What Are Specialists and What Do They Do in Civilization 7?

Specialists are one of the biggest reasons a nation wins, as they help secure those legacy points in Civilization 7. They are crucial to gaining useful resources, and they should be given some level of priority when growing a city.

But how do you get these Specialists, and what exactly do they do in Civilization 7? Here’s everything you need to know about these underrated “specialists.”

What Do Specialists Give You in Civilization 7

Specialists are one of the best ways to increase and scale your Science and Culture as a civilization. They could be in your capital or cities, but you can never have them in your towns. You’ll eventually completely urbanize the city or capital completely. Once that happens, you can no longer “grow” your city but only add Specialists to Urban tiles.

These Specialists produce more Science and Culture per turn and sometimes even more gold. However, it comes at a cost as you are converting that tile to be worked on by a Specialist, which means you’ll lose some Food and Happiness in exchange for technical progression.

You can have up to two Specialists per tile, and their Science and Culture bonuses may depend on their adjacent buildings for buffs and bonuses. The base stats for each Specialist create +2 Science and +2 Culture with a +0.5 adjacency bonus. They also cause -2 Food and -2 Happiness each. However, adjacency buffs and bonuses create higher numbers than those mentioned above, as the values already include the bonuses.

Thus, you must be careful when adding Specialists. You don’t want to overpopulate your city or capital with Specialists. It could have a negative effect on your Happiness or Food in the long term. Happiness is especially crucial since it is hard to increase while at war. Food can be easily fixed by establishing trade routes or buying granaries with gold.

Related: What Does Ageless Mean in Civilization 7?

How to Get Specialists in Civilization 7

You can only unlock Specialists in cities or capitals. You can’t have them in your towns since you can only “grow” tiles by converting those Rural tiles into Urban ones. To get Specialists, you need to wait for your city or capital to grow and instead of converting tiles, you have the choice of adding a Specialist.

Each tile will create +2.5 Science, +2.5 Culture, -2 Food, and -2 Happiness. The values may differ depending on adjacency bonuses as they are inclusive in the tiles when highlighted. You can have up to 2 Specialists per tile. The best strategy is to keep all Specialists in one capital or city and try to sustain Food and Happiness through trade routes, policies, and bonuses.

When you have Specialists concentrated in one city or town, you can activate the “Research Initiative” or “Cultural Festival” projects under the production tab to increase Science or Culture production by 25% of the City’s production, respectively. You’ll need production buildings to increase it, but you’ll have enough Culture or Science to overtake all the other leaders and leave them in the dust.