Is it possible to prevent the game from choosing my specialists?

[TaPele]

It's sooooo annoying... I get into a city screen and out of the blue it has a spy assigned. Then I change it and choose an artist for instance. A couple of turns later the specialists are all messed up again. How can I tell the game to not to choose the specialists? Is it possible?
Thanks

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Yes. Disable automation for the city. It's the small computer icon on the bottom right of the screen you get when you open a city that has an orange box around it. Click it to make the box disappear and turn off automation.


And always remember. Cool people newer automate anything.

 

[danjuno]

If I remember correctly, even without automation the city will sometimes assign a new citizen as a specialist, so even then you should keep tabs on growing cities to avoid your GP pool getting polluted.

 

[AcaMetis]

That happens when a city grows, since the new citizen will be assigned by the same automation that thinks running spies all day every day is a great idea. If you want to make sure cities don't end up doing dumb things with their citizens disable automation, and turn on city growth notification. Every time a city grows manually check it again, because that new citizen will be doing something stupid you don't want it to. It's a lot of tedious work, but it's the only way to prevent cities from running spies barring never building any buildings that allow a city to run spy specialists in the first place.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

And do what I do which is to check every city every turn.

 

[lymond]

And do what I do which is to check every city every turn.

This is def a good idea, and key to high level play with this game.

What I do though to help counter that annoying specialist assignment, is actually do select the city automation. First select the food option, and the click the right "city automation" button. The city will adjust citizens to max food. Then manually adjust the citizens to the tiles you want to work and any specs you want to run. What you select should remain static. New citizens will opt for a max food tile at growth. (You can also select or option as well, or a combination...I usually select since it is simple)

It's never an exact science, but the above approach seems to work quite well for me. Also, when running Representation, cities tend to want to run specialists more.

 

[TaPele]

Thanks for your answers!

 

[Kaiman]

turn on city growth notification.

How do you do this?

 

[AcaMetis]

I believe it's a bug feature and somewhere within the BUG menu (the green gecko-looking thing), but I'm not sure.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I believe it's a bug feature and somewhere within the BUG menu

Yes - Ctl + Alt +O or the gecko then "Alerts" - the first option is for City growth.

 

[6K Man]

Randomly assigned specialists are the punishment the game metes out for building too much infrastructure in every city.

 

[elmurcis]

Game really wants to outspend AI on espionage. No contact with AI - no Spy assigned. After Optics few turns it is calm (before storm) and suddenly one turn almost every city that has courthouse will assign spy. Just because AI I'm focusing espionage increase it's own points towards me. Most times at that point it doesn't matter anyways but this behaviour really makes me to skip CH and use SP more often just to avoid "spies everywhere.... even in game!!!"