Specialists and city radius/size

[Yoleus]

Is there any max size for cities? If not, what happens when you have enough population to harvest resources from all the tiles of the (biggest) city map? Do the extra people must be specialists as in Civ2?
I still don't understand what actually specialists are... are they resource gatherers with particular tasks or are they independent from city resource gathering?
If my city is squeezed in between other cities and the city radius is cropped short, will I still need the same number of population that I would need if it was free in order to harvest 100% of resources? Please answer no...
After the 3*3 (9 squares) block which is worked by 6 people at 100%, I read that the second "ring" of land is worked by 12 people at 100%. So now it is 12 squares for 12 people.
This is actually quite a boost for ICS, because cities smaller that 7 are FAR more efficient than bigger ones to gather resources... Anyway, will we have the same people/square ratio of 1 also for the other "rings" of city expansion?
If for example another city prevents my city to gather resources from 3 squares that would have been inside its radius but are controlled by the other one, will I need 3 less workers to gather the full resources?
In this case, what will happen of the extra 3 workers?
I have a bad feeling about this automatic resource gathering, I hope somebody (from Activision?) will answer fully...

check this out
http://apolyton.net/misc/column/139_cities.shtml

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum35/HTML/000313.html

[Yoleus]

Thank you MarkG, now I have answers to all but one of my questions:

if my city is squeezed in between other cities and the city radius is cropped short, will I still need the same number of population that I would need if it was free in order to harvest 100% of resources? If for example another city prevents my city to gather resources from 3 squares that would have been inside its radius but are controlled by the other one, will I need 3 less workers to gather the full resources?
In this case, what will happen of the extra 3 workers? Must they be specialists forever or could they be used LATER to gather resources when eventually the radius will grow another ring?

I think nobody asked this before. I will await an answer also to this last doubt (for now ). Thanks again for the quick answer.

[Yoleus]

I will post the previous question to Column #139 and close this thread...

[Yoleus]

I thought I could close my own threads... well OK, I will wait for MarkG to close it .

hehe, no you cant close your own threads...