AnnoZone Forum

While I have no idea about replacing them with a different effect, I just scaled them down in my personal modded game to be less powerful.
I multiplied the cycle time of the extra good with a certain factor (so the product gets produced less frequently), depending on the sophistication of the product. Basic products like wheat I used factor 3 while more advanced products got a higher factor with the end game products like steamcarriages getting the highest factor of 8. So e.g. Bruno Ironbright will produce an extra steam engine every 21 cycles instead of every 3 and so on.
It certainly feels less overpowered that way.
For specialists affecting production buildings higher up the chain, another way is to change the bonus product to something more basic and ideally a material used in production in the first hand. So Bruno could produce extra steel (think of it as being more efficient with material use) instead of giving free artillery pieces etc.
This can also be used to nerf the "changes input product specialists" which I find silly since it bypasses parts of the game which is building up production chains. Instead of requiring wood instead of brass I changed Gerhard Fuchs to produce 1 brass every 5 cycles, so he basically saves 20% on brass instead of trivializing the whole production with the wood replacement.

Ah, I see, hmm.
Those "goods provided" effects are effectively a 100% reduction in need. How about replacing that effect with a lower need reduction instead, similar to what the recipes in the restaurant, bar etc. provides? Like 15% or something like that.
Should be as simple as changing the number in the line below for each item to a different one, e.g. -15 instead of -100:


<AmountInPercent>-100</AmountInPercent>
Edit:
Apparently not all of the aforementioned specialists work like that, some use <ProvidedNeed> to outright supply certain goods. They can probably be changed in the same manner as above I imagine, it just requires more modding changes (removing the NeedPorvided section and adding the GoodConsumption section that the others have?).
Examples:
GUID 192441 (Dennis Brammen) uses ProvidedNeed

GUID 113800 (Fernando de Faro) uses GoodConsumption