Specialists and Growth

[Ledneh]

I'm without Civ IV for the next couple weeks (I'm dying and losing my mind a little more each day--stupid computer ), but while I wait, I figured I'd ask a question, and that's about specialists.

As the attentive already know from my previous thread, I kinda suck at expanding enough. I'm slowly learning, though. What still bothers me is this: specialists, and city population growth. In most of my games so far, by the end I never get any city's population above 18, and those are in fairly food-rich cities with farms (maybe if I had like, eight floodplains, it would be different--one should be so lucky ). And that's usually after reaching a rough peak at about the 1600-1700's at 16 population. And THOSE are my fairly food-rich cities; everything else hovers consistently at around 10.

Considering that it takes pop 20 to work all available tiles, that's a lot of waste

This leads into my second problem--specialists. In a nutshell, if I try to set up specialists in almost any case, it would mean unsetting a 2 or 3 food tile, and often sending me into stagnance or starvation--obviously, not good (well, I guess stagnance would be okay if I were at the health/happiness cap, but I'm usually not). I always figured if I could get pop above 20, I could churn specialists (and so, Great People) like nobody's business. But, as I've said, I can't.

Unfortunately, I don't have any savegames to provide to illustrate my point anymore (grrrr ), but what I generally want to ask is: what sort of hoops do I have to jump through to get high food (and so, population) if just being relatively food-rich and building farms isn't enough? And more generally, does anyone have any advice on the whens and wheres of using specialists?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

(edit) To whom it matters, I usually play Pangaea/Lakes, Standard, Normal on either Chieftain or the one just above that (just before Noble)

 

[obsolete]

I don't know about noble.. havent played it in so long cause I only do deity now. But even then, I have not even seen the AI to get a city up to 20 people. Maybe it's possible on settler?

As for great people, the only ones that become really usefull are the engineers. Everything else is just wish-wash gimmics. Even the scientist who can make academies don't serve much use. If you watch the science gauge, and make your accademy you are often lucky to see it increase by a hair. Certainly not worth the effort you put into farming these great people. Engineers... always are usefull though.

It's ok to turn some of your civilians into engineers to get the extra points to build one, just don't over-due it.

 

[kb2tvl]

I have not got the specialists down yet but I have some opions. First, you want tiles that yeild 3+ food. Second, you need a granary. Third, techs help a lot.

The general goal is to have all your cities to have about the same size. cities with mountains or desert are good canidates for specialists. Happiness is related to city size...

 

[obsolete]

I think I could tweak my specialists just a bit more. But I have come a long way... I used to just build any wonder I could in any town.. and abosrb crap specializes (artists, yuk) into them. What a mistake. Nothing worse than waiting for your great engineer to arrive.. and getting a useless artist, or something else that slaps you in the face.

If I have a pyramid in my town, I will refuse to build say, stonehenge in it, even if I knew it was my only way of building stonehenge. It is just not worth the (gp pollution) hassles.

 

[Alistic]

Too get a high population you will generally need alot of resources, to help cover unhappyness/unhealthyness.

 

[Corbeau]

If you want to get rid of health and happiness problems, go Environmentalism. Since you get Biology before you can get the tech for Environmentalism, your farms get +1 food and can support a larger population.

But yeah, lots of resources help. Not just for happiness, but if you have a city with several food resources next to it you can afford to run a specialist or two early.

 

[Draetor24]

I've had GP cities reach 25 population, possibly 26 once. It only happens in late game, with biology and tons of farms, and lots of buildings to support happy/health benefits, like +2 for most resources. Markets, Grocers, Forge, Aqueducts, Hospital, Supermarket, Broadcast Tower with happiness wonders, etc.

 

[allnightplayer]

This whole specialists thing needs a deeper analysis by some of the more experienced players though (maybe it's already been done and i just haven't come across it yet on the forum). Personally, i almost never end up assigning specialists deliberately (apart from when some wonder automatically gives 'free' specialists) because it never seems wise to deliberately stunt city growth (due to the food loss) by removing some of your working citizens from the city screen in order to make them specialists. While all specialists do give you either hammers, beakers or culture, none of them give food - which means that the city won't grow as fast if u use them. In the long run, i suppose one would do better by simply letting city population rise until all the productive squares are being used...? Unless one is running close to the happiness/health limit, or one REALLY wants to get a GP for some reason.

 

[shadow2k]

Considering that it takes pop 20 to work all available tiles, that's a lot of waste

Some tiles aren't worth the effort it will take to work them. You have to waste effort on building happy/healthy buildings for all of your pop, especially as you move up in levels. It becomes wasteful to have huge cities if the extra tiles you work aren't bringing you anything useful. 12-15 size cities are a much better goal.

As for GP cities, you need to find the right spot for them. This usually means 2-3 food resources. But don't just keep growing and growing them, expecting to work all 20 tiles AND have specialists. It's one or the other in most cases, especially due to happy/health concerns. Work the bonus food tiles, and maybe a couple others to get an even number on extra food, then turn remaining citizens into specialist.

Take a size 13 city for example. You need enough food for 13 people, so that's 26. You get 2 from the city square, so your citizens have to bring in 24 food. If you have seven specialists in this city, that means the remaining six citizens working tiles have to bring that 24 in all by themselves. That's four food per working citizen. You can do that with six farmed flood plains tiles.

Assuming you aren't at your happy/healthy limits, you can take that seventh specialist and put him to work in the fields to continue growing, but what will you gain? If he can only work farmed grassland, it takes two of those to get another specialist. Or you can keep him working as well, and on and on...but you are losing out on GP points in the meantime, and getting very little in return. At a point, it's better to just stop and be happy with where you are.

The key to these cities is going to be extra food resources, as well as not trying to grow it to huge population for no good reason. What you gain from having a pop 19 city with 9 specialists compared to a pop 13 city with 7 specialists will be negated by the time it took to grow it that large, and the fact that you'll end up having to build extra happy/healthy buildings to support them.

 

[AngryPants]

As the attentive already know from my previous thread, I kinda suck at expanding enough. I'm slowly learning, though. What still bothers me is this: specialists, and city population growth. In most of my games so far, by the end I never get any city's population above 18, and those are in fairly food-rich cities with farms (maybe if I had like, eight floodplains, it would be different--one should be so lucky ). And that's usually after reaching a rough peak at about the 1600-1700's at 16 population. And THOSE are my fairly food-rich cities; everything else hovers consistently at around 10.

I'm sure you know most/all of what im about to say, but since i invariably end up with multiple cities in the high 20s or larger(in long games), i'll share what i do.
If you want to up your population size, you need to consider 3 things: foods, health and happiness. Food is pretty straightforward, get those farms built, there is no shame in windmills either. Corollary: If farms and Windmills are good, then Workers are good, If many farms and windmills are great, many workers are great. Hopefully this goes without saying, but make sure your cities are far enough apart so that they can use their whole work area. If the AI has placed a city too close to one of yours, declare war, and burn their city to the ground. Its not genocide if you really need the elbow room.
As far as health, make sure you get the health improving buildings(especially granaries) built as soon as they are available, this will maximize their effect over time. Don't forget to build a grocer, you get gold and health from this building. The Hanging Gardens are your friend, so is building your cities on a river or lake, both of which provide a health bonus for fresh water. Chop Jungles as soon as you get the chance, these lower your cities health. My Monkey Habitat Massacre starts immediately upon discovery of Iron Working. Grab all the food resources that you can, trade for the ones you can't, invade for the ones you they won't trade. I have gone to war for sheep, thousands died, but the roast rack of lamb was delicious.
Happiness is a bit more complicated, especially at higher difficulty levels. Religion is your friend, more Religions is a party. Spread multiple religions to your larger cities, they will need the variety of temples. Or keep open borders and let your neighbors spread the religions for you. Shy away from theocracy. Figure out which city will be your largest, build the Globe Theatre here. Don't forget to build the forge and market, both provide happiness if you have been snapping up the right bonus resources. The Forge, does reduce health by 1, but if it gives you 2 happy faces and helps you get that aquaduct built faster, then thats a fair trade.
Hopefully you or some1 else will find something useful in all that.