Specialist use: After full population or sooner?

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Fleme

Now, I went back and checked my empire in 1840 AD when things had already balanced out and specialists had outlived their "golden age". (spawning great people gets too slow to be useful later on in the game). At this time my coastal commerce (which had also became my capital for the Bureaucracy bonus) city was producing 1240 gold per turn (yes, 1240 gold per turn from one city) and also had 3 merchant specialists! (almost forgot!) and my former capital Kyoto was producing a meager 280 Research. Now, it was still clearly the leading research city of my empire with it's 6 scientists and now +3 engineers (war time, no more Caste System or Representation), second one being my commerce city with 150 The remaining 15~ cities were lucky to break 50 each coming to a total of 1475 research per turn.

Well, I now have a new goal--to build an empire where I can put out numbers like yours. In my current game, I think I'm at about 175 research/turn and it's the 1850s on Normal. I suck. But I'm leading on my continent and in second overall! So at least I'm doing something right.

Thanks for the tips!

[Fleme]

Any time; I don't dare say I'm by any means good but these things work for me and hopefully it can be of use to you as well.

For me the proper use of specialists was the way to Monarch and Emperor. I can also send you a save from that particular game if you want to take a look around on what makes what tick in that particular game.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by NFIH
OK, so if my goal is indeed to pump out great people, should I typically try to get the population up to max cap before running specialists, or not?

My rule of thumb is this: manage your population such that the next GP born in this city arrives as quickly as possible.

In practice, this tends to mean that you don't grow until doing so allows you to run another specialist; your growth tends to happen all at once, immediately after a GP is born, and ideally when some other city is going to be pushing out a GP soon anyway.

These are the same sort of considerations you keep in mind when considering infrastructure as well (if turn off a specialist to get a building done sooner, will that speed the arrival of the next GP?).

There are some exceptions - if your plan is to use your next GP to lightbulb tech X, which depends on tech Y, there's no benefit to having the GP arrive before tech Y is researched. So you might as well grow before he arrives, since it doesn't cost you anything to do so.

[Chopper]

How do you stop the automatic assigning of Spies by the Governor? I want to assign specialists in a city but sometimes forget and when I get to the city the "Gov" has already assigned spies, when scientists or priests would be more effective. I also have the spy slidet set to zero.

[Wittlich]

In the City Screen, make sure that none of the governor options are highlighted (this, in affect, turns off the city governor).

[wodan11]

Wittlich, I think that works only until the city adds another peep, at which point it decides what to do with that citizen as if the governor was on. Which often times will be a spy specialist.

Here's another option and what I do. Leave the governor on, and force just 1 specialist of the type I want that city to run. Then, that city will ONLY run that type of specialist, even if I'm whipping or suffering happiness ups and downs due to WW, or whatever.

Wodan

[MoonWolf]

Think I will look into Fleme's strategy myself. I have tried something quite close to it, but not running as strictly as (s)he recommends