How to use Specialists

[spleen1015]

One thing I haven't done much of and probably one of the reasons I can only manage a 50% win rate at Noble is use Specialists. I always feel like I need that pop to be working a tile instead to help my city build or grow.

I did some brief search yesterday trying to find some general ideas about Specialist usage and didn't come up with much. Did I miss something?

If not, what are some of the general strategies to employ with Specialists. Specifically, I need a better understanding of when to use them.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I did some brief search yesterday trying to find some general ideas about Specialist usage and didn't come up with much. Did I miss something?

If not, what are some of the general strategies to employ with Specialists. Specifically, I need a better understanding of when to use them.

In mechanics, the function of a specialist is to convert food to GPP points + some other goody (research, gold, culture, hammers).

Common strategic ideas include:

Running specialists for a limited time to spawn a particular flavor of great person ("I built a temple and hired a priest to spawn a great prophet to build the shrine", "I built a library and hired two scientists to spawn a great scientist to build a science academy in the capital", "I've built a forge and hired an engineer in the hopes of rushing the Great Library")

Building a city (the "Great Person Farm") completely dedicated to running specialists.

Designing an entire economy around food, and running specialists everywhere. This gives you lots of cities running specialists in parallel.

Because Great Engineers are highly valued, and difficult to come by, it is common for cities with forges to hire engineers permanently if there is hope that the city will produce a great engineer.

You will in some cases find players taking care to keep the pool "clean" - sacrificing the rate of production of GP in exchange for better control of what types of GP get founded.

To some extent, you can customize cities for the kinds of specialists they wil run (these cities have banks, so will run merchants and priests. those cities have engineers, so they will run scientists).

You'll also find that players will shape their game strategies around creating as many of the same type of GP as they can (Artists for cultural victories, Scientists for the Liberalism race, Prophets to create Hammer of God cities, etc). The approach taken to specialists will then be geared towards the objective of creating the right kinds of GP.

My first suggestion would be to experiment with dedicating a single city to specialists. NO COTTAGES HERE. Initial target: 100 GPP per turn without starving the city.

 

[spleen1015]

Thanks, VOU. That's explains a lot to me. I don't know why I've ignore them. I guess I forgot about them for some reason.

Interesting enough, I started 2 games last night after reading your post and each time I had corn and pigs in the fat cross of my Capital and no less than 3 grassland squares on a river. So, I was ready to give this a go with no cottages and lots of specialists.

I found using specialist to stagnate grown when at the happiness limit very effective.

I wondered yesterday why I didn't get much response in this thread. I bet it is because this is something that I should already know about.

I appreciate your adice VOU.

 

[futurehermit]

^^^great advice and overview.

i agree. when first learning specialists you should start with creating one dedicated gp farm city. look for a spot that has 3+ surplus food resources (seafood, farmables, herdables). build library, market, temples, forge, theatre followed by as many buildings that allow specialists as possible (e.g., grocers). farm as may of the available tiles as possible with some mines for production (you still have buildings to build right? ). grow your city to the pop cap and then stagnate working as many specialists as possible. when you get more grow to max pop and stagnate, adding specialists. just work as many as you can. when you get a gp decide what you want to do with it.

 

[cabert]

you didn't get more answers because VoU gave you such a good one
There are loads of articles about great persons, + an enormous amount of arguing about Specialist Economy (SE) vs Cottage Economy (CE).
If you have sleeping difficulties, try reading those.

 

[futurehermit]

you didn't get more answers because VoU gave you such a good one
There are loads of articles about great persons, + an enormous amount of arguing about Specialist Economy (SE) vs Cottage Economy (CE).
If you have sleeping difficulties, try reading those.