Go go Artist culture bomb.

How do you guys tend to use your specialists when you get them?

Artists - If I have a smaller city bordering one or two other other civs, or if there is a resource just in their territory I want I use the great work. Otherwise perm specialist in a border city.

Scientists - Always the academy

Merchants - Always usually specialist. Maybe Golden Age.

Prophet - Usually Great Church's first

Engineer - hmmm depends on whether I have a wonder I want to rush otherwise specialist.

General - usually turn them into a leader. Until I have a couple and then into specialist building for +2exp.

I don't tend to usually convert them into a golden age.

Artist, I use the great work if there is a neighboring city that I want to absorb. Otherwise I dump it as a specialist in one of my bigger ones.

Scientists, academy, yes.

Merchants, the trade mission.

Prophet, the great shrine things are pretty nice, otherwise I'll use them for the tech because their specialist thing is crap.

Engineer, rush a wonder or specialist/tech depending on my needs.

I agree that golden ages are a waste of great people.

Merchants - Ive never used a merchant on a Trade mission so don't know how much they are worth, is it quite a bit? I tend to keep closed borders and try and squeeze other civilisations into corners or surround them.

Priest Specialists - they become really worthwhile if you have certain wonders, but otherwise the special buildings are much better

I always use the engineer for a wonder. I'm a wonder whore.

Merchants can give you an obscene amount - if you send them all the way across the world, you can get like 1500+ gold from them. I'm pretty sure you also don't need open borders to move a merchant through another civ.

I'm a wonder whore too.

The merchants are so OP. I sent one to a very large capital city (12 people?) on the far end of the continent and got 3000 gold from it. I pretty much played the rest of the game with 0 gold income on the sliders.

Most of my great people I use for technology, or specialists if the tech I'd get I wouldn't get fully and won't be researching soon. Prophets go first towards shrines, one merchant goes for gold, the rest tech or specialists.

Bump. Anyone care to try a multiplayer game?

Would love to, just not today. Have a couple hours of work, then my partay. PM contact info or steal mine from my profile.

The one thing that still bugs me about civ, is that the AI focuses on killing armies, not cities, and how easy it is to take over a city without first defeating the armies around it.

But now I want to play...

This is why you always keep your armies in your cities unless you're actively sending them out to attack another army/city.

No, you see the opposite is actually true.

Its much better to leave your armies walking around, (specially your weaker units) since the A.I. will go after them, and leave your new fledgling city alone.

And for some reason they think you will do the same thing, so they sometimes empty out a city (specially when there are hills or mountains around) and make taking over the city easy pickings.

Lol. Whenever I don't have an army unit in a city, it almost always gets taken within a few turns. They may have changed the AI in the newer version.

Anyways, I can't play today. Sorry.

hmm, maybe its a balance then.

I just remember this one game where I beat a civ (the mongols) who had a much larger army and much better technolgy by just emptying my cities of all my warriors, and sending my cavalry to attack his cities directly. He destroyed all my warriors (and ended up taking 2 of my cities) but had no more cities of his own to defend.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Whenever the AI sees any of my cities unprotected, or protected by a relatively light group of troops, they immediately charge in and take it. And I haven't even played on the higher difficulty levels.

They will, however, engage your armies that are blocking their path, or that are in their territories.

Right, they don't move around the armies and aim for the city.

Yes, they do. I've lost cities because of that.

Or the barbarians. I hate the new barbarians. I usually play with a light army until my tech starts rolling...and when I play on a larger map, I get beat down by the loser barbarian horde and watch the other civs swoop in and take my cities back.