Is there ANY conceivable reason to ever build a citizen specialist?

[Yared]

Think biology and forests then.

Aha

 

[Wreck]

if you have Sistine Chapel, you can easily pop borders without being in Caste System.

Yes. This is their main voluntary use.

Others have mentioned using them for the 1. I do that, though it is rare. One situation that makes it a bit more likely to be worthwhile is when you have hammer multipliers in a city, and are near a hammer breakpoint. I.e., you've whipped a forge in a seacoast city with just one hammer. You've got plenty of food, but only the three hammers from the city-center tile and running an engineer. Thus 3 total hammers: 3*1.25 rounded down. If you run a specialist, then you get five total hammers: 4 *1.25.

 

[shyuhe]

If you want to build the Moai (or dike) in an island city, working a fishing resource + citizen specialists is often the fastest way to build it short of rush buy.

 

[Grashopa]

I use them most games for the above reason.

 

[vranasm]

Hmm some interresting lines of thinking. Didnt thought about using them in some ways that were explained here.
I usually used them only to avoid growth when I dont have libraries, but lately I am more using workers/settlers at start and later in game I usually have enough libraries around, so I didnt look at them mostly.
Automatized governor doesnt use them I think so you have to MM them...

 

[mirthadir]

1. Border pops either from Sistine, hammering or both. Normally this is a case of settling on an Astro island and trying to pop for a key resource. This is most useful if you take Sistine by conquest and lack Music or when you have no other .
2. Marginal tiles, like 2 1 or 3 may often be inferior to 1 and 3 . Using ice fishing to run rep specs is not a bad deal and until you can get better slots (or ones that won't pollute your GP pool if you are gunning for a specific GP) make rep citizens better than the alternatives. If you need to keep the GP pool pure and don't have the slot you want, citizens aren't too terrible.
3. Whip storage, these are pretty lousy but if you lack any other alternatives they can let you get up to 6 or 8 pop and then whip in whatever you need.
4. General pop useage. One tile city with +16 from sushi; yeah I'll do that to take control of the AP/UN. I'll even keep citizens instead of going caste if I don't care about GPP in this city if the are more important.
5. :Hammers: of last resort. If I can use the whip to overflow from units into big ticket items (e.g. Globe, MS, forge) then I may use citizens to convert to .

 

[obsolete]

but I was initially going to append something along the lines as "...or perhaps I just suck and do not know how to use them"

Well no problem there then. Time to time someone shows up, doesn't know how to use So & So or This & That, then writes a little banter on how useless it is. And everyone else is supposed to take their word for it naturally.

So... now we got that out the way.. People who do a lot of early warring will get more use out of civilian specialists, since a lot of the early cities won't have slots open for specialized specialists.

 

[Kid R]

Beakers in representation but not caste system seems the most generally useful to me. I also use them quite often to get things going in ice/tundra fishing cities, but those tend to be crappy sites that I suspect I shouldn't have settled anyway so I'd be cautious about offering it as a tip. It's possible the tip should really be "don't settle any city where 1 hammer from a citizen is an attractive proposition"! Moai city excepted of course, especially if stone doubles it to 2.

I've also used citizens to deliberately not get GPP for a few turns so a GP pops somewhere else first. Which is using them precisely because, as the OP said, they suck.

Population storage when no useful tiles are available surely doesn't count as using the citizen specialist by choice does it?

 

[mirthadir]

Beakers in representation but not caste system seems the most generally useful to me. I also use them quite often to get things going in ice/tundra fishing cities, but those tend to be crappy sites that I suspect I shouldn't have settled anyway so I'd be cautious about offering it as a tip. It's possible the tip should really be "don't settle any city where 1 hammer from a citizen is an attractive proposition"! Moai city excepted of course, especially if stone doubles it to 2.

I've also used citizens to deliberately not get GPP for a few turns so a GP pops somewhere else first. Which is using them precisely because, as the OP said, they suck.

Population storage when no useful tiles are available surely doesn't count as using the citizen specialist by choice does it?

Ehh, tundra cities have lots of 1 tiles which can be worse for your whip cycle than dumping it into a spec slot. Also, you should consider the globe as well for buildings worth building use citizens. If you get to drama late or aren't in HR then you may not be able to use the whip to build it and high food feeds a lot of crappy citizens.

 

[piblokto]

What a great way to post a question. You claim that citizens suck, yet not being privy to the fact YOU must suck as well, for not having taken advantage of them in half a dozen different situations that you no doubt failed to take advantage of...

Hmm....

There are simply too many reasons to count, but here's a clue. They get all bonuses other specialist boosters get AND they give 1 h. I'll bet 100-to-1 that you're primarily a cottage spammer, and hence haven't moved up to something better like SE yet. If you did, you should have known!

I'm just posting here (perhaps for one of my first times ever) to say that Obsolete you are a total asshat for overreacting to a legitimate question from the OP.

Obsolete (aka Asshat) - I withdraw my comment if English is not your first language and your rudeness was not intended.

 

[Manco Capac]

I primarily use citizens for boosting early wonders (save one or two turn) if the city is hammer poor; by early wonders I mean pre-classical wonders (thus no workshops) where there are few ways for getting hammers. Dec0y is somewhat right by saying "citizens suck" IF we compare to other kind of specialist or working a tile (excluding tundra).

BTW, Obsolete must've a bad day which has a kickback here in the forum.

 

[obsolete]

I don't doubt Decoy meant to append what he said he had originally intended. Though, one can argue that would still leave him open for the returning comment anyway

Anyhow, no bad day here. We still love ya Decoy.

 

[Kid R]

Also, you should consider the globe as well for buildings worth building use citizens. If you get to drama late or aren't in HR then you may not be able to use the whip to build it and high food feeds a lot of crappy citizens.

Ah yes, globe, good point - always in a high food city. Mention of whipping it brings up the fact that in slavery the whip is a good source of hammers and in caste priests are superior to citizens. Which is why for hammer purposes citizens are a niche thing - mainly for really poor cities. In theory perhaps less so at emancipation but by then even the worst cities probably have some infra up.

 

[mirthadir]

KidR: Caste does not affect priests at all. Caste gives you unlimited merchants, artists, and scientists; no spies, engineers or priests.

By whip building the globe I mean something like this: Work enough food to grow 2 pop in 3 turns. Turn 1, invest 1 into a spear.
Turn 2, two pop whip the spear.
Turn 3 build the globe, letting the overflow from the spear go into the Globe
Repeat until done.

If you are in HR this works extremely well as the new unit counteracts the whip anger and then when the globe finishes you have plenty of new shiny units (you can use the same trick with the MS, but then you need to wait forever for the whip anger to die). The problem comes when you can't two pop whip effectively. Most notably when you have all classical or later units this doesn't work. Going for a raw high pop whip is possible, but often you will come out ahead by using citizens to lower the pop needed by 2.

Now if you have any other tiles, even tundra hills or dirt basic workshop plains, those are superior to the citizen, but for the cities with truly nothing but food (e.g. seafood/fur/tundra) this can make it worth it to run citizens. It is fairly rare that I need to use the Globe in such a location and don't make the effort to be sure I can whip it out efficiently, but every now and again I need to be in rep and plan a draft war or rush to grab lib and can't get drama until I have only expensive units to build.

 

[rollo1066]

Can't remember using them. Could be forced if a city got very large and you have no land left to work and all Specialists allowed by Buildings are used up.