Is this correct strategy: population to specialists question

[MBison]

Is one of your goals of city management to use a worker to improve surrounding tiles sufficiently so that you gain enough food/production/commerce from FEWER city gatherers so you can use a population point as a specialist instead of working the land. But maintaining slow, but steady growth as well as decent production speed? That balance would seem to be ideal.

Help me

 

[woodelf]

Looks good to me. That's what I've been micromanaging towards the middle of the game. The old strategy of maknig your cities as large as possible isn't worth as much in Civ4 , and that's a good thing.

 

[kromm20]

Ideally, you want your cities tiles to be as productive as possible, because the more population a city has, ultimately the better. BUT... if you have a high growth city, you will need to control its pop growth somewhat or you will begin to run into the problem of unhappiness/unhealthiness. I had a city in my last game tucked in between two rivers and all tiles were flood plains(wheat on one) except for two plains tiles and 2 hills (gold on one of them). quickly grew out of hand to the point where i did two things: used the city governor buttons to emphasize production(effectively moving citizens to mine the hills and workshops) and stop growth( which put several pop into citizen specialists) as more health and happiness resources became available, I was able to slowly let go of the growth stop and let her build up. End game, that city out produced all my other cities(including capital) in research by alot!
Don't be afraid to use specialists, their bonuses will begin to add up significantly.

 

[Xeos]

For some reason I never seem to get together enough food to make good use of specialists. I always seem to have terrain tiles that give more stuff. For instance:

Science specialist: 3 beakers, 6 with that one civic

Grassland + town: 2 food, 5-8 commerce (which can in theory all go to science) maybea production with the one civic

Engineer: 2 hammers, +3 science with civic

Grassland + hill + mine: 1 food, 3 production (iirc)
Grassland + hill + windmill + windmill upgrades(never reall use them until then): 1 food, 2 production, 1 gold

Merchant: see scientist more or less
Artist:see scientist(need music to replace with commerce)
Priest:weak engineer

Note that none of these apply to actual resources, I assume those are given to be worked upon.

So what is the use of specialists besides to get more great people, or to affect the kind of great person recieved?

 

[woodelf]

Merchants can be a life saver early on if your budget is running -3 or so. I like the engineer for cities that are larger and are building Wonders. Any GL points are a bonus not to be ignored either.

 

[erfael2]

Ideally, you want your cities tiles to be as productive as possible, because the more population a city has, ultimately the better. BUT... if you have a high growth city, you will need to control its pop growth somewhat or you will begin to run into the problem of unhappiness/unhealthiness. I had a city in my last game tucked in between two rivers and all tiles were flood plains(wheat on one) except for two plains tiles and 2 hills (gold on one of them). quickly grew out of hand to the point where i did two things: used the city governor buttons to emphasize production(effectively moving citizens to mine the hills and workshops) and stop growth( which put several pop into citizen specialists) as more health and happiness resources became available, I was able to slowly let go of the growth stop and let her build up. End game, that city out produced all my other cities(including capital) in research by alot!
Don't be afraid to use specialists, their bonuses will begin to add up significantly.

Yeah, this is what I've been doing. And it's pretty easy to see from the list of the city advisor which ones are running into trouble. I really like this new health and happiness system. It's so much nicer than pollution and civil disorder.

 

[Whomp]

I've noticed growing too fast without the proper technologies can be a burden. What are you guys doing for the unhappy slackers in high growth cities before luxs and lux sliders?

 

[erfael2]

I've noticed growing too fast without the proper technologies can be a burden. What are you guys doing for the unhappy slackers in high growth cities before luxs and lux sliders?

Turn people into citizens so that the city doesn't grow large enough to have unhappies. If I have 9 happiness in a city and the population is 8 or so I start to look at the number and see how many more times I can grow without getting any unhappy citizens. When I get to the point that I can't grow again without getting angries then I move enough people off of food production and into specialists to make the city not grow any more.