Using NC and Library

The strategy around building the NC quickly has been around for quite some time and has survived a lot of patches. I've been tinkering around it and am wondering how exactly am I supposed to make use of the library and NC. Generally speaking, do I put scientist specialists asap at the expense of ?

 

I haven't pursued this strategy often myself, so I don't know what the best approach is. I'd guess Great Library to NC, with scientist specialists filled until the first Great Scientist appears, then transition back to normal production. It depends on if you plan on running a specialist economy or a gold/production economy.

 

I'm playing Suleiman right now so I'm particularly curious about its use in the NC rush.

I'm feeling like rushing the NC and then filling up the specialist spots deprives me of so much growth at the early game. Just from building the GL rushed, I starve my city at 4 pop up to 0 food. By that I mean 2 mines are worked with 1 mine worked even up to starvation as long as it doesn't kill a citizen. At this point, is the free Library supposed to be worked? I think it's probably not, but idk.

Then comes the NC, where without much time to replenish food, we start to rush production again. The tough part about it is that yes, we have the NC (3 scientist slots available), but we don't quite have enough food to support those specialists and grow. We are also deprived of a lot of hammers and gold.

Rushing the GL seems necessary to prevent other civs from building it and getting it for yourself. Rushing the NC, however, seems much like a gambit, especially if our intention for rushing it is mainly about using the 2 slots.

Generally speaking, how much of the strategy is about just getting the passive effects of having the buildings and how much of it is using those specialist slots for maximum use?

As of now, I tend to delay building the NC until the 2nd expansion is up.

 

Rushing the National College was particularly powerful when that wonder resided on the Writing technology (in vanilla). I moved it to Philosophy to make a once-city rush to it more challenging. What I usually do instead is expand to 2 cities, build two libraries, then build the National College. By that point the cities are usually large and developed enough to support specialists. This is obviously a better strategy if you have good sources of food nearby.