Ok I have played a lot of Civ but I still cnat figure out what specialists are. I mean i know how to put them in like if you have the writer guild you will put two specialists in but when I do that I suddenly find my civ in starvation or has literally no production. Is there somthing I am doing wrong?

And about procduction... I keep building the best production in my captial to build all the wonders etc but then find out that my production is only something like 40 ish but other civs have less mines in their capital but have insane amounts of production sometimes doubble mine and have an insane amount of population. In order to increase the production, do you need to put food a priority then when your city has a big population switch to production?

thanks for the help