Specialists - or not?

[Strategist83]

Tile improvements - mines, cottages, etc - generally produce more commerce/production than specialists save for the case one is running the 'representation' civic. For instance, a cottage-family improvement provides between one and four commerce (I think) while a plains mine provides four production. Thus, I figure one should only use specialists for the 'great person' points they produce. Furthermore, if one city has more specialists than all others, that city alone will produce Great People. It therefore follows that one should only use specialists in the city acting as 'Great People factory' and use standard improvements everywhere else.

Is everything in the above paragraph correct? I read otherwise in another thread and now I am in doubt.

Thanks in advance.

[joncnunn]

Well, that's not the only issues though, its quite common to have a situation where your city has reached a happiness and/or health limit, making specalists more useful.

Also every single specalist benifit is multiplied by the buildings that multiply that percent.

In my own game, yes, only my capital will ever produce GPs, but I've played games where four seperate cities produced a Great Person.

[Strategist83]

Would it not be better to simply toggle on 'avoid growth'?

Also, you are correct that the specialists take advantage of any bonuses - but so do standard tiles so your point is moot.

[gentle]

I am in love with specialists - especially with merchants.

As one heavily relies on %-bar when it comes to research there always is that nasty "where does my money come from" prob.

A merchant for example gives +3gold/+?/+?
If you are at 70% science that roughly equals 9 commerce.

(yeah yeah, 70% is not 66% but I am a lazy guy)

Furthermore it is possible to have the cash-%-bar at 0 and make profit. Thats leet imho^^

[chequita guevara]

I generally use the super specialists early on from the great leaders, and add any specialists I get from wonders, but I don't generally use normal ones because production is paramount.

[Strategist83]

Originally posted by gentle
A merchant for example gives +3gold/+?/+?
If you are at 70% science that roughly equals 9 commerce.

Huh? Surely the merchant creates only 3 commerce? I do not think there is a such thing as 'gold' in the game - just commerce.

[Moonbars]

No, there is "Commerce" that is turned into "Gold, Beakers & Culture" by the sliders.

Helpfully, the interface uses the same icon for Commerce and Gold.

[gentle]

Yep, can only repeat what moonbars says:

Commerce is divided into
- Gold
- Beakers (science)
- Culture

A merchant generates +3 GOLD (+ maybe various other stuff)

One doesnt have a gold-slider though.
But everything lacking up to 100% is actually the gold-%

70% science + 20% culture implies 10% gold

PS: I think with 1.52 they changed the icons and gold now has a different icon than commerce.Commerce still the coin, gold the pile of coins.

[Velociryx]

Minor nitpick/correction....actually, you DO have a gold slider on the expense summary screen....just not accessible from the main UI.



-=Vel=-

[Verrucosus]

Using artists, scientists and merchants has the advantage that you can fine-tune the science/gold/culture budget on the city level. The national science and culture sliders are extremely powerful, but somewhat crude tools.

For example, if you want to exert pressure on a particular neighbour, you could boost commerce in your border towns and raise the percentage of commerce going into culture. Doing it that way, might lead to waste of valuable commerce points in core cities where you might need not need the culture boost.

Different example: You are rapidly expanding to another continent where you have no government center and court houses yet, so you need to lower nation-wide research spending to cover increased maintenance costs. If you have a science city with all science improvements (incl. Oxford University) and don't want it to suffer from the reduction of the science rate, you could use scientists rather than commerce from tiles.

This kind of flexibility can be extremely useful in certain situations and, to me, seems as important as the GP benefit.

Interestingly, although I am quite fond of specialists, I have not used them on a large scale so far. Maybe it's because I play on the medium levels where it's not that difficult to raise happiness and health levels. As long as the city can grow, the loss of food income from tiles is a high price to pay for using specialists.

[gentle]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Minor nitpick/correction....actually, you DO have a gold slider on the expense summary screen....just not accessible from the main UI.



-=Vel=-

[Vynd]

Re: Specialists - or not?

Originally posted by Strategist83
Furthermore, if one city has more specialists than all others, that city alone will produce Great People. It therefore follows that one should only use specialists in the city acting as 'Great People factory' and use standard improvements everywhere else.

Is everything in the above paragraph correct? I read otherwise in another thread and now I am in doubt.

I'm not sure what you mean by "that city alone will produce Great People." I've been able to generate Great People from many different cities at once. Even though some were producing a lot of more GP points than others, all of them output Great People at the rate you'd expect from the amount of points they are generating.

[gentle]

Re: Re: Specialists - or not?

Originally posted by Vynd


I'm not sure what you mean by "that city alone will produce Great People." I've been able to generate Great People from many different cities at once. Even though some were producing a lot of more GP points than others, all of them output Great People at the rate you'd expect from the amount of points they are generating.

Yes it happened to me too.Though I try to concentrate on one city for producing GPs, some minor cities managed to put out some GPs too (as I said before, I use a lot of specialists and are a fan of mercantilism ^^).
Nevertheless, focusing GPP on one city is good imho, because one only has 1 National Epic ^^

PS:
How can I insert images into my posts ? I only get the link inserted even if I use the img tag.

[Verrucosus]

"If one city has more specialists than all others, that city alone will produce Great People."

I've read similar statements elsewhere, but I'm not convinced that they are valid. They refer to the rule that the cost of generating Great People is the same in all cities, so a city that generates a lot of Great People Points (GPPs) can raise the cost for other cities.

As an example, let's assume that there city #1 is generating 20 GPPs per turn, city #2 10 GPPs per turn and that cost increases by 100 GPPs each time a Great Person (GP) is generated.

Turn #05 - GP generated in city #1 raising cost to 200 GPPs - 50 GPPs in city #2
Turn #15 - GP generated in city #2 raising cost to 300 GPPs - 150 GPPs in city #2
Turn # 30 - 300 GPPs reached simultaneously in both cities, GP generated in city #1 because it is processed first (this bit is speculative), raising cost to 400 GPPs - 300 GPPs remain in city #2
Turn #40 - 200 GPPs in city #1 - GP generated in city #2 raising cost to 500 GPPs

You can see that eventually the city with the lower output will produce a Great Person, but will also notice that the percentage of the Great Persons produced by the slower city does not correspond to the ratio of GPP output (1:2). (This is even true if city #2 had produced the third Great Person, because in that case city #1 would have had a 300 point headstart for the next set of Great Persons.)

In summary, I would suggest that the statement is not correct because (a) it refers to the number of specialists rather than the amount of GPPs per turn and (b) because eventually even the slower GPP producers will reach the cost limit first, so their GPP output is not lost. However, the cities with a higher GPP output will produce a larger percentage of Great Persons than the ratio of their output to national GPP production would seem to indicate.

[Blake]

The Merchants question is complicated...

Lets take a sample empire.

The capital produces 100 raw commerce (it's a super-city), the rest of the empire produces 100 more commerce total, the grand total is 200 commerce.

All cities have Libaries (+25% science), the Capital has an Acadamy too (total +75% science).

Total expenses = 40, science allocation to break even = 80%.

The question is, do you get better value for money from Merchants or Scientists? (I'm going to assume that fractional science allocation is possible becuse it sort of is with slider-tweaking).

If you create 4 scientists in a secondary cities, they add 15 beakers (4*3*1.25).

If you create 4 merchants in secondary cities, they add 12 coins, "reducing expenses" to 28. This allows allocation to be increased to 86%, which turns more raw commerce into beakers.
Secondary-cities beaker change (6*1.25): 7.5
Capital beaker change (6*1.75): 10.5
Total = 18 beakers.

Would you look at that, the merchants add 3 more total beakers than scientists.

Basically, here is the deal.
If you have a variety of cities, some with higher science multipliers than others, then you're better off creating merchants in cities with low science multipliers, as that frees up more raw commerce in cities with higher science multipliers. In cities with high science multipliers you're better off creating scientists.

So if for example you have a nifty specialist GPP pump, which has no science or coin infrastructure at all, you'd be better off creating merchants in it, assuming you are indifferent to the bonuses of great merchants vs great scientists.

And with Merchantalism you should create Mercants in your new cities with no infrastructure, create scientists in the cities with good infrastructure. (sometimes ofcourse engineers or artists will be better)

It does get more complicated though when you start having a bunch of coin multiplier buildings like banks, but generally speaking the overall labs multiplier will be higher, so the rule of thumb of merchants for poor cities and scientists for good cities is pretty solid.