Specialist Help

[cyndrax]

So I am not terribly familiar with the hows/whens/whys of using specialists in cities.

Does anyone have any advice to offer, or theories on the best use of specialists?

Thanks,
Brian

[DaveMcW]

In general, you are using specialists for the Great People Points (GPP). The extra beakers/culture/etc is not that great.

The first Great Person is by far the cheapest, at 100GPP. So decide which one you want to go for first. Great Prophets are popular choice: build a temple, hire a priest, and 34 turns later you have your shrine.

After the first couple Great People, they get too expensive for one specialist to produce. So switch to Caste System and hire mass specialists in your highest food city.

[cyndrax]

So I guess the next question is, what are the best great people to work towards, and what are they best used for?

I use prophets for shrines, engineers for superspecialists (probably not the best use after reading about specialists here), artists for culture bombs in border cities, and merchants for the gold infusions.

Is this the best use of them, or should I be saving some for golden ages, or using them for other uses within the cities?

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by cyndrax
I use prophets for shrines, engineers for superspecialists (probably not the best use after reading about specialists here)

WHAT? The absolutely, positively, undeniably best use for engineers is to hurry wonders. I just took my first Noble victory as a builder by getting the Pyramids by chopping, cranking out Great Engineers and using them for wonder-whoring.

[Felan]

I like using Great Scientists to build the Academy or whatever it's called. +50% research building in select cities.

[Merzbow]

In general, is it better to use engineers to hurry wonders or to hurry tech?

[Aeson]

Settling a Great Engineer is actually a viable option. If you hurry a Wonder, you get that X production up-front, depending on what Wonder it is. The Pyramids are 450 production for instance. Though if you are IND or have the resource for the Wonder, it does devalue the rush.

Settling gives 3p3b per turn. So settling instead of rushing the Pyramids would take 150 turns to "pay off" in pure production value (assuming no Wonder building bonuses). That's certainly not the whole story though.

Forge gives +1p. If in your capitol, Bureaucracy gives +1p1b. A Library gives +1b. So rather early in the game a settled Great Engineer will be worth 5p5b per turn. It doesn't take long to exceed the value of the rushed Wonder in terms of production even ignoring the beakers. By the end of the game, if everything possible is factoring in, a settled Great Engineer is worth 7production 12beakers 11culture per turn. (That's with Hermitage instead of Iron Works, as Iron Works doesn't work currently. With a working Iron Works it would be 8p12b9c)

It does make it more likely to miss that specific Wonder though. But doesn't mean you will miss it. If you get an Engineer with your desired Wonder around, settling it will still give you a better chance of building it than without one at all. Whether to rush a Wonder or not depends on how badly you want a particular Wonder, what odds are someone else will beat you to it, and if that offsets the game long advantages of settling.

[Peets]

hurry wonders, wonders are good to have.