What are you thoughts regarding to automating workers? I generally manually setup improvements around my first three cities, after that it becomes somewhat cumbersome when dealing with other aspects of the game. How good of a job do the automated workers do compared to ideal improvements? Its seems like they always lean towards commerce...

When your worker is near a city, do you see those blue circles? That is what they will work on. They spend a lot of time undoing the improvements that have already been made. I dont like the AI here.

This question has been discussed to death :)

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I usually do not automate worker.
many people automate only in the very late game.
Many people have the game option 'Leave Improvements untouched' enabled (inlcuding me :) )

Here are a few discussions that can asnwer your question:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144733&highlight=Automate

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146327&highlight=Automate

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=143747&highlight=Automate

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=143358&highlight=Automate

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146156&highlight=Automate

My advice: Do not automate, specially if you know what you are doing (if you know what tiles to improve first, cities to connect first ...etc.)
if you are a noob, then automating is a must :)

The most annoying thing about automating workers is that they're completely oblivious to what non-automated workers are doing. They seem to coordinate with other automated workers not to step on each others toes, but if you're building an improvement, they'll come all across your empire to try to build the same thing, even if it will be finished before they arrive. They'll also build a road right next to your non automated worker connecting the same destination.

And even when all workers are automated they tend to swarm on the same cities. If one city is flagged as needing improvements, they'll come build 20 improvements around a population 2 city, instead of spreading out and building a few improvements at all your fledgeling cities.

Automated workers tend to focus on food production over everything. So personally I never use it.....

Can't you specify that they focus on commerce, production, or food?

I do automate alot, but I've been doing more and more micro-managing. I'll be doing even more after a lot of what I've read today.

the only time i ever automate is for trade networks, other than that all by hand.

Do not automate, unless they put some real automatizacion options like: maximize food or commerce or production in nearest city, improve city tiles and resources only (so they do not lose turns placing farms in every empty square when they are more important things to do), automatization AI must consider getting new resources high priority. I think with SDK we might be able to change this.