Ok, in the Great General thread I suggested that the new specialists you've created are unbalancing. What I meant by that was about the generation of GPP. I think its important to compare the GPP generation of the three new specialists with the 5 existing ones to find a suitable balance between all 8.
That's why I'm posting this in this thread rather than the others, cause I am assuming the three new specialists will be included together.
So I made a tally of the sources of GPP for the 5 existing specialist classes:
Scientist:
Merchant:
Engineer:
Prophet:
Artist:
From this list we see the following rules for GPP generation:
- World wonders always give 2 GPP
- National wonders always give 1 GPP
- There is only one instance of free specialists (the Great Library)
- There is a hesitancy to give too many GPP too early
- There is only one instance of a World Wonder giving the ability to place specialists (Angor Wat)
- Only wonders generate automatic GPP
- Each specialist type has one national wonder that seems to correspond with it directly, and that national wonder allows 3 of that specialist to be placed:
- Oxford for scientist
- Wall Street for merchant
- Ironworks for engineer
- Globe Theater for artist
- Religious shrine for prophet
- Total GPP automatically generated from buildings:
- 17 for Artist
- 14 for Merchant
- 13 for Scientist (if you include the free specialists)
- 11 for Prophet
- 10 for Engineer
- Total specialists allowed to be placed for each grouping:
- 10 Scientists
- 10 Priests
- 10 Merchants
- 10 Artists
- 6 Engineers
It clearly seems they were trying hard to balance all these specialists. It looks quite clearly also that they decided engineers to be the most powerful of the GP's (and they are) so they decreased the amount of them. It also seems that Firaxis didn't consider the Artist to be particularly powerful, at least in the late stages of the game (and I'd agree). So the effects of the great people should affect how many points are given to them.
One must also note that Artists, Merchants and Scientists are all unlimited under Caste System, whereas prophets and engineers are not. We must consider how to include these new specialists with Caste System. My recommendation is to include doctors under caste system, but not generals or statesmen. Give a free statesman(or two, but no more) in the capitol when under bureaucracy. And just have no civic adjustment of soldiers/generals since I consider them fairly powerful.
Lets compare the simple counting of GPPs to the new great people you suggested, also including the points that end up being taken away from existing specialists:
- Total GPP automatically generated from buildings:
- 16 for Doctor (if you include the free specialists)
- 24 for General (if you include the free specialists)
- 35 for Statesman (if you include the free specialists)
- 12 (-5) for Artist
- 9 (-5) for Merchant
- 11 (-2) for Scientist (if you include the free specialists)
- 11 for Prophet
- 7 (-3) for Engineer
- Total specialists allowed to be placed for each grouping:
- 11 Doctor
- 8 Soldier
- 10 Statesman
- 10 Priests
- 7 Scientists
- 7 Merchants
- 7 Artists
- 6 Engineers
Ideally, if these three new specialists are going to fit in seemlessly with the 5 existing specialists things will need to balance. Both with the points you are giving the new specialists and the points you are taking away from the existing ones. From the list above, the placement of specialists seems to be balanced, but the automatic points (counting GPP from wonders and free specialists) is drastically out of line, so I'm proposing a fix to balance all 8 specialists. I also recommend the 3 new ones follow the same general rules put forward by the 5 original specialists therefore I propose the following:
Note that I have the Castle allowing 2 soldiers and 2 statesmen. I think this is historically appropriate since castles were both administrative and military centers. Also in my experience (correct me if you've seen otherwise) castles don't get built that much, so this would give some extra incentive to make use of them.
Also note that I've given Taj Mahal to the great statesmen, and taken it away from great artist.
And since there are few natural doctor related buildings in the game, I decided to strengthen the Red Cross and give out the only free specialists in all my recommendations so great doctor has parity with the other classes.
Since each of the original 5 specialists seem to have a national wonder that corresponds directly with their purpose, I've done the same with these three.
- Forbidden Palace corresponds to Statesmen
- West Point corresponds to Generals
- Red Cross corresponds to Doctors
This provies the following free GPP points:
- 8 for Doctor (if you include the free specialists)
- 7 for General
- 9 for Statesman
- 10 for Artist
- 9 for Merchant
- 11 for Scientist (if you include the free specialists)
- 11 for Prophet
- 7 for Engineer
- Total specialists allowed to be placed for each grouping:
- 7 Doctor
- 7 Soldier
- 7 Statesman
- 10 Priests (if you wanted to take away the 3 bonus from Angor Wat, then that would bring priests in line with the others)
- 7 Scientists
- 7 Merchants
- 7 Artists
- 6 Engineers
. You're just making more work for me 
.
