City Worker: Worker? Entertainer? Sci?

[ACTD_Ran]

I was told somewhere that if you switch one of the city workers to a Science Worker you get one 'gross' science point... Or something like that. Does anyone know what that one point is equilivant to in terms of city 'bushels' that go to science or technology development?

[Kloreep]

It's equivalent to one commerce point generated by the city being put into science (but the science specialist citizen's "beaker", as science points are called, is not affected by improvements. This means that while one commerce point put into science in a city with a library and university would equal two beakers, a science specialist in the same city would still generate only one beaker).

[ACTD_Ran]

So basically their useless... Not worthing having the citizens mood change to get it from the worker, to a taxpayer who changes their moods, and then to a science worker...

It would seem worth while at some point in the game to actually be able to use them for a gain, instead of an apparent loss...

Cause like I mentioned:
a) You have to change the worker to a tax payer who effects the moods of the other citizens in that city...
b) You get seemingly no gain from doing this...

So it's seemingly worthless and pointless to even have it in the game. It would be more logical to have it effect research early in the game when your CIV is just growing and even have it's effect drop off as the game progresses because of the fact that more than likely you'll have more cities... And as I mentioned prior to this thread, to change the worker to a science worker "Shouldn't" make the citizens unhappy as he will ultimately improve the citizens way of life, etc...

[zulu9812]

Entertainers are good for haltting disorder and whatnot, and I doubled the output of taxmen and scientists to make them more useful.

[ACTD_Ran]

Yes, I doubt that with the Taxman too... Especially since he makes the citizens unhappy I keep my ratio at about 70% Science and vary the entertainment, I thought it might have some benifit so that at times I can lower the science...

[JohnM2433]

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I don't think specialists make citizens unhappy -- at least not directly. However, if you have a luxury rate of over 0% and the tile you pull the worker from was generating commerce, then the city will have less commerce to go into luxuries, which will reduce happiness. Also, if you change an entertainer into another type of specialist, happiness will obviously go down.

However:

I have noticed that the least happy citizens in a city are assigned the specialist jobs. But specialists are always considered content (I think). So in addition to its regular job, a specialist makes 1 unhappy citizen -- the specialist itself -- content (assuming that at least 1 citizen in the city is unhappy).

And while the output of a scientist or tax collector is unaffected by improvements, it is unaffected by corruption as well. So in high-corruption cities, specialists are often more productive than regular workers.

My problem with specialists is as follows:

Suppose that I want to change all of the tax collectors in my empire to scientists, to focus on research. Then I have to go into all of my cities and change them manually. Arg! The only difference between these two specialists is on my empire as a whole -- they change nothing locally in their home cities. So why can't I just decide to change my x tax collectors and y scientists into x-c tax collectors and y+c scientists, without having to manually reset them? Or equivalently, why not just have a generic tax collector/scienist specialist instead of the two separate ones, and let the player decide how much of the income they generate goes into the treasury and how much goes into research?

[Ethelred]

I find specialists are usually a waste except for entertainers. If you have a lot of them then it may be worthwhile to have them doing science but why have a lot of them in the first place.

Taxmen do not make anyone unhappy. In fact they come from the unhappen end of the spectrum so they reduce the number of unhappy people. Same for scientists.

Entertainers however make one content person happy or one unhappy person content and that can make a huge difference if you are near to disorder. It also raises you score more than the other specialists do.

Scientists are the one specialist I do occasionly use intentionally even when entertainers won't help. Whenever I am in Anarchy I set at least one citizen to Scientist. That one flask can be enough to get me another tech advance. Specialists produce coin and flasks even in anarchy.