How and When Should I use City Specialists?

paintanker

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 24, 2010
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I've come accross little + and - buttons in my city map. According to the N00B guide, these are city specialists which have benefits. The thing is, I have no idea what these benefits are worth.

For example, there is a 'citizen' specialists which says "+1 hammer," but it increases the time it takes for me to build something. That seems counterintuative.

What my question really boils down to is this:

In what cities, at what time, and in order to do what should I train specialists?


Edit:
So Ghpstage, are you saying I should always have as many specialists (except for citizens) as I can in a GP Farm? What about my other cities?
 
For example, there is a 'citizen' specialists which says "+1 hammer," but it increases the time it takes for me to build something. That seems counterintuative.
The specialist you added was probably removed from a mine, 3:hammers:>1:hammers: :lol:
For the record 'citizens' are trash and shouldn't ever be used, the other ones are where the good studff lies.

When you add a specialist it removes one citizen from a tile in your BFC, this will make you lose growth, hammers and maybe even :commerce:.
The benefits are however, that those specialists give a direct :culture:, :science:, :gold: etc yield that the slider doesn't affect and more importantly it gives you 3 Great People Points (GPP).
Great People are very powerful, especially at the early stages so getting a lot is advisable

Under Representation specialists also give a really good yield that can compete with cottages, a single scientist will give 6:science: for example.


Its always good to have at least one city whos job it is to run specialists to get Great People, known as a 'GP farm'.
This city needs a lot of excess food, so 2-3 good food resources makes a city a candidate, it doesn't really matter what the other tiles are, i'd be quite happy with 3 fish and the rest desert as only the fish will get worked. ;)
This city will want buildings to allow specialists like a Library, the National Epic wonder that doubles base GPP output and perhaps some wonders if possible as they give a little GPP (The Great Library is a special case giving a whopping 8 scientist GPP).
One of the big advantages of using specs to get Great People is that you can control which great person your going to get, scientists givea great scientist etc.

Early on when getting a lot of specialist slots is difficult and :) is limited I often settle a city or two intent on working a food resource and running 2 scientists to get my first 1-2 GS.
 
So Ghpstage, are you saying I should always have as many specialists (except for citizens) as I can in a GP Farm? What about my other cities?
Everyone you ask here may have different answers :p

Typically I try to run as many scientists as possible as GS are by far my preferred great person but if any Engineer slots are available i'll fill them up too.

When it comes to other types and numbers you have to remember that the GP that you get will be dictated by what GPP you are generating. If you have a Scientist and an Artist running you will have a 50% chance at a G.Artist or G.Scientist and if you were banking on the scientist this can be a very bad thing, this is know as GP pollution.
To avoid unwanted pollution in your GP pool you may want to avoid running as many specialists as you can feed as adding a priest to your 2 Library scientists could prove painful, but on the other hand that priest would give you extra GPP so your great people will come faster.

I typically use Caste System quite early as it removes the limits on Scientist, Merchants and Artists so I can run a load of Scientists but it is situational as Slavery is great for getting :hammers: and you may not have the :food: in your GPfarm to justify the swap.

For other cities you can use specialists to give a reasonable yield if the city has no other way to avoid working an unimproved tile, a second GP farm is also reasonable especially early in the game (between writing and National Epic). Specs can also be used instead of weak tiles like plains.
 
Here are some reasons to use specialists:

#1 I need research NOW but I don't have many cottages! What can I do?
You can build libraries in your cities. These buildings allow you to assign up to 2 "SCIENTIST" specialists. The scientists will provide your empire with "unconditional" research in that the research given is NOT affected at all by the "slider" at the top of your screen. This is good because even if your empire is flat broke, you can still research things by using scientist specialists.

#2 I would like a great person!
Every "specialists" ("citizen" specialists don't count) also provides "Great Person Points" in addition to their other bonuses. Once you get enough Great Person Points (GPP), you get a great person! These great people are very useful to your empire and provide great bonuses. For example if you get a "great scientist" he can build a special building called "academy" that increases all science in a city by +50%! That's good! There are other things you can do with him too, these great people are fabulous!

There is a "great person" for each different type of "specialist". Each different kind of great person gives different bonuses. I won't list them here, look them up in the civolopedia!

The point is that in any game you're going to want at least a few of these great people to pop up, and there are strategies you can use where you run specialists in many cities and by the end of the game you will have dozens of great people!

#3 My cities are HUGE
By the end of a game it sometimes happens that there are so many people in your city that all of the land in your BIG FAT CROSS is used up! If you grow bigger than 24 population, then there cannot possibly be enough land for all the people in the city. In that case there is nothing useful for the extra population to do except be a specialist!

Remember that the "citizen" is not a real specialist, doesn't give you GPP, and is all around useless except in rare instances where a city has Lots of food and happiness but no production nearby at all, and you need to get some buildings up.
 
To elaborate, you must understand that the time it takes to build something depends on how many hammers your city is creating. Like ghp said, you probably took a guy off working a mine in order to get that citizen, which gave you a net loss of two or three hammers.

Similarly, the more specialists you create, the slower your city will grow (because people working the fields usually generate one or two food in addition to the tiles' other yields). This is why it's so important to have loads of high-food tiles in your GP farm: that way, you can have three or four guys working tiles that give 4 or more food, allowing you to assign a whole bunch of specialists.

In order to make specialists other than citizens, you will need to build certain buildings (like library for scientists, forge for engineers, and so on), or you will need to use the Caste System civic (which allows you to create artists, scientists, and merchants without having to build any buildings). Note that just creating specialists willy-nilly is a bad idea - they only pay off if you concentrate their numbers (like having 6+ scientists in one city) and build the relevant multiplier buildings.
 
It might help to think about the situation being modelled. In an early city, everyone has to do manual labor, either on the farms or the mines, just to keep everyone fed. As the city becomes more prosperous, it can afford to let some of the population focus on science (or art or religion...) which provides different benefits to your city other than just the food and hammers they'd give you by working tiles.
 
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