The Purpose of Specialists

[silverjack100]

Long Question: Alright, when I started Civ I played on the Gold edition and only played warlords. So I never got a tutorial and started Civ with no training whatsoever. I checked in the Quick/ Newbie Questions forum but found that it was not the right thread to bring this up being is that even some very experienced players never use specialists anyway. So, what are specialists for anyway?

Short Question: What are the purpose of Specialists?

 

[TheLazyHase]

Being better than working tile in some case. Engineer for example can be a lt more useful than working a food-nly tile (if you are near the happy cap, that is). If you have a hard time improving enough tile for one city, specialist may help. And lastly, artist tend to help in culturally oppressed city, because it avoid having to up the general culture % when you need culture in only one city.

Or, giving you more great people that you need. In most case, using a scientist instead of working a tile is not that bad, especially under representation, and the great scientist can really be useful.

You can forget about. That's the same as musketman : you can win games even in deity without using them. Still, you can gain a lot from a clever use of them.

 

[JujuLautre]

Several uses:
- providing you something that you will not get otherwise (culture for an artist, hammers for an engineer, espionnage for a spy when you espionnage slider is at 0%...)
- providing you more than working in the field (especially true for specialists with representation; you can easily get a riverside cottage to a village for 3 commerce to compete with a scientist (who eats foo on top of that) but if such scientist procudes 6 beakers it will be hard to compete). Also, the benefit provided is immediate, compared to cottages which have to grow (very good in the early game)
- stop growth (for a city which is at happy/health cap)
and arguably the most important use of specialists:
- provide you great people !

 

[Monsterzuma]

Their main purpose is to generate Great Person Points in a way that the player can directly control. Under Representation (possibly unlocked by the Pyramids) they can also generate science at a competitive rate. Scientists are also a competitive source of beakers in the early game when happiness caps are low so that cottages can not be ran in great numbers yet.

 

[The Snug]

Bcz they're better than cottages.

 

[Shafi]

If you have surplus food, or terrain where you can generatre lots of food by running lots of specialists they can be very useful. The most common specialists used are Scientists to power research however all types of specialists have their uses.

Have a look at the attached game i have saved, and see how much of the research is powered by specialists.

I am running representation so that increses the milage i get from all the scientists i am running and the icing on the cake of course is the GP points i get towards producing a Great Person.

Hope it helps with showing you their value.