Do you auto manage your specialists?

[hadisami8]

This is what i always do, but do you guys manage your specialists yourself? Am i missing out on something?

 

[Maxym]

Never let AI manage anything in this game. Yes you are missing half the game, specialist management contributes more then anything else to science and culture victories.

 

[hadisami8]

Thought so, but at what population do i decide to start putting in specialists? Right now i'm playing as Sweden, so i need a lot of great people. I was thinking of adding a few specialists, but some of my cities are a bit small and when i add a specialist, the city nearly grinds to a halt.

 

[Gamewizard]

Your specialist cities should be on rivers to take advantage of the extra food. Once all of your riverside farms are being worked then you can start assigning specialists.

 

[dpunk]

I always alternate between food focus and production focus depending on when I want to grow my cities. For example, if I have an army up and feel safe and I'm just waiting for techs I'll try to put as many workers on food to grow city. This way when the time comes to start thinking about specialist I have extra population and can take the food sacrifice.

-full production/stagnant when you need to build something fast
-high food/low production if your safe and have nothing/less important things to build
-don't need to go full on specialists, move them around depending on your current needs too

 

[joncnunn]

This is what i always do, but do you guys manage your specialists yourself? Am i missing out on something?

Yes, always.

Going for any victory condition other than cultural:

Fill all scientists slots first.

If city has a massive food surplus, and particularly if hammers are poor, also run engineers.

Don't run other types unless there is a very good reason to (such as the alternative is an "unemployed" citizen)

Going for cultural victory condition:

Fill all cultural slots first.
Second priority is to fill the Scientist slots.
Third priority is to fill the Engineer slots.

 

[atarihuana]

rule of thumb(science domination diplo): always run universitys, have at least 5 pop to do so, (3food to keep growing)

culture victory: obviously all culture buildings, you dont "need" scientist allthough it helps ( you can relocate if building a critical culture wonder/units/buildings as needed) korea is very powerful here(UA)

always lock all your tiles and go to production focus ( hammer trick), when city is attacked and potential tiles blocked, switch to foodfocus)

 

[joncnunn]

when city is attacked and potential tiles blocked, switch to foodfocus)

No need to go to food focus for that; just go to default focus; where food is such a high priority within it that you're highly unlikely to starve.