National Park and too many specialists?

[Zanthra]

I started a game to try warmongering in, and managed to do something I have been wanting to do for a while, build my National Park city in a location with access to nothing but food resources and forest/jungle tiles. Now I have rice, banana and 18 forest preserves. Unfortunately, that leaves me with 2 Scientists, 2 Artists, a Spy, and 20 Citizens (with Merchantalism and SoL). Even with all the structures that provide slots for specialists, can I even hope to have better jobs for all of those free specialists? Should I switch back to Caste System just for that city? I am quite a ways ahead in tech, and it will be some time before the AIs get Emancipation.

Just curious on what others would do in this situation.

 

[qwertz]

I really don't know how your game looks like, but Caste System is usually much more usefull than emancipation, particularly when the AIs are still far away from emancipation. So unless you have a lot of unmatured cottages I'd swich to caste system.

 

[Smakemupagus]

With 20 hammers from the citizens, it wouldn't take long to just prioritize building forge/market/grocer/bank/uni in the NP city to provide job slots, no?

 

[r_rolo1]

^^that or Caste system.

 

[Priah]

unless its very late in the game and your people will rebel without emancipation, id just switch to caste system really quick, at least until you can run enough specialists.

 

[siggboy]

With 20 hammers from the citizens, it wouldn't take long to just prioritize building forge/market/grocer/bank/uni in the NP city to provide job slots, no?

I agree with that. Under Representation, a citizen is 1h+3b, which is not THAT bad.

The fastest way to get "real" specialists are probably the religious buildings, completely awesome if you have Angkor Wat, but even without, they are "deluxe" citizens that generate GPP already. I would follow that up with Market/Grocer/Bank and start turning the city into a gold mine (chances are you have your science city established already at that point).

 

[Ormur]

I usually try to build lumber mills in my National Park city before I reach biology so I can either build enough buildings to occupy the specialists before or while I'm phasing them out for forest preserves.
Spreading a few religions there and saving the city for the big religions buildings is also a good way to get specialists (especially with Ankor Wat as siggboy said since that makes priests the best specialists).

 

[Zanthra]

Alright, thanks for the advice. I was not thinking ahead to what I would do with my load of specialists after I finished the National Park, but rather that it would be the most specdialists I have had in one city before. Still learning here, so just trying to find out what all the options are.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Another option is to switch over to universal suffrage and rush-buy buildings.

 

[Johnpecan]

To answer your question, with a strong NP + food city you CAN come very close to maxing out specialists (sans caste system of course).

I had a city with about 8 forest preserves, 3 food resources and the rest grassland tiles (with a hill or 3 I think ). I ended up having to build cathedrals ( and the other religious buildings) to have enough GP slots available. So you CAN max out or come close to maxing out without caste system. I find in a competitive game at Emperor or higher, by the time the NP is built, I will be having to switch to emancipation very shortly, so unfortunately, caste system + NP is a deadly 1-2 punch that doesn't last very long.

 

[Zanthra]

Yeah. I was in quite a tech lead. I managed to kill off two of the civilizations very early in the game, neting some very nice cities, brought my tech back up and had such a tech advantage to end the game in the mid 1800s. I learned to use the culture slider to ward off WW, and I was able to run Caste System through to the end of the game. Got a record score for me of 56,000 points on a prince game, so I am going to be moving up in difficulty now.

 

[siggboy]

I'm growing more and more fond of the NP, with every game that I end up building it.

By now I plan my inital expansion with the NP in mind, saving a "jungle camp" for later or passing on wonders even to save the forest I might have to chop otherwise.

In my last game I paired the NP with National Epic (so I did not build it early, but that was OK since I relied on cottages mainly). Unfortunately early Great People are a lot more valuable than late ones, even if the actual total number of GP generated does not change by that much if don't build the Nat Epic before Biology.

Probably the best combination is NP + Wall Street, and then incorporate Sid's Sushi in the city, which has great synergy.

So, what do you guys think about that? Would you defer the National Epic for the NP city or rather have it in your "real" GP farm and then maybe get a few late game GPs out of the National Park city as well?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Depends entirely on whether I have a good GP farm or not. My current game I don't - my "farm" runs off two fish and has grassland that can never be irrigated. Occasionally it gets a pig when my capital doesn't need it. But its not good enough to make it worth building National Epic. Nor are there any better locations on my island. So I am saving National Epic until I either conquer an enemy capital or find an island to settle with lots of forest.

I have a lot of jungle but the problem with settling in the jungle is getting enough hammers to actually build National Park in the first place.

 

[Diamondeye]

Caste System

-it's crucial for superspecialistcities.

 

[mungbean]

Even with Caste System, you probably want to build some slots for production citizens (forge, temples, factory all good). You might consider building whichever ones are cheapest for your leader (eg if industrious, build a forge there).

The Industrial Park seems almost automatic for the NP city once you have enough production (unlike other cities where it is a judgment call and could hurt you). Health problems are a non-issue, you get a free engineer, and you get more engineer slots.