HELP - City size and specialist?

[zwolf]

I play on Immortal and Deity difficulty.

Is there a optimal percentage of your citizens to be assigned as specialist?

Maybe I could be working engineer and/or merchant slots way before that, but I keep prioritizing growth and only work Guilds for culture and Science slots.

 

[anthropophage]

My general rule is one specialist at pop 7, a second at pop 10, and then every second pop thereafter - 12,14,16 etc.

 

[noonex]

IMHO That depends on so many things, especially wide/tall empire city specialization and which policies/religion you have.
Generally you grow cities as much as happiness allows and as many hammers/beakers you need immediately. Even if you just built University and has some jungle tile - using or not the specialist depends on many things.

 

[klaskeren]

make it your goal to work science specialists at all times in all cities and still grow. Also you should work artist guild in capitol, writing specialists come next. only work other specialists if you have secularism, and either: you have extreme food, or: Its lategame and you want to push your science just a bit more in the short term.

 

[neilkaz]

I want to use almost every specialist I can once I hit secularism especially if no jungle tiles for the university. I have my clearly best ever science game going on as Babylon off a NC first start now with 4 cities and everything worked out perfectly after finishing Tradition as I was able to Oracle Rationalism and next turn use my culture for Secularism.

My next build after Unis (2 specs added to each). Next I built workshops and added a spec unless severely crippling growth for both the tech and PP gain. I may have overdone it with early specs in smaller cities but I have so much tech and will be able to Oxford Radio to hit Modern in the lower 160's turns which is a huge record for me. Then, I'll open Freedom for all the spec enhancers like consuming half food.

From what I am reading here I may have sacrificed too much earlier growth for extra immediate science when I should have grown more to get more science later from larger pop. I'd expect that a pro level player would better manage growth vs specs and either hit Modern even earlier than I will, or hit it at the same time with maybe 10 more people.

 

[neilkaz]

Here's a newbish tip since even on Emperor where you can almost always build the GL with a good start, don't then bulb Drama and build a quick Writer's Guild and stick two specs in there from your pop 7 capitol.

I did this once just to try it and the extra culture was nice, but growth was crippled and my game basically sucked as a result even noting that it is trivial to get the theming bonus for 2 extra culture/tourism once the 2nd writer has popped.

I don't worry about Writer's Guilds off a GL start unless I have at least a dozen pop in my cap and still good growth unless a few CS want a GW.

 

[phillipwyllie]

I usually wait until my cities are at about pop15 before assigning specialists. I make my build queue in my expos granary->library->market->university->guild->research followed by an extended period of growth focus(usually in the Renaissance era). If happiness could be a problem then Colosseums are built. If I trigger a GA then all the guild slots are filled to maximize the culture but other than that it's growth. Come the industrial era then hopefully I can build and work all specialist-based buildings and keep around 20 excess food.