City Specialization - Need Answers

[Gyspsysmoke]

I posted this in the "Trouble with Specialization" thread, but it had become a debate about GP cities by that point and never got answered (though if you want a mathematical breakdown of GP cities, look that thread up)...

I get stuck in the all around city rut, at least for science and commerce (I usually try to get all those buildings in every city, or at least a couple).

That's not to say I don't have Millitary cities (aka Heroic Epic and West Point) or cities where my Culture/Science is a lot higher and cities where I have higher commerce (and a GP city for that matter); but these usually depend on the improvements I put around them not the specialists within the city...this leads to my next question...

If you have improvements built, there are many cases in which the production output in beakers/culture (from gold) and/or hammers is HIGHER if you work a tile instead of using a specialist (or the difference is marginal). By the middle ages, I usually have conquered at least one empire (aka, cottage spam cities out the wazoo) and the ability to work one more tile in X number of turns (aka city pop increasing), while getting a marginally smaller amount of beaker/culture/hammer seems the more logical choice than saying "screw it, I'm stoping growth and going to hump the current edge the specialist gives me FOREVER".

I know I must be wrong about this, people have played this game a lot more than me, but I don't see what the big frikkin deal about specialists is (NOTE: I DO USE THEM, especially in the early game right after I get a library) but I think you have to balance their use against growth (especially when happiness/health is a lot higher than the city pop) and the production lost from not working a tile.

I really want to know at what City Pop people start using specialists, what kinds of specialists they use in what kind of cities, etc.

I feel a "it all depends" answer coming, so if it does "all depend", I would like to know what it depends on. I thought I had this figured out but in my current game my capital is my highest beaker/hammer/gold/GP city and it is driving me nuts (does the terrain given to you constrain your ability to make certain city types?)

 

[Gyhth]

If you specialize your cities, that's what defines what kind of specialists you can get in your city. Example, a commerce city probably has banks, merchant, etc, which allow for you to put Merchant specs in the city, and it would probably be best to put them into that city because of all the bonus you'd get with the mods.

What really defines the number of great people, and really, what kind of great people you would be using is the kind of city you want it to be - though the Civic Caste System is alot of help if you wanna go Specialist crazy. So really, yeah, the terrain does play a huge part in what specialists you can get, because if you play a game where all your cities are specialized to one thing, your going to find that your hilly production cities are mostly going to be engineer specialists, your science will mostly be scientists, etc, etc, etc.

If you make a GP Farm, it's best to go with Caste so you don't need to worry about the buildings - just finding a place that will give off alot of food, and then add as many specialists as you can and make what you think you need.


With the population question, personally, I'll add a specialist at 2 population if I can still grow decently with 1 specialist and 1 worker. It's especially great I find when it's your 2nd or 3rd city and the one you plan to GPF. You get your GPP slower, but your starting them off earlier than other people, plus, if you managed to get pyramids, your getting those little bonuses from Representation which can add up.

 

[Willem]

I really want to know at what City Pop people start using specialists, what kinds of specialists they use in what kind of cities, etc.

I start using Specialists as soon as the city can support one, provided I have the Caste System by then. If I can get one Mine, a couple of Cottages and still have a surplus of 2 food for future growth then I'll create one. As for what kinds, it depends on what I decide that city is going to specialize in. If it's going to be a science city, I'll have nothing but Scientists. If it's a Holy City, I'll have nothing but Priests. My border cities end up being my Artist cities and a site with lots of Hills and high production gets the Engineers. Merchants and Scientist sites are kind of interchangeable since they both rely on lots of commerce production. So any site that can produce lots of Cottages and enough food can be either one.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I really want to know at what City Pop people start using specialists, what kinds of specialists they use in what kind of cities, etc.

I can't really answer that because city pop is pretty much irrelevent to my decision to use specialists. If I use them it'll be because of the needs of the situation, or the amount of food surplus the city has.

In general, I use specialists in 3 situations:
1. My GP city. In this case I will tend to let the city grow, working only squares that have >2 food (other than some production squares to get things like national epic built), until it has a fairly big surplus - eg. 10 food/turn and I'm running caste system. I'll then whop on about 5-10 of whichever specialist gives me the GP type I want (possibly with some starvation in the process but never to actually lose population) and get the GP very quickly - eg. in 10-20 turns. Then I'll prob let the city recover for a bit then repeat the process.

2. Wonders. If I have a city that is producing GP points because of wonders, I may assign a specialist or two to (a) favour the odds to the GP type I most want, and (b) make sure that those wonder-generated GP points don't all get wasted because my GP city keeps moving the goalpost faster than my wonder city can keep up I'll normally do that as soon as I perceive I can remove a tile-worker and still leave the city with a reasonable food surplus.

3. Cultural Pressure. If a city is under severe cultural pressure I'll probably put a couple of artist specialists in it *immediately*, even if it means no growth for a while. This most often happens with cities I've just captured. (On one occasion on a captured city that still had it's forge, I used an engineer specialist instead to build a theatre quickly, then swapped to an artist specialist - this kept the city at size 2 and no growth - until my knights and macemen had removed the source of the cultural pressure )

4. Going bankrupt. If I'm *really* short of money (like running on 0 science and still about to run out) I might put on a merchant specialist.

Offhand I can't think of any other situations where I often remove tile workers to use as specialists. If I perceive that the production/science/etc. from the specialist is more appropriate to what the city is supposed to be doing than I could get from working a tile then I'll do that, but in practice that almost never happens.