Specialists usage

[fluffy_bunny]

I've been playing Civ IV and the expacs since its release and have never really bothered too much with tweaking specialists. I let the city automatically assign them if there isn't a good tile to work (or the city is out of workable tiles due to size) and will usually make all my specialists scientists unless I have a good reason not to. I use slaving to control population until Emancipation, which by then overpopulation is usually not an issue for me.

I really hate micro managing cities to be honest and will usually just do an occasional sweep through all my city screens to make sure there aren't any blatant mis-allocations of worked tiles. But I'm starting to get a creeping feeling that I'm missing out on a lot of extra beakers/hammers/gold by not micro managing specialists.

I guess I should mention that my overall strategy in the vast majority of my games is huge economy + burst warmongering, which I think is a pretty common strat.

Does anyone have some general advice (or maybe a link to a good thread) about when and how to use specialists? Thanks in advance

[Nikomakkos]

If you want a city to grow population, grow cottages or work tiles for other reasons like hammers instead of assigning citizens to be specialists, you should activate emphasize food and commerce/production, or just food. That way it won't assign specialists.

Sometimes a specialist is better than any available tile, and of course you use them to get great people. Read up on GP farms.

[SvenVvath]

I'm pretty interested to see what the others will say about this...

In my ideal game... based on the ones I've played so far ...I'll have about 3 of the first 6 cities population strong. After writing, Library and scientist SP's (Specialists). That'll help research and get you that GS (Great Scientist).

[TriMiro]

There is the concept of Specialist Economy, that is you get almost all of your research and gold from specialists and also generate great people like crazy. Here is a short tutorial on how to work with it.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/specialist_economy.php

[Supr49er]

Welcome to Apolyton Nikomakkos and SvenVvath.

@fluffy_bunny,

Definitely check out the GP (Great Person) Farms and SE (Specialist Economy) strategy.

You could pump out Great Engineers for example, and build several Great Wonders for free.

[fluffy_bunny]

Originally posted by Supr49er
Welcome to Apolyton Nikomakkos and SvenVvath.

@fluffy_bunny,

Definitely check out the GP (Great Person) Farms and SE (Specialist Economy) strategy.

You could pump out Great Engineers for example, and build several Great Wonders for free.

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Supr!

[Blaupanzer]

Bump due to interest from another thread.