Specialists and Great People

Specialists and Great People


  "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
   - William Shakespeare
Time and again throughout history, there have arisen men and women who have profoundly changed the world around them - artists, scientists, generals, merchants and others, whose genius sets them head and shoulders above the rest. In this game such visionaries are called "Great People."

There are five different kinds of great people in the game: Great Merchants, Great Artists, Great Scientists, Great Engineers, and Great Generals (a sixth, the Great Diplomat, is added in CSD). Each has a special ability.

Your civilization acquires Great People by constructing certain buildings and wonders, and then staffing them with "specialists", citizens from your cities who have given up working in the field or the mines. While specialists do not work city tiles, they do greatly speed the arrival of Great People. Balancing the need for food and the desire for Great People is an important challenge of city management.

When a civilization has advanced technologically enough to be able to support citizens who are not directly involved in providing food, those citizens can be assigned as "specialists." Specialists can increase a city's output of culture, gold, science or production. In addition, specialists speed the creation of "Great People."

Great People are the artists, merchants, engineers, scientists and warriors who can, singlehandedly, change the course of a civilization. They're people like Leonardo Da Vinci, Andrew Carnegie, Louis Pasteur, and Robert E. Lee. Great People are extremely powerful. Great People are cool.