Specialists

I'd suggest increasing the GPP bonus from the Garden if GPP per specialist is decreased. Even before the building is of questionable value IMO.
 
That's a good idea! :)

So if our capital has:

  • Library
  • National College
  • National Epic
  • Garden
Our great scientist rate is:

00 :c5greatperson: = (0 * 1.25) in vanilla
09 :c5greatperson: = (6 * 1.50) in v.16
11 :c5greatperson: = (6 * 1.75) in v.17 ←
14 :c5greatperson: = (9 * 1.50) in v.15

It's a good compromise between moderate and high GP availability, rewards city specialization, and buffs a somewhat weak building.
 
I'd like to say something about the specialized economy
In civ4 that was made by replacing the science from villages to specialists via civic. Was near impossible to build this kind of economy without representation and maybe mercantilism, because specialist was not that strong by themselves. Engineers was still weak in the specialized, they were never meant as substitute for mining
In civ5 things are differents. The slide is gone and gold and culture are not something marginal.

In the latest version things are going the exact opposite of civ4 but for me that is wrong. Specialist should be used for great persons, for acquiring culture and science and sometimes to help cities with poor production, but not for substitution of titles yelds.
The specialist economy should be created with the social policies that should give a massive boost as civics did in civ4.
Specialist are also different from civ4.
Keep in mind that in civ5 scientists and artists are more important than in civ4 because culture is much more important and science is more difficult to change, so every economy needs that kind of specialists. The problem is that merchants and engineers are substitute for title and usefull in the first place for great people creation. So we have 2 unique specialist and 2 specialist that have values similar to titles and the problem is to find a way to use the latest 2 specialist in massives numbers and in a different way

What i suggest is to return to the original values for all specialist and give more power to social politcs. Also make the merchant a substitute for the villages with the commerce tree. The engineer should be left with only two hammers or will ruin city placement.
 
What i suggest is to return to the original values for all specialist and give more power to social politcs. Also make the merchant a substitute for the villages with the commerce tree. The engineer should be left with only two hammers or will ruin city placement.

At first glance it may seem that engineers are OP at 3 hammers, but in the early game you only have 1 or two because the buildings just aren't available and/or you decide to build different buildings. Mid/late game your mines are worth 4 so it's still better to work the mine. The 3 hammer engineers DO give totally hill-less cities a mild chance to produce buildings the hard way though.
 
What i suggest is to return to the original values for all specialist and give more power to social politcs. Also make the merchant a substitute for the villages with the commerce tree. The engineer should be left with only two hammers or will ruin city placement.

At first glance it may seem that engineers are OP at 3 hammers, but in the early game you only have 1 or two because the buildings just aren't available and/or you decide to build different buildings. Mid/late game your mines are worth 4 so it's still better to work the mine. The 3 hammer engineers DO give totally hill-less cities a mild chance to produce buildings the hard way though.

Manarod's point of view seems perfectly reasonable, and would lead to an interesting, viable game. It just doesn't happen to be what Thal has been shaping for a while now. Zaldron's point is a version of what I've been trying to say: that the concerns that lead someone like manarod to propose an alternative system may not exist to a problematic degree, when you actually play a game.
 
Replying to some comments by Maniac in the City Development thread:

Spoiler :
consider grassland plots, happiness for 4 citizens

4 grassland river villages with tech boost = 4*4=16 gold

2 grassland river farms with tech boost to support 2 merchants = 2+(2*3)=8 gold

add the cost of four social policies to get +1gold and +1science for villages
each citizen als provides +1gold and +1science from trade routes and inherent science yield

4 grassland river villages with tech boost = 24 gold, 8 science

add the cost of five social policies to get +1gold on specialists and halved food and happiness intake. Can support four specialists with two farms as a consequence

2 river farms, 4 merchants = 22 gold, 6 science

Conclusion: in the early game specialists are only half as useful as villages in non-GP cities. In the late game even with a higher social policy investment, specialists are inferior.

The problem is especially in the early game. Removing the early game yield bonus for non-farm improvements near rivers could solve that. Then 4 grassland river villages would still provide 12 gold, 4 more than the specialist alternative, but GPP are more valuable in the early game.

I find it quite depressing that even with an investment of five social policies, specialists in my example only provide 4 more yield than four villages without any social policy investment.

Specialists are underpowered now!

Perhaps the yield of ALL specialists should be further increased to 4 of their kind?

That would in the late game make the output equal between villages with an investment of 4 SPs, and specialists with an invesment of 5 SPs.

In the early game, assuming the tech bonus from Optics is removed, that would mean 12 gold for villages, and 10 gold and 4 GPP for specialists. This example is in the benefit of specialists, but keep in mind that I am assuming the unlimited presence of rivers, and specialists require an investment in buildings. A higher output should follow from a higher investment and favorable circumstances.

The way I think of these things is a priority list of where to put citizens. Specialist economies are usually tall empires, so food is often the most important yield. After Civil Service priorities are probably something like (copied from the revised original post of this thread)...

  1. High-food resources
  2. 4:c5food:1:c5gold: River grassland
  3. 3:c5food:1:c5gold:1:c5production: River plains
  4. 2:c5greatperson: Specialists contributing to great people
  5. 3:c5food:1:c5gold: Coast
  6. 3:c5food: Dry grassland
  7. 0:c5greatperson: Specialists who will never make a great person (lone specialists creating a trickle of gpp)
  8. 2:c5food:1:c5production: Dry plains | 2:c5food:2:c5gold: Jungle
  9. Forest, hills, river tundra
  10. Dry tundra
  11. Desert, snow, mountains
The order can vary depending on things like:

  • The value of surplus food drops to near-zero when if reach our happiness cap.
  • There's a limited number of river tiles, so unless we have a huge abundance of rivers we run out of those quickly.
Even in a specialist economy I think river and coast tiles are usually going to take priority.

Some other things to consider:

  • Free Speech gives +1:c5culture: to all specialists, and it's easily accessible 2 policies into the Renaissance era. There's no equivalent to this for a tile based economy.
  • Specialists are somewhat more flexible than tile improvements. If we have 4 river tiles, it takes longer to change the yield of those improvements than it does to change where specialists are slotted.
 
Other yields are always useful, but food and happiness are harder to quantify due to the happy/unhappy threshold. With too little happiness, the value of surplus food is nearly zero. With excess happiness the value of additional happiness drops.

I'd like to inflate food closer to the others but we can't alter it. Population growth has an exponential factor, and without access to the core game we're unable to add a multiplier to the formula, so it'd be very difficult to alter food expenses. The end result is farms are slightly worse than mines/villages, and the farm-boosting techs are slightly better than the mine/village techs. Combining those two I believe works out in the end. It's close enough I'm not concerned about it.

I'm not disputing that food is more valuable if you haven't reached your happiness cap. My post focused on a later game situation:
1. by which time the GP threshold has increased, seriously reducing the value of a GPP. That's not even counting cities which never will have any hope of producing a GPP.
2. by which time you're always near your happiness cap =>a situation in which farms are used to support specialists =>a situation for which it is entirely posssible to give a precise value of food compared to gold and hammers. And my example shows that a specialist economy is inferior now, that is better to just build villages than try to form a specialist economy, even when you have an abundance of rivers. A lack of rivers would make the village strategy even more beneficial compared to farms/

I haven't suggested to alter food expenses or touch the farm yield. That would indeed be tricky. I suggested to:
1. Increase the yield of specialists.
2. Return to the vanilla situation where both freshwater and non-freshwater non-farm improvements are boosted by Economics, Chemistry, Scientific Theory(?), and not by Optics etc.

Specialists are somewhat more flexible than tile improvements. If we have 4 river tiles, it takes longer to change the yield of those improvements than it does to change where specialists are slotted.

One can argue it takes longer to build the buildings supplying a certain desired specialist slot.

Free Speech gives +1:c5culture: to all specialists, and it's easily accessible 2 policies into the Renaissance era. There's no equivalent to this for a tile based economy.

Social policies require an investment, so they should result in an increased output compared to a strategy that requires less investment.

Another analysis looking at the percentual gain in output from investing in social policies, comparing vanilla and TBC:

first vanilla:

consider grassland plots, 4 happiness
3 social policies to give trading posts +1 science
5 social policies to give specialists +2 science and halved food and happiness intake
each citizen provides an inherent 1 science, and more or less 1 gold from trade route

first consider a baseline of 4 trading posts without SPs:
4g from river
8g from trading posts
4g from trade routes
4sci from citizens
= 16 gold, 4 science

now with SPs:
4 grassland river trading posts with tech boost: (3*4)+4= 16 gold, 8 science

specs:
2 river farms, 4 merchants: 2 gold from river, 6 from trade routes, 8 from specialists, 8 science from specialists, 6 from citizens = 16 gold, 14 science

so you spend five social policies to get an awesome 50% increase in citizen output compared to the baseline

Now look at TBC:

baseline of villages:
4g from river
12g from trading post
4g from trad routes
4sci from citizens
= 20 gold, 4 science

in TBC you can invest in 4 village-boosting SPs to get an output increase of 33%.

or you can invest in 6 SPs (50% more) to get: 24 gold, 6 science, 4 culture, an output increase of 40%.

From these numbers it seems clear that a specialist economy has been weakened in TBC compared to vanilla and compared to villages.
 
When weighing the slots vs tiles - in other words, the relative advantages of a Specialist economy vs one based on working tiles - it occurred to me that we haven't sufficiently weighed the fact that using slots "starves" city pop. This negative with regard to Specialists mitigate their overall contribution.

For example, a Specialist that gives the same number of hammers as a tile, contributes more GPP but less food.

This is one major reason why early-game specialists in particular aren't all that useful, except in larger cities like capital.
 
1. Increase the yield of specialists.
2. Return to the vanilla situation where both freshwater and non-freshwater non-farm improvements are boosted by Economics, Chemistry, Scientific Theory(?), and not by Optics etc.

The simplest way to consider yields is... how would you sort the list in post #66?

In vanilla there's not much choice in where to build improvements. Along rivers, for most of the game farms are obviously the best. The result is I automatically built farms on rivers and other improvements on dry tiles. I felt like I'm just "going through the motions"... not really thinking about the decision. When each improvement gets similar boosts at around the same times, the choice is more challenging, and the game has more strategic depth. :)
 
That depends on the happiness level, both global and local (that is, does the city size exceed the happiness provided by its buildings).

Anyway, whatever, never mind. :) We must be talking at cross purposes, because to me your post doesn't seem like a reply to mine. I guess I'll need to start making my own mod. :D
 
I'm not explaining myself very well. :crazyeye: Is your main point river grass tiles are better than specialists? The list was the most concise way I could think of to reply with two points:

  • I do agree with you that river grassland (top of the list) are better than specialists.
  • There's tiles other than rivers and grassland (bottom of the list), and specialists are better than those dry tiles.
To put things differently...

  • In a specialist economy, specialists are better than some tiles and worse than others. When river/grass tiles are exhausted specialists are the next best choice.
  • In a tile economy, specialists are worse than all tiles.

If specialist yields were always the best option in a specialist economy (like with Suleiman), there would be less choice involved. It would be best fill out all specialist slots when we can afford the food, regardless of circumstances.

If the problem is later policies don't boost specialists enough, I can solve that best by buffing the policies. Something to keep in mind is the specialist policies improve all specialists, while the tile policies improve only villages. I think the specialist policies are somewhat more powerful for this reason.

Changing how improvements benefit from techs would increase options for specialist economies, but reduce our options between types of improvements, so it wouldn't be a net gain for gameplay.
 
I'm not explaining myself very well. :crazyeye: Is your main point river grass tiles are better than specialists?

No, my point was that in every possible scenario you can think of (where GPP doesn't matter), with a similar investment in policies and a similar level of technology, villages are better than specialists, regardless of the plots considered.

I was just using grassland plots because that allowed me to give an example with the least common multiple where food intake-consumption and happiness use in both examples is the same, is four. When you consider plain river tiles for instance, it becomes six.

There's tiles other than rivers and grassland (bottom of the list), and specialists are better than those dry tiles.

To put things differently...

In a specialist economy, specialists are better than some tiles and worse than others. When river/grass tiles are exhausted specialists are the next best choice.

To make my example work with the situation where the village strategy doesn't have sufficient river available, you just need to deduct 2 gold from the village example's total yield:

two river villages, two dry villages, tech boost, four SPs: 22 gold, 8 science
two river farms, four specialists, six SPs: 24 gold, 6 science, 4 culture

Actually slightly contrary to what I was previously saying, if you assume an equal investment in SPs and the specialists don't get the +1 gold, the yield is actually equal:

two river villages, two dry villages, tech boost, four SPs: 22 gold, 8 science
two river farms, four specialists, six SPs: 20 gold, 6 science, 4 culture

However something I've not yet taken into account, is that while in the two example the happiness consumption is equal, you need 50% more citizens in the specialist example. Which requires an investment in filling food boxes. To compensate for this, the specialist strategy still should receive a boost IMO.

If specialist yields were always the best option in a specialist economy (like with Suleiman), there would be less choice involved. It would be best fill out all specialist slots when we can afford the food, regardless of circumstances.

Why would I ever want to invest six social policies into specialists, if even then the specialists aren't always better than non-bonus dry plots? For me the choice and strategy lies more in
* deciding where to found cities
* maximizing your output through choice of policies
* prioritizing techs which boost the improvements you have most of
* in the case of specialists researching and building the buildings which provide specialists
rather than the actual choice what specialist to pick or what terrain improvement to build on a specific tile. All improvements being as valid on any terrain seems just as random and devoid of meaningful choice to me as certain terrain improvements always being better on certain terrain, eg farms near river.

If the problem is later policies don't boost specialists enough, I can solve that best by buffing the policies.

Sounds good to me. Consider:
1. TBC has two SPs which boost villages. Vanilla only one. Is it still necessary to boost villages this much, considering you've returned to 1:c5production:=1:c5gold: rather than 2:c5production:=3:c5gold:?
2. Vanilla has a policy which boosts specialist output by +2:c5science:. In TBC it's only +1.

Something to keep in mind is the specialist policies improve all specialists, while the tile policies improve only villages. I think the specialist policies are somewhat more powerful for this reason.

I don't see how that makes a difference. :confused: A specialist economy still needs as much farms and mines as a village economy.

Changing how improvements benefit from techs would increase options for specialist economies, but reduce our options between types of improvements, so it wouldn't be a net gain for gameplay.

What factors do you take into account when deciding what improvement to build where? I don't see how it adds choice if all improvements are equal everywhere. In fact, wouldn't it reduce strategy and diversity because 1) it makes the decision where to colonize less important, and 2) it will lead to less diversity because then it becomes better to build one improvement everywhere and only boost than one through policies or techs.
 
However something I've not yet taken into account, is that while in the two example the happiness consumption is equal, you need 50% more citizens in the specialist example. Which requires an investment in filling food boxes. To compensate for this, the specialist strategy still should receive a boost IMO.

This is pretty much what I said a few posts up.
 
@Maniac
Something to keep in mind is Ahriman thinks specialists are overpowered, while you think they're underpowered. Like politics, with such passionate arguments both ways things might actually be balanced. :lol:

From the experiences I've had trying each of the three types of economies I feel they're all useful in different circumstances.

Thalassicus said:
Is your main point river grass tiles are better than specialists?
My point was that in every possible scenario you can think of (where GPP doesn't matter), with a similar investment in policies and a similar level of technology, villages are better than specialists, regardless of the plots considered.

With policies the net benefits are (subtracting the common 1g1s):

Merchant
1:c5food: 3:c5gold: 1:c5culture: +0.5:c5happy:

Dry Villages
1:c5food: 2:c5gold: 1:c5production: forest
2:c5production: 2:c5gold: hill
1:c5food: 2:c5gold: tundra
1:c5food: ocean
2:c5gold: desert
2:c5gold: snow
n/a mountains

Unless we really need production, the specialist is better than these plots, and they're common on most map scripts. :)

For me the choice and strategy lies more in researching and building the buildings which provide specialists rather than the actual choice what specialist to pick or what terrain improvement to build on a specific tile.

All improvements being as valid on any terrain seems just as random and devoid of meaningful choice to me as certain terrain improvements always being better on certain terrain, eg farms near river.

Consider the question of what to build on a river forest tile: lumbermill, farm, or village? In two hypothetical cities:

  • A city surrounded by ocean. A Lumbermill is a good choice because we have plenty of food and gold for the city.
  • A city surrounded by hills. A Farm is appealing since otherwise the city can't grow much.
Real cities are somewhere between these extreme examples, but that's the general idea. What to build is much more complex than vanilla's simplistic "farms on rivers, other things elsewhere." The same applies to specialists:

  • I put engineers or artists in relatively new cities so they can build and expand borders faster.
  • Scientists and merchants are for more developed cities with Universities or Markets.
Since there's no specific line between new -vs- developed, it's a complex and flexible decision to make. :)

1. TBC has two SPs which boost villages. Vanilla only one. Is it still necessary to boost villages this much, considering you've returned to 1:c5production:=1:c5gold: rather than 2:c5production:=3:c5gold:?
Why would I ever want to invest six social policies into specialists

1) Most policies are designed for specific circumstances and strategies. Why invest in Honor if we intend to play a peaceful game, or why invest in Commerce if we don't intend to focus on gold? The important thing is that with whatever policies we choose to support our strategy, each of those strategies is powerful. :)

2) I give short and concise explanations like 1:c5gold:=1:c5production: for those who don't have much time to read details between work and family. It's quick to get across that 1g is approximately as valuable as 1p.

However, Civ is a complex game! :D Nothing is that simple. Villages can be built anywhere, while mines/lumbermills can only be built on specific tiles. For this reason I set it up so in the early game mines are slightly better than villages, and in the late game (with policies) villages become better than mines. Otherwise, since we can build more villages than mines then villages and village-boosting policies would clearly be the better strategy. This leads to my third point...

3) In a way you answered your own question. Policies have to give a valuable benefit, or we wouldn't invest in them. In vanilla the Commerce tree is really bad and few people go for it. :)

4) Our options for policy effects are very limited. If I removed the effect I'd have to find something else interesting to replace it with. I discuss this in more detail in the policies thread.

These are some options available for policies... most of the others are already in use.

  • CityYieldChanges
  • CoastalCityYieldChanges
  • CapitalYieldChanges
  • CapitalYieldPerPopChanges
  • CapitalYieldModifiers
  • HurryModifiers
  • SpecialistExtraYields
  • BuildingClassYieldModifiers
  • BuildingClassYieldChanges
  • BuildingClassCultureChanges
  • BuildingClassProductionModifiers
  • BuildingClassHappiness
  • ImprovementYieldChanges
  • ImprovementCultureChanges
  • ValidSpecialists
  • YieldModifiers
  • FreePromotions
  • UnitCombatFreeExperiences
  • FreePromotionUnitCombats
  • UnitCombatProductionModifiers
  • FreeUnitClasses
  • FreeItems
 
@Maniac
Something to keep in mind is Ahriman thinks specialists are overpowered, while you think they're underpowered. Like politics, with such passionate arguments both ways things might actually be balanced. :lol:

From the experiences I've had trying each of the three types of economies I feel they're all useful in different circumstances.

But can you and Ahriman support that experience and opinion with a mathematical analysis? :borg:

Villages can be built anywhere, while mines/lumbermills can only be built on specific tiles. For this reason I set it up so in the early game mines are slightly better than villages, and in the late game (with policies) villages become better than mines. Otherwise, since we can build more villages than mines then villages and village-boosting policies would clearly be the better strategy. This leads to my third point...

Hmm? :confused: Your example shows you seem to think that villages only provide 1 gold as base. Both mines and villages provide a yield of 2 right from the start in TBC.

In a midgame specialist economy the net benefits are (subtracting the common 1g1s):

You are comparing a specialist economy with a non-specialized economy without tech boosts or social policy investments. What I have been arguing is not that a specialist economy isn't better than a non-specialized economy, but that a specialist economy is worse than a village economy, which you define in the first post as including investment in the commerce tree. You need to compare the economies using a similar investment in policies, and a similar level of technology. Since the Freedom tree is enabled in the Renaissance, it seems logical to take into account the village boost from Economics, an early Renaissance techs.

The correct comparison is:

Merchant
1:c5food: 3:c5gold: 1:c5culture: +0.5:c5happy:

Dry Villages
1:c5food: 1:c5production: 4:c5gold: 1:c5science: forest, plain

That's 2:c5gold: base, 1:c5gold: from Economics, 1:c5gold: from the Commerce tree and 1:c5science: from the Rationalism tree.

Would you still choose the specialist? Take into account that you also need to invest food to grow population to make use of that extra happiness. In your first post you state you want the specialist economy to be equally interesting and useful.

Consider the question of what to build on a river forest tile: lumbermill, farm, or village? In two hypothetical cities:

  • A city surrounded by ocean. A Lumbermill is a good choice because we have plenty of food and gold for the city.
  • A city surrounded by hills. A Farm is appealing since otherwise the city can't grow much.
Real cities are somewhere between these extreme examples, but that's the general idea. What to build is much more complex than vanilla's simplistic "farms on rivers, other things elsewhere."

This is of course just my anecdotal opinion, but in vanilla I vary the decision whether to chop down river forests based on how much I need hammers in the nearby city. In TBC where lumbermill near rivers provide the same yield as a farm, I have yet to chop down a single river forest for the reason you mentioned in your post: villages and farms can be built anywhere; mines and lumbermills only on specific locations. By making improvement yields more equal, you have at least in this specific case made improvement building less interesting for me. ;)

1) Most policies are designed for specific circumstances and strategies. Why invest in Honor if we intend to play a peaceful game, or why invest in Commerce if we don't intend to focus on gold? The important thing is that with whatever policies we choose to support our strategy, each of those strategies is powerful. :)

I agree. That's why I feel specialist should be boosted or villages nerfed: right now the village strategy is more powerful than the specialist strategy.

3) In a way you answered your own question. Policies have to give a valuable benefit, or we wouldn't invest in them. :)

4) Our options for policy effects are very limited. If I removed the effect I'd have to find something else interesting to replace it with. I discuss this in more detail in the policies thread.

Here are two Commerce suggestions:
1) each Camp, Plantation and Quarry provides +x:c5gold:.
2) the gold gained from Open Borders with other civs is doubled. Well, the AI wouldn't correctly evaluate this one, as it's not part of existing XML.
 
In a midgame specialist economy the net benefits are (subtracting the common 1g1s):

1g + 1s + others <=> 1g + 1s + others

I factored out the common 1g 1s. I think you added this back to the village side, but forgot it from the specialist side?

The statement was tiles are better in every scenario regardless of what the plots are. I gave examples of where this is obviously not the case. Even with forests or hills it gives better gold, culture, and happiness. Since there's no culture booster for tiles, a specialist economy is clearly an appealing choice for culture victory games. I'd probably list them as...

Victory Types

  • Culture - :c5citizen: Specialist economy
  • Conquest - :c5gold: Gold economy
  • Science - Uncertain...
Yeah... I usually organize my thoughts in lists... :crazyeye:

It does also depend on circumstances of the map. In terrain like arctic regions or deserts (both of which are common) specialists are very appealing.

Changing the effect of policies in regards to the AI is not a major concern, because the AI ignores the effects of units/buildings/policies/etc when making decisions. It uses random probabilities manually written by humans.

There's some good times to chop a forest instead of using a lumbermill. Villages are better than lumbermills in a conquest game, and village-plains is clearly better than village-forest (unless we're Hiawatha). If a river is bordered by forested hills and food is scarce, farming the river is highly valuable. Lumbermills are not available right away either, so chopping is useful for early rushes for wonders or units. There's deep strategies in the mod that go beyond the simplicity of vanilla. :)
 
1g + 1s + others <=> 1g + 1s + others

I factored out the common 1g 1s. I think you added this back to the village side, but forgot it from the specialist side. :thumbsup:

Nope:

Dry Villages
1:c5food: 1:c5production: 4:c5gold: 1:c5science: forest, plain

That's 2:c5gold: base, 1:c5gold: from Economics, 1:c5gold: from the Commerce tree and 1:c5science: from the Rationalism tree.

If I add back the trade route and citizen science yield, it's 1:c5food: 1:c5production: 5:c5gold: 2:c5science:

You stated tiles are better in every scenario regardless of what the plots are. I gave examples of where this is clearly not the case: tundra, deserts, oceans, mountains, and snow.
...
It does also depend on circumstances of the map. In hostile terrain like tundra or deserts (both of which are common) specialists are very appealing.

Are you saying that you regularly run out of dry plain and hills tiles to work in your games and have no choice but to pick a specialist? I have never encountered this. Even if I were to encounter this, because of the global happiness system, you're not forced to try to make the most of each city as in Civ4. You can stop growing a city and use your limited happiness for other cities that still have plains and hills left.

However, a specialist economy will have more culture than a tile economy for everyone but Kamehameha. This means a specialist economy a very appealing choice for culture victory games.

Depends. Even when you can only achieve Friends status, paying :c5gold: to a city state results in a higher amount of :c5culture:. So as long as city states are available, 1:c5gold: > 1:c5culture: for the purpose of a culture victory.

If you are ok with a specialist economy only being useful for a cultural victory, how about doubling the value of that "culture on specialists" policy in the freedom tree, and removing the specialist gold boost in the commerce tree? Then you at least need to invest in less policies to get the same effect.

Changing the effect of policies in regards to the AI is not a major concern, because the AI ignores the effects of units/buildings/policies/etc when making decisions. It uses random probabilities manually written by humans.

Are you certain of that? In Civ4 you could also give flavours to stuff to make them more valuable for the AI, but that was on top of the AI evaluation code in the SDK. It would be rather appaling if Civ5 didn't have any AI code for social policies at all.
 
Discounting the common yields in grey...

Merchant
3:c5gold: Base
1:c5gold: Commerce
1:c5science: Rationalism
1:c5food: Freedom
1:c5culture: Freedom
.5:c5happy: Freedom
============
1:c5food: 3:c5gold: 1:c5culture: +0.5:c5happy:

Forest Village
1:c5food: 2:c5gold: 1:c5production: Base
1:c5gold: Commerce
1:c5science: Rationalism

============
1:c5food: 2:c5gold: 1:c5production:

You say the village adds up to:
1:c5food: 4:c5gold: 1:c5production: 1:c5science:

I don't see an error in my arithmetic... :confused:

Yes, I regularly have only forests, plains, hills, tundra, desert, ocean, snow or mountains remaining. At its maximum radius with no other cities nearby, a city can only work 36 tiles. Even a size 20 city is consuming more than half that. If the city is coastal, most coasts only go out 1 tile, and after that it's ocean. Any city in an arctic or desert region runs out of tiles quickly.
 
Ah, I misunderstood. When you talked about excluding the common 1g1sc, I thought you were talking about the gold from trade routes and science provided by each citizen, instead of the extra yield from policies.

Anyway:
1) You left out the tech bonus to villages from Economics, which is given in the same era the Freedom tree is enabled.
2) You're comparing a Merchant who has required an investment of eight social policies to result in that yield (four from the Freedom tree, two from the Commerce tree, two from the Rationalism tree), to a village which only required an investment of four social policies (two from the Commerce tree, two from the Rationalism tree). Even with double the investment in social policies, the specialist is only slightly better than the village.

Do you agree that if you invest a certain amount in something, the resulting output should be higher than if you invest half of that in something?
 
What do we consider "slightly better?" I think +1:c5culture: +0.5:c5happy: per citizen is very valuable, especially in culture games. Consider some sources of culture with Piety:

  • 3:c5culture: Monument
  • 4:c5culture: Temple
  • 3:c5culture: Artist
  • 1:c5culture: Each specialist
This is one reason specialist economies are so good for culture games. Even without policies, artists are a big source of culture! :D


In your list, 1) is my main point. The value of things depends on circumstances like Economics. Specialists are valuable when:

  • They produce a great person
  • Culture victories
  • Gandhi
  • Suleiman
  • Coastal cities
  • Large population cities
  • Cities in arctic or desert areas
  • Cities with few rivers
Ahriman feels specialists are always better than tiles, while you feel they're always worse. I think it depends on what tiles we're talking about and other circumstances like these. :)

Something to keep in mind is the specialist policies improve all specialists, while the tile policies improve only villages. I think the specialist policies are somewhat more powerful for this reason.
I don't see how that makes a difference. :confused: A specialist economy still needs as much farms and mines as a village economy.
Answering this earlier question I missed... coasts provide a lot of food, which is great for specialist economies. Village policies provide less value to coastal cities, especially those settled to acquire resources in island/arctic/desert areas. An island is a perfect example of where we quickly run out of village tiles. On the continents-plus and pangaea-plus map scripts there's many island chains.
 
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