Civil engineers Vs Taxmen

[Mr Justice]

ive recently come to the conclusion:
in my far flung citys and citys i take from the enemy im get more benifit to my empire if the extra citizens i used assign as tax men are now assigned to be civil engineers. my reasoning is that at worst i get semi productive citys (2 civil enjiners + min 1 sheild is 5 shields per turn, temple in 12 turns), and at best i save a pile of money when i money rush the building.

i dont have and raw data here to prove the benifits that i believe are in curred (primarily the saving of cash when rush building), but i want to get a feel for what other people do.

however one discrepency ive noticed which annoys me is that a city in resistance will still produce gold from taxmen, but wont produce the shields (i know why, but it still annoys me).

[Last Conformist]

May those resistant cities be trying to build units? Civil Engineers don't count towards units.

[Kloreep]

Yeah, Civil Engineers don't count toward units, just buildings.

So I generally use them to help construct some buildings - courthouses, police stations, and happiness structures - but then turn them in to other specialists once the buildings are up.

[MrWhereItsAt]

It will depend partly on how many shields are already in the city (uncorrupted). One CE is great, as it can reduce build times by 40 turns or more. A second makes less of a difference, and so on as diminishing returns (of a sort) sets in. The key is to note that, although each successive CE is worth the same number of shields, as you get more of them they contribute less of a turn difference to the build times. The difference between 10 and 11 CEs is the same as between 0 and 1 CE in raw shields, but 1 CE will change your build times by 10+ turns, whereas an extra CE at 10 or 11 CEs already existing is unlikely to affect the build time at all.

[Kloreep]

Yes, you need to tweak to avoid shield waste, but generally I'd say if you can squeeze even one turn off the build, go for it over having an extra tax collector or scientist. I don't really look at it as diminishing returns, since the sooner a building completes, the sooner you can get on with the next one; and the sooner you get all your desired buildings done, the sooner all the CEs can be turned in to other specialists. It's a cascading effect.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Kloreep
Yes, you need to tweak to avoid shield waste, but generally I'd say if you can squeeze even one turn off the build, go for it over having an extra tax collector or scientist. I don't really look at it as diminishing returns, since the sooner a building completes, the sooner you can get on with the next one; and the sooner you get all your desired buildings done, the sooner all the CEs can be turned in to other specialists. It's a cascading effect.

You Americans and your 'domino effect' theory.

[Mr Justice]

May those resistant cities be trying to build units? Civil Engineers don't count towards units.

i know that, i never build units in my far flung citys untill ive made them reasonable productive without the aid of CEs. wheather its a bug or a limitation that ive observered i dunno, but i have proof it happens.
i mentioned earlier about city in resistance but thats not the case and that was my memory playing tricks. it seams that Starvation is the key, if a citizen dies due to startvation u dont get the sheilds that ur CEs produce anyway.

here is athens shortly after ive taken it. i want to reduce the pop and produce the sheilds. i am faily sure if i did the equivlent with tax men i would recieve the gold. (i'll atach images in a few mins going for dinner and i need to resize them).

also i use CEs for a Turn or 2 and then rush buy, generally i save half the cost of the building for using 2 turns of CEs rather than just using taxmen and rushbuying. this is what i mean when i say it saves me a pile o money.

[Mr Justice]

here is athens shortly after ive taken it. i want to reduce the pop and produce the sheilds

[Mr Justice]

here is athens the following turn.
only thing that happend was Starvation at the beginning of my turn, thus the govener reassigned my workers, ive recieved the sheilds from this reassigned workers but i didnt recieve the shields from the CEs

[Last Conformist]

Since your gov'nor apparently reassigned all your CEs, why would you expect there to be any shields from them?

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
You Americans and your 'domino effect' theory.

MrWIA, it's a simple matter of return on investment and thinking in terms of long-term investments rather than short-term gains.

[Aqualung71]

If you are able to allocate all your citizens to CE, then your governor is not turned on. If this causes a food shortage that induces starvation, the system will automatically redistribute all your labourers to worked tiles so that you will not get the benefit of the shields from the CE's you set the previous turn.