'Specialists' are underpowered

[gunkulator]

I wouldn't call specialists in Civ3 useless, especially the scientists. Food surplus was much easier to obtain in Civ3 since you could chain irrigate from the start. Any highly corrupt food-rich Civ3 city could be made to produce 12+ science/turn pretty easily. Do that in a few cities and it really adds up.

[Solomwi]

Specialists are the single biggest aspect I had to unlearn from Civ2/3. The old rule about never using them unless you absolutely had to or, as gunk mentioned, were doing so in a hopelessly corrupt city simply no longer holds. In fact, in Civ3, it was a ritual of mine to check for over-specialisted cities once I started getting every tile worked, then see if I could, say, mine an irrigated grass to squeeze more production out of it.

[DrSpike]

In Civ2 specialists rocked though.

[Solomwi]

Maybe my memory of Civ2 us faulty, but I thought I generally held to the same rule on specialists as in Civ3. I'll defer to those who kept playing Civ2, though.

[DrSpike]

You should.

There were no great people of course but with the way the science bonuses stacked in Civ2 those extra beakers could get multiplied a great deal, making specialists essential for a good SSC.

[Jaguar]

I am pleased with the way specialists work. However, I don't really like the National Epic wonder very much. It makes it too lucrative to have a Great Person Farm city, which is just kind of silly.

[Shr3dZ]

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
... And as Dominae and others repeat a lot, scientist specialist are great in the early game especially when you are not Financial.

In the early game, if I have enough extra food in a city to create specialists, Im more likely to use the slavery civic and get slap happy. Thats just me...

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Jaguar
I am pleased with the way specialists work. However, I don't really like the National Epic wonder very much. It makes it too lucrative to have a Great Person Farm city, which is just kind of silly.

I think you are supposed to build a "Great Person Farm"-City. That's part of the game and I think it's a lot of fun.
Specialization is the thing I like best in Civ 4.
What I thought was silly from all previous Civs is that you just kept on building cities just in order to build cities and they all were just copies of each other.

In Civ 4 all of your cities have a certain purpose and works differently from each other.
It reminds me of Colonization witch btw I still consider is the best game ever.

You can see your GP-producer city as some kind of a cultural "intelectual elite" capital.