Specialists

How do you guys use specialists? I'm using mine pretty much the same way as I did in Civ 2. I use entertainers when needed (which is a lot when you have a -6 empire size unhappyness penalty ) and then when I reach 18 (the number that fills up the first two rings around your city) I make every additional person a scientist so that I don't have to do PW on the third ring of spaces around my city.
It seems to work fairly well except the AI gets a little bit ahead of me on tech.

[Prince_Vegeta]

My cut off number is 28 (purely arbitrary), but i try to keep an even mix of scientists and merchants, and about a quarter of that number of entertainers. Seems to work well, i'm always about three hundred years ahead of any of the AIs, and about five hundred years ahead of the real world timeline.

[MrFun]

Specialists??

Oh - you mean those specialized workers that I have NEVER used because I have not seen a need for them?

[Alpha Wolf]

I dont use specialists much either, but look at the output you get from them. Farmers = 30 food, workers = 30 prod, scientists = 20, and entertainers are +2 happiness. Those numbers are obsurd and notice after you capture an AI city that it waill use specialists ALOT.

Personally I lowered the values back to CtP1 type numbers. I've noticed that my city growth is more in line with what CtP1 was. i hate have cities over 20 before 1ad. i swear the AI could build a city on the moon and have it be 20 by then.

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History is written by the victor.

[Mikel]

A lot of people have been complaining on the Forums about the city size growing too fast, but its just a number. Size 20 in game terms may be the potential equivelent of sive 10 in CtP1 or 5 in CivII as they all have different game mechanics.

[Dyzee400]

Pretty much the only reason that I ever use my specialists is when one of my cities is rioting and I need some happiness. I put in an entertainer or two to get my city back into positive territory.

[Dragonfly]

I turned off my City Mayors early in the game, because they were assigning specialists all over the place, and I didn't agree. It is now 1740 AD, and just about all of my 45 cities is polluting like crazy. The only thing I have been doing about it is adding Scientists, until the pollution number in the Empire manager is no longer red. I have lost 2 tile squares to pollution, and it only happened when the pollution number was in the red.

I have more than enough happiness, Tile improvements for the food and production, and I am getting scads of gold from trade, so the only thing left was Science.

Seems to work just fine, but I have to check the Empire manager every turn, and adjust the most polluting cities.