Thank you both. So, I guess we generally tend to build them up if we got them early in the game.
Not generally, no, I haven't. I think I've talked to people elsewhere who do. It's probably more consistent with the designers intent, since even CxxC specialist farms were not intended as optimal (Soren Johnson called something significantly less strict than CxC spacing ICS... and they didn't want ICS as optimal for this game).
It may seem tempting to think that it will pay off to eventually have a better research rate in say the modern age. Maybe you believe that might make winning a spaceship launch game easier? But, even then a whole cluster of science specailist farms can outdo wider spaced cities with a whole lot of corruption. And as a reminder, research has a strict limit of 4 turns at minimum, thus more science only helps with later research, but that stops applying at some point in the modern age. The timing of when more infrastructure actually can pay off for research in highly corrupt areas is close to when there is very little, if anything, left to research of any consequence.
I found a size 23 city from my recent Maya game:
I adjusted the science slider from the final
save so we have 70% of commerce going to research. Though Sid level makes extreme corruption easier to find, it still often can get found on lower levels. The city produces 15 science from specialists, but only 11 from the city! At 100% science it would produce 16 from the city. The citizen's research barely outdoes the scientists without any multiplier buildings!
Now, of course, one can point out that if it has a commercial dock, it would produce more science. But, the cost of the courthouse (80), police station (160) (how did one get Communism... was it worth it?), and commercial dock combined (160) equals 400 shields. That's 5 specialists civil engineering those buildings in 38 turns (8 for the courthouse, 15 for the other two) AFTER the hospital and aqueduct get built.
More cities getting up scientists earlier likely ends up better than two. Two cities at size six with 3 scientists each produced at least 20 science. And if we had a third, because of 2 earlier settlers from the city, that city producing settlers instead of infrastructure early could work out better for research purposes even if late game.
Science specialist farms are very simple to setup (no infrastructure, just get them food, and make scientists) and I think
@BlackBetsy would agree with them as fun to run too. The only issue might be that one might end up with "too many of them", but the game thankfully is hard coded to never allow for more than 512 cities also.