Micromanage Specialists?

[Cicer0]

For those of you who have city specialization down, do you micromanage your specialists, or use the governor? That's the one bit of information I can't seem to find in all the city specialization threads, is when and how to micromanage the city specialists. Maybe someone could even be nice and write up a breakdown of the different specialists, when to use them and in what combinations. Thanks in advance!

 

[Aldor]

You can use the city governor, but STILL manage your specialists manually (well, in some cases the governor will override your decisions, in those cases you have to turn him off).

For example, if you want an engineer specialist, turn off the governor, put the specialist into action, then turn on governor again. Usually he will respect your choice. Exceptions usually happen when you tell him to max food or production, in which case he will often put the specialist back to work on the fields

Generally, the choice of what specialists you want depends on your situation (big surprise). Normally, I wouldn't put a specialist to work before your city gets a reasonable size however, like 7 or 8.

To find the uses of the specialists, mouse over them (or look into the civilopedia). You want engineers or prophets to improve production (hammers), merchants or prophets for cash. Scientists for well, science and artists to boost the cities cultural output.

 

[cleverhandle]

This is quick and dirty, not comprehensive...

In general: You're better off working a properly improved tile than using a specialist. The general exception is when you're devoting a city to Great Person production, in which case you probably want as many specialists as you can reasonably run without crippling the city. Besides the situations listed below, you may want to run a particular specialist if its Great Person fits in with your strategy - these are comments purely on the specialist output itself.

Engineer: The favorite default specialist - hard to argue with extra hammers. Particularly useful for coastal cities with extra food from seafood but few hammers due to limited land.

Merchant: Not a terribly useful specialist apart from its GP. However, a city with Wall Street and the other financial multipliers will gain +9gpt from a merchant, and that may be worth more than 2 hammers.

Scientist: A bit more useful than the merchant since you may have Academies boosting your science multipliers long before you have Oxford.

Artist: Crucial in culture games and in situations where you're attempting to push back a border. Running a few artists can make a big difference in border power. Other than borders and culture VC's, not very helpful.

Priest: Useless unless you have Angkor Wat, which is hardly worth the payoff. Perhaps you just can't run more than one engineer (only a Forge) so you use a priest instead, but that's just temporary.

 

[syneris]

A forced specialist will always stay forced even with unhappy citizens and population shrinks from starvation. When the city's population drops below the number of forced specialist, then you start to lose those specialists.