pineappledan
Deity
Over the past 2 congress sessions we have had quite a few proposals to increase the yields on engineers, change the manufactory, decrease the yields on mines so they compete with engineers less, discussions for changes to Towns and Great Merchants, and for creating a global GPP pool for specialists. It seems we are going back-and-forth over the specialists and great people, especially the ones that produce "common" yields, that are easily taken from terrain (ie.
and
)
The impression I am getting from these proposals and the conversations surrounding them is that there is something fundamentally lacking with the specialist system, and that tweaking yields won't result in a permanent fix.
There has been an intense focus on Engineers in particular, but the conversations I have read suggest this is missing the forest from the trees. Any problem with Engineers is also a problem with specialists as a concept, they are just the most visible and easy example, because they compete so directly with basic Mine improvements.
Here are some ideas which have been tossed around in various congress proposals and on the discord for how to fix parts of this. If you feel I have misrepresented a viewpoint then I apologize, I can edit the OP if you comment:
1. Just make Specialists really good.
GPPs generated by Specialists transferrable somehow. Could do this in a few ways:
Interested to hear from other community members about what their take on specialists is.
Do you think there is a problem?
Do you think our attention should be kept on just getting Engineers right, or do you see a wider issue?
What do you think specialists ought to be doing for your empire?
How would you change how specialists work?
![Production :c5production: :c5production:](/images/smilies/civ5/production.png)
![Gold :c5gold: :c5gold:](/images/smilies/civ5/gold.png)
The impression I am getting from these proposals and the conversations surrounding them is that there is something fundamentally lacking with the specialist system, and that tweaking yields won't result in a permanent fix.
Spoiler Summary of my thoughts on the current situations :
- Every specialist provides a relevant yields, and
GPPs for the relevant Great Person type. eg
Science and
Great Scientist Points for Scientists.
- They consume 3
food to start, increasing by 1 per era, and generate
Urbanization. Urbanization can sometimes be offset by the
needs that are reduced by working the specialist though, so it's not as simple as flat -1
unhappiness in all cases.
- For each Specialist type there are two situations:
- The specialist is in a major city and their
GPPs will count towards a Great Person Birth
- The specialist is in a minor city, and their
GPPs won't go anywhere.
- The specialist is in a major city and their
- If the
GPPs generated in a city don't count towards anything then they can be ignored as if they don't exist. Specialists in that cities that don't birth Great People consume
food and generate flat yields in return.
- Balancing specialists is really hard, because it is as if there are two specialist types that share yields, but one also makes Great People and the other doesn't.
- Filling a specialist slot with a
Citizen that Consumes
food and generates flat,
/
/
/
yields is the same thing that a
Citizen could be assigned to do on a tile. The amount of
food eaten, the amount of
yields generated, and the unhappiness from
urbanization are the only differences.
- In the case of Engineers and Merchants -- who generate yields that are pretty easy to get from basic improvements -- it is very hard to make working them attractive unless each specialist is generating a lot of yields, or the land around your city is really deficient in one of those yields in particular.
There has been an intense focus on Engineers in particular, but the conversations I have read suggest this is missing the forest from the trees. Any problem with Engineers is also a problem with specialists as a concept, they are just the most visible and easy example, because they compete so directly with basic Mine improvements.
Spoiler Possible Solutions :
Here are some ideas which have been tossed around in various congress proposals and on the discord for how to fix parts of this. If you feel I have misrepresented a viewpoint then I apologize, I can edit the OP if you comment:
1. Just make Specialists really good.
ie. Make the base yields and tech increases on all specialists bigger.
eg. Increase Engineer to +6
per turn to start, with more tech bonuses.
PROS![Production :c5production: :c5production:](/images/smilies/civ5/production.png)
- You only get a few slots of each specialist, so there are already strong controls to keep specialists from getting out of hand, so why not make them way better than any improvement they would otherwise compete for
Citizens with?
- Specialists also give guaranteed flat
unhappiness and consume more
food than basic tiles. Currently this is framed as being a sort of 'investment' or delayed gratification in exchange for a Great Person, but that isn't the case if working that specialist won't result in a Great Person. So just make working specialists always worth it, if your happiness, food and slots in the city can sustain it.
- No new code. Easy to implement; just make the numbers bigger.
- Would inflate yields in general. Would probably need to weaken buildings and tile improvements, or increase cost scaling for things to compensate for adding yields directly onto specialists
- Would make bonus yields on specialists weaker, and extra specialist slots much stronger. If they are always worth working, then having more slots is a really good bonus. Things like Babylon's Walls, or Rationalism's Observatory would be made even better
- Would make the resulting Great Person feel less special if the specialist was already the best use of citizens up front. Might make it difficult to balance GPTIs against the specialists that generated them.
- Makes working specialists vs tiles not feel like a decision anymore, because specialists are always better if you can support them. No more some 'yields now' vs 'more yields later', cost-benefit decision.
eg. Change Engineers so they give +2
AND +5%
in the city
PROS![Production :c5production: :c5production:](/images/smilies/civ5/production.png)
![Production :c5production: :c5production:](/images/smilies/civ5/production.png)
- Specialists do something different. Right now,
Citizens can only give flat yields no matter how they are assigned. With this change, they could be assigned to give a % yield increase instead, which makes a
citizen in a specialist slot do something a
citizen on a tile can't do.
- Specialists can actually specialize a city by acting as a force multiplier. You can focus on filling all your specialists of one type to stack modifiers to make that city good at that 1 yield.
- Specialists would scale automatically as the city grows and builds infrastructure. This means we could take a bunch of +1 to X specialist bonuses out of the tech tree, and clean the tech tree slots up.
- Doubles down on specialists being best for tall empires with large cities
- Specialists would be less good at shoring up weak yields in cities that are struggling with Needs, and would potentially be weaker in cities with weak infrastructure or small populations
- New code, might be hard to implement.
![Greatperson :c5greatperson: :c5greatperson:](/images/smilies/civ5/greatperson.png)
a) could make a global pool for GPPs which all specialists contribute towards, so at least some GPPs earned in smaller cities go somewhere.
PROS- No yield rebalancing.
- Focuses Specialists on the main thing they already do different from
Citizens working tiles: Making Great People
- Makes
GPPs less of a wasted yield. A test game showed that at least half of all GPPs ever earned are wasted, even in a small, 5-city empire focusing on GPs. The waste is much more severe in wide empires.
- A global pool would make use of global %
GP rate modifiers, like policies and Gardens in all cities.
- Would benefit wide gameplay. Many cities building basic infrastructure and working a few specialists could contribute quickly to new Great People.
- Would result in more Great People being born overall. Might need to re-scale how much each GP costs
- New code and hard to implement. Would require quite a bit of UI work so that the global pool can be made visible to players.
b) Give players a way to spend or convert unused GPPs
eg. Could unlock a project in late game which, when completed, zeroes out all
GPPs earned in that city and converts them to
Faith (which could then be spent on Great People)
PROS![Greatperson :c5greatperson: :c5greatperson:](/images/smilies/civ5/greatperson.png)
![Faith :c5faith: :c5faith:](/images/smilies/civ5/faith.png)
- Almost no game impact, but gets rid of the wastage GPPs at the end of the game
- Easy to implement, but it is new code.
- Doesn't seem to contribute to solving a problem about making specialists feel different. Even though technically all GPPs earned would now be useful eventually, the solution seems distant and insufficient.
Interested to hear from other community members about what their take on specialists is.
Do you think there is a problem?
Do you think our attention should be kept on just getting Engineers right, or do you see a wider issue?
What do you think specialists ought to be doing for your empire?
How would you change how specialists work?
Last edited: