Is it bad that I never specialise my citizens?

[AFACI]

I've never touched them! I always found that if I do, it inhibits my city's food reserves.
I feel like I might be missing out on a valuable tactic.

Am I?

Cheers

 

[JujuLautre]

I feel like I might be missing out on a valuable tactic.

you're missing an entire kind of economy, which is based on specialists; and in general, you miss lot's of opportunities to creatre great people (which is one of the main goal of using specialists)

 

[Cer]

I used to be like you-- never really went for specialists (except the free ones you can get from mercantilism). A bunch of expert players in this game seem to consider specialists to be more powerful in the early part of the game and cottages (the main alternative) to be better in the late game. That is generally true in my experience too.

Getting literature fairly early and building the National Epic somewhere, getting as many tiles with more than 2 food as you can in that city, and then running a bunch of specialists (merchant/engineer/scientist/priest) ... not the only way to go, but a good way to go nonetheless.

 

[slobberinbear]

It took me awhile to get the hang of specialists, and I am no SE master. You are essentially trading food and city growth for some other advantage: great people, beakers, culture, commerce, or hammers. Certain civics are tailor-made for specialists and make them even more powerful in the mid-game period. Once you have civil service and biology, your farming options explode and you can create some huge cities with specialists, providing that you can keep them happy and healthy, of course.

 

[popejubal]

I've never touched them! I always found that if I do, it inhibits my city's food reserves.
I feel like I might be missing out on a valuable tactic.

Am I?

Yes.

Some tiles are very valuable and you want to work them if you can. Most resources are exceptionally good to work when they have the appropriate improvement and you'll want to work cottages if you can, as well. Cottages are an awful improvement, but they turn into quite good improvements over time.

Most of the time, you'll get better output from a good tile than from a specialist. Compare a Plains Forest to an Engineer and you'll see that you get 2 from the Engineer while you get 2 and a from the Plains Forest. Obviously, the Plains Forest is a better tile to work.

Or is it? You have a limited amount of happy people available to a city. putting some of your citizens to work as specialists instead of working tiles that produce food will limit your population growth. While that is a bad thing if you want to grow, it's a very good thing if you are near the edge of your happiness limit.

Additionally, each specialist grants you 3 Great People points per turn. Great People are an exceptionally powerful asset and it is a shame to miss out on them. Even people who base their economy on Towns and Cottages still try to keep at least one city with good food resources focused on creating Great People by working only food tiles and specialists and ignoring all else except for what is absolutely essential in that "Great Person Farm" city.

It is also entirely possible to create a strong and dynamic economy by using lots of specialists to satisfy your research and $ needs.

I've done both and I've found that neither approach is absolutely better than the other. Each has its strengths and its weaknesses and each is better suited to different leaders and different particular maps.

 

[Cer]

Cottages are an awful improvement, but they turn into quite good improvements over time.

Better than workshops, before Guilds is discovered.

 

[ShadowKatana]

If you're spamming cities, one of the first things to do with those cities is to whip/chop a library and run 1/2 scientists, so they are contributing *something* to your science pool rather than *almost nothing*. Take out the scientists once the city is big and cottaged enough to be useful without scientists, if you want (you might want to keep them running for scientist great people).

An example is for the Holy Roman Empire - placing down 6-10 cities and having all of them run 1/2 scientists is a very good way to get research done, and you pop a bunch of GP scientists for bulb/settling in the meantime.

 

[6K Man]

My feelings are mixed about specialists. At this point, I'm generally using them in cities that have no other good options (the stereotypical island city with 3 seafood tiles) and trying not to use them in most other places. The GPP are meaningless if you have specialists everywhere, and I'd usually rather be working my cottages/mines than converting my citizens to specialists. I find the irony with specialists is that the cities with a lot of options for different specialists - the ones with a Library, Observatory, Forge, Market, Factory etc - are usually ones where you'll want to keep your workers on the land (because the way those buildings get built in the city is (usually) by having a lot of workable tiles in the fat cross).

Ideally, I'd like to have a couple of island/peninsula cities pushing out Great Scientists, and another city with all the wonders in it (which will produce assorted Great People, but that's the hazard of building Wonders). Unfortunately, the island cities are usually forced to stop at 3 Scientist specialists unless I'm in Caste System, and that means I usually stay in CS waaay too long.

 

[Tennyson]

I run specialists when I can't get hammers or a cottage from the same worker. With Great Library and Sankore I run all scientists - and the large chunk of fixed science means that adjustments to the slider have less of an effect. Even if I'm not running a full specialist economy, I still get to turn down the slider and reap the cash rewards.