Policemen vs. Civil Engineers

[Eyeoftiger]

Hey all, long time reader of the forums, finally registered.

What are some of your thoughts concerning the new specialists? I've found myself using the engineers in out-lying cities, while using policemen in the interior where corruption is less rampant. Does the Civil Engineer give free shields, or does it figure into corruption and waste?

 

[Mr. Do]

The CE does give two free shields for anything except units. It's the policeman that confuses me- sometimes it takes one off money corruption, sometimes it takes one off shield waste, sometimes it takes one off either- but is utterly incconsistent in its application for me.

 

[meltone1]

Hmm.. I thought the police took one corruption and one waste away. Maybe you have to be producing a certain amount of shields/commerce for it to apply to either one?

 

[Bamspeedy]

I think police reduce corruption by a certain %. If corruption is already really low, you may not see any benefit. If corruption is pretty maxed out, then you won't see any benefit either. For max corruption the game is designed so that a city will not be more than 95% corrupt. But if due to the number of cities/distance, etc., the city should be at say 150% the police might reduce this to 125%, but that still puts you over the max, so you will still get the 1 shield/1 gold output from the city.

 

[Mr. Do]

Thereby making police useless where they're needed the most. Another smart move by the makers!

 

[meltone1]

eh? I wouldn't say their worthless.. it's just when your city is so corrupt it is very difficult to make it productive no matter what you do.

 

[CyberChrist]

I have never noticed Policemen working in any other way than to recover 1 gold from corruption and 1 shield from waste.

 

[Masquerouge]

The Engineer is awesome for those highly-corrupted, freshly-captured cities. Allows you to build a temple pretty quick while starving the population, muhahahahaha !

 

[ssvensson]

I started a similar thread in the strategy section and Barbslinger came with this post:

"I found that after conquering a far flung civ where there is little flip risk you can use the people there to grab allthe high food tiles to barely support the populace and put the rest on CE. You can greatly reduce the time to build. You build everything but the cathedral or university and then use that as a prebuild for tanks, etc. Build up 100 shields towards cathedral, switch over and presto, a tank." - Barbslinger

CE are great! - its the only way to get those corrupted cities to produce units.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Originally posted by ssvensson
You build everything but the cathedral or university and then use that as a prebuild for tanks, etc. Build up 100 shields towards cathedral, switch over and presto, a tank.

Nice exploit.

 

[phizuol]

You might as well consider Scientists and Tax Collectors "new specialists" now. With their boost I certainly look on them in a new light. All 5 specialists have their uses now, I think. Its really a shame that the CE comes so late in the game, it could be a huge help early on.