Specialists

[Harry Haller]

Are specialists worth it? Don't they choke the growth and production of your city? I can understand using a lot of specialists in a great person city, but what is the best way to use them for other cities? It seems to me that the benefits of specialists are not that obvious over letting the city work its tiles. Maybe late in the game there are tiles that aren't worth working, and it's better to use the population for specialists. But during the early/middle parts of the game, they don't seem to be clearly worth it to me.

 

[Phyr_Negator]

sometimes it is not needed for city to grow, watch for happiness numbers.

 

[Gufnork]

Some cities have very few hammers in the city, making Engineers necessary to get a decent production (usually true for fishing villages). Conquered cities benefits a lot from having a few Artists to expand their borders quickly. And finally, as Phyr mentioned when another citizen would just be a whiny wimp you're often better off using specialists since the food a tile produce is worth nothing (unless you use Slavery).

Other than that you should just keep one or two specialist cities for Great People farming.