Lets revisit specialist slots

[cazaderonus]

Yeah specialists are useless at the moment. Just like citizen management is when you reach 8/9 pop in a city. You tend to just focus production, or maybe gold later on, and get on with it. So sometimes i see specialist being used but i just dont care to look to hard.

Adding GPP to specialist would already be a step in the right direction, buffing the yields wouldnt hurt as well. And adding some policies affecting specialist might also be a good idea, like each specialist grants X more hammer, or amenities, etc.. It seems really weird that this doesnt exist already. Feels a lot like this system was implemented without too much thought .

 

[Jaybe]

Enhancing specialist yields would just hamstring the AI more because the AI does not grow large pop cities (I am NOT referring to high difficulty levels).

 

[Chibisuke]

The thing is, specialists now are so worthless they are not even a viable alternative unless your city is smack in the middle of a flat desert or flat snowy area, and even then, you'd barely get anything from it because the city would be so small and have such weak production. They need some kind of buff just to be useable.

 

[sa1vy]

Specialists are definitely not useless.
For religious games, I firmly believe that utilizing specialists is optimal play. Gathering as much faith as possible is (nearly) the only important thing in a religious victory. Culture is important only up until you get to theocracy, and science is basically not needed at all. Production is irrelevant because you can buy everything you need.
For culture games, I think they can be very helpful for getting out of the way expensive civics somewhat quicker, like conservationism.
For science games they are not especially helpful, but could be the best use for some citizens in large cities without good production tiles. IZ specialist slots may be your best production tiles.
For domination games, specialist slots give culture and production. You are unlikely to build theater squares in a domination game, so your culture could really be lacking. These specialists can give you a bunch of extra culture.