districts. That was pre-gs.

 

[acluewithout]

I use projects a lot. I go as faraas saying that learning to use them is a mandatory step in learning optimization in civ6.
Now It has changed a bit tho. Before you would get multiple cities (that has not changed), get them two to three districts, but the upper tier building were so bad that you would not spam those and get your cities on project instead. Now I'm still assessing how good those buildings are with power. Probably someone with more playtime in GS can tell.
As for specialist, well,for a long while worker's yield were low in my concern. Projects and caravan gives tons of gold as well GP, then I buy buildings and districts. That was pre-gs.

Maybe there’s a related question of Projects v Buildings. The maths is probably beyond me (or at least my willingness to figure it out).

Thing is, you can buy buildings with Gold but can’t really buy Projects. I therefore tend to run projects and buy Buildings - ie I spend my Cogs on Projects and Gold on Buildings. Then there’s Chopping - that I might use for Buildings too, particularly Universities.

Part of that approach though is just that I don’t like having to watch too many production queues. I usually have 3 or 4 Cities that I care about and that really do stuff with. The rest of my Cities can just give me Science or Culture or Gold. I’ll dip in from time to time to buy them some buildings, or to chop out something in particular, but that’s it.