Specialists - or not?

[gentle]

Interesting maths,Blake.

Interesting you compare it to science, because my approach that finally lead to merchants was a different one.
I was looking for a way to get as much gold from stuff other than commerce in order to set up a 100% culture empire.
I still stop at a certain point in the tech tree and turn on culture 100%, as I have decided to skip the option of winning via space ship, so I dont need most of the really late game techs, that mostly have to deal with space ship stuff or prereqs for space ships.
Furthermore, as I do not play a civ with the creative trait, I have been seduced by specialists in new found cities that generate culture (mercantilism + caste system), which allowed me to install artists there asap. Artists are not very satisfying though, because after the first border expansion they are sort of useless, so I came up with merchants + Sistine Chapel.
To outsource gold income from commerce I finally found Curreny and Resource to Gold/Turn trade.
This comes in pretty handy because Curreny also gives Grocers (markets?), which allow to install Merchants without CasteSystem and add +25% Gold.
Ok, for an ideal setup you can guess what is missing.
Yes, I am a Representation junkie ^^
So, Pyramids, Sistine Chapel and Great Library are the wonders I really, really want to have.Let the others have the other ones, but I need these ^^

Nice to see your math regarding science in that context, thx blake ^^

[Hauptman]

I love Great people of all kinds....

[Verrucosus]

gentle,

I was also tempted to use specialists in newly founded cities, but I felt that the slowdown in population growth was too high a price. Was this a concern for you and, if so, how did you address it?

By the way, it's funny to think that these all-around-talents that you use are still called "specialists".

[gentle]

Well, when starting to install specialits ?
Ok, let me do some stream of consciousness here.
I can only speak for myself but my plan/thoughts on this is sth like the following:

a)First opportunity where one might think about specialists is when Writing (library) is discovered. I believe this is far too early, actually I dont touch the specialist even if I have built a library in a city (I thought different a while ago, but it just doesnt work so early imho).Get the GreatLibrary and one has 2 scientists ; I want Literature anyway cause it gives National Epic.
b)Second opportunity is Currency and markets (not grocers I guess, damn really should look it up).This is more of a deal for me, as now I can really built up my economy via trade and merchants and I can found cities which whole dedication is -more or less- bringing in some production and commerce but focus on gold and resources to trade away. Most of these cities will only have barracks, grocer, market, bank and maybe granary in it as their final setup.The later they are founded the less is their chance to get sth like a library/forge or so, because I will focus 100% on culture later anyway.
Note that I imply that one has several (~4 ?) CoreCities that are immune to specialist "manipulation" because it actually harms too much early on.
c)Third Opportunity is Code of Laws. This actually gives the possibilty of not building a grocer or appropiate building first, which is obviously quite nice.
Now comes the interesting part. One tech still missing to make specialists really interesting is Banking (mercantilism).
It also fits perfectly into my plan cause from now on I am heading towards Astronomy (well, a lie...its Liberalism but I want to grab Astronomy as I play terra maps and it fits into further research plans) and Banking is only a detour of 2 techs (tried it with Saladin who gets his unique unit with guilds to get sth out of that detour-now changing to Mao Zedong).

During this period (between Code of Laws and Banking) I rely on Merchants only that much, that I have at least no deficit spending and can research fast.It is up to the supporter cities to do so.One might say that mercantilism is the tech one wants to go for, if one likes to play with specs. As one might have noticed my fixed civ trait is PHI, and I bump lots of my GPs into tech to speed the whole thing up.
As soon as Mercantilism is established one should have no gold problem anymore. A free merchant, all +%gold buildings available, cities dedicated to resource grab (to trade for gold) and all +%gold buildings available is a valuable thing to have.

So, maybe in short...I use some cities, usually the first ~4 ones without specialists because it indeed harms growth too much, but I will use cities dedicated to gold production / resource grab ,where I dont really care if they stop growing at size 10 or so (micromanage a bit and let them grow but try to snatch a merchant here and there as early as you can get).
Also, I sometimes build cities that only have strategic reasons for their placement, where it would be a lot of effort to make a really good city out of it.
I remember having founded a border city that I founded to restrict opponents growth and grab a gold source early on.It sort of worked the gold and a food resource +2 merchants or so.Build walls,market (havent looked it up yet), produce wealth and ...deveopment finished.
This might not sound dramatically but +6 gold is a lot during the ...erm...classical era (?currency era?), where numbers are still low.

Later on, 100% culture GoldenAges really make me cry for joy ^^

Hope my thoughts helped a bit.Still working on that thing but this is my general and so far tested outline / approach.

[Blake]

IMO getting the quick acadamy is essential. That early in the game scientists are actually useful in themselves, since they give +3 resources. This is equivilant to a forest or many other unimproved tiles, it will speed up research for all bar financial civs.

What I nearly always do is find a relatively high food secondary city - a freshwater grain resource will do fine, or pigs. Or a couple of "inferior" food resources. I chop or whip in a library in that city, then assign 2 Scientists once it hits size 3 or 4 depending on where the food is coming from (1 6 food tile, or 2 3/4 food tiles), ideally I like the city to have enough leftover food to keep growing or building workers, but it's not essential.

The advantage of doing so in a secondary city is the capital can continue to focus on important things, like a wonder (and it wont pollute / be polluted by the prophet/engineer points).

Once the great Scientist pops out, I unassign the scientists and create the Acadamy in my Capital.

For Philo civs I'm a bit more inclined to go with scientist(s) in my capital, because it's possible to get away with using only 1 scientist, or using 2 scientists and generating multiple great scientists in a reasonable time span.

[gentle]

Originally posted by Blake
What I nearly always do is find a relatively high food secondary city - a freshwater grain resource will do fine, or pigs. Or a couple of "inferior" food resources. I chop or whip in a library in that city, then assign 2 Scientists once it hits size 3 or 4 depending on where the food is coming from

Hmm, interesting too. My 2nd city nearly always is a military one and I try to place it next to a prod source to pump out units or another settler/worker.
Dedicated Library city sounds pretty interesting though, but I disagree with the Academy. I dont build the Academy anymore but burn Scientists for techs later.
( I am afraid some math of yours could convince me otherwise but it would be a tough project =P )

[Hauptman]

The early academy is like my favorite new toy. With Elizibeth (my new favorite leader) it only takes 10 turns or so to make an academy, and you can also produce something else at the same time!

As soon as you get writing chop out a library then plop 2 scientists in it while you build a unit/wonder/granery etc, until the Great leader pops (10 turns or so). then make the academy and go back to normal city growth until you are ready for mass GP production.

[Strategist83]

Originally posted by 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.

That still does not explain where you get '9 commerce' from. I take it you mean '3 commerce'.

[Strategist83]

Originally posted by gentle
Interesting maths,Blake.

Indeed. Interesting people at these boards (if you are a Civ geek like me, that is).

I do not understand this part though:

Originally posted by Blake Secondary-cities beaker change (6*1.25): 7.5
Capital beaker change (6*1.75): 10.5

Are you not making the assumption that the extra beakers are evenly divided between the sub-cities and the capital here?

[gentle]

Originally posted by Strategist83


That still does not explain where you get '9 commerce' from. I take it you mean '3 commerce'.

No, I mean 3 Gold.

If you run 70% , 0% culture this means 30% gold.

-> ~1/3 of Commerce is turned into Gold
-> If 1/3 of Commerce is turned into Gold and Merchant produces 3 Gold, it means you would need 9 commerce to generate the 3 Gold.
(because 3 gold =1/3 of x commerce -> x=9).

Lazy part on my side is, that 1/3 would be 66,67% not 70%.

[Verrucosus]

I think he is, but the evenly divided extra beakers (6 both in the capital and all other cities combined) are subject to the multipliers from science buildings and in Blake's example only the capital has an academy.

Edit: This refers to the end of Strategist's last post.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Strategist83
Are you not making the assumption that the extra beakers are evenly divided between the sub-cities and the capital here?

Yes, at the start of my post I said to assume that the empire produces 200 commerce, of which 100 is produced by the super-capital and 100 more by other cities.
This isn't a bad assumption because capitals can produce ungodly amounts of commerce if they are also the #1 trade city.

[Civrocx]

Great people know great things

A great scientist for example can teach you
metal casting
machinery
engineering
philosophy
education
And many other great things


Great mercant's can teach you
civil service
guilds
banking
nationalism
economics
Constitution
Just to mention a few


So yes to specialist

Need em gotta have em


How soon do i start to create specialist... ASAP!

I look @ my great persons bar as an extra research bar.
Because thats what i use them for ,except great prophets or great engineers.

I will put Ironworks and National Epic in the same town.
Sound crazy?
Not if you like great engineers!

I like to have great people towns ,with farms and mines, and rotate from one to the other.
Trying to concentrate on one town to produce a great person,while the others do the normal build ,troops that sort of thing.But i normally leave at least one to two specialist in every town possible.Most times its a great engineer .

Then once you get biology...whoa ! lots of specialist
goin on.
Which by the way, a great scientist can help you learn.

Dont get me wrong i use towns ,but only in commerce towns.
I build "food farms " first then try to put my commerce towns somewhere that i think is gonna be outta harms reach.