Has anyone figured out how many workers would be the optimum number for an empire? Something like 1 worker for every 3 cities, or someting like that?

I usually get to the midgame and realize that the land around my cities is still (very much) undeveloped. More cottages and mines would equal more gold and hammers. However, there always seems to be something more important to build than another worker.

I generally use three to four workers per two cities for most of the game.

It really depends on how you play though. More chopping in example means you need to have more workers around.

One indication is that if your cities still have unimproved tiles that they are working, you need more workers.

And, there's almost nothing more important than building another worker (if you need it for tile improvements).

One worker for every three cities seems to be very low. In the earlier stages of the game, I typically have at least two per city. Later, there is no need to constuct more, as those already around don't have that much to do.

Workers pay for themselves very quickly in terms of population growth and more hammers.

I build two per city. Once every single square within city reach is improved and every resource is harvested, I find someone to attack. The workers are generally not idle for very long. :D

Something like 1 worker for every 3 cities, or someting like that?
Heh, no. I would say one per city is a minimum

I like one per city and one extra to build roads between cities. More than that develops the land faster than your cities' populations can fill it - which isn't a bad thing, just not optimal - and less means that you're working on undeveloped tiles, which is a bad thing and slows you down.

Just have everyone build their own worker when they hit size 2 or 3 and throw out an extra one from the capital and that should be enough.

two for the capitol andone per city for the first expansion. after that those four or five move from new city to new city.

I can't believe how understaffed I have been playing! I was suggesting 1 worker per 3 cities as a goal that I could aim to reach.

My worker shortage was really brought to my attention when I played as the Romans for the first time. With the praetorians, I annexed both Egypt and India with very little effort. None of the other civs ever inspired me to go for an early game domination.

cIV is a great game -- I still have so much to learn. This forum is fantastic -- thanks for the help.

I think you guys are being a bit insane with your numbers. Three per city is just a waste. Cities don't expand fast enough usually.

I find one per city does me just fine, and even with this amount my workers eventually run out of things to do.

Whenever there is little to do run to a forrest and chop chop chop! :)
Also having more means getting stuff a lot faster if needed. Getting that wonder chopped before someone else. Getting that railroad up fast etc.

The worker ratio you want has less to do with how many cities you have than the rate at which you are building cities. You'll want to have about 2-3 workers availbe to work each newly established city up to a point where
6-8 tiles have been improved before moving on.

For instance, you might establish your first city, build two workers, have those workers improve a few tiles around your city, build a settler, and have those workers move on to your next city to do thier work.

If you are in a situation where you are working a lot of unimproved tiles you should be buildng workers, not settlers.

I usually make at least two workers in the capital before building a settler, and then add another worker from each additional city. I usually end up with around two workers per city, unless its a map with large amounts of jungle in which case I could have as many as 3-4.

This usually means I have a large number of workers sitting around doing nothing once my core is improved, but after wars I can swoop in with my worker armies irrigating newly captured cities so they can reach a large size quickly, and then workshop/mine as much as possible to turn them into production powerhouses.

It completely depends on the game. You'll know if you don't have enough workers if you have unimproved tiles that are being worked. Like another poster said if you have to chop a lot then you'll need more workers also. If you have a very low happy/health cap then you won't need many workers at all. Therefore in general the lower the difficulty the more workers you need. There are a bunch of other factors as well. There's no set formula.

The real waste is having your workers run back and fourth between your cities trying to stay ahead of the population growth. Every turn spent relocating a worker wastes a turn that the worker could be making improvements.

The optimal way is to have each city with its own workers. Just enough to stay ahead of the population growth for that city. This means that some cities might only need one worker due to a slow pop growth and others might need two or even four workers.

I think about this as I am rushing workers from city to city.

The real waste is having your workers run back and fourth between your cities trying to stay ahead of the population growth. Every turn spent relocating a worker wastes a turn that the worker could be making improvements.

The optimal way is to have each city with its own workers. Just enough to stay ahead of the population growth for that city. This means that some cities might only need one worker due to a slow pop growth and others might need two or even four workers.

I think about this as I am rushing workers from city to city.

Oh, definitely improve so that the city has a couple tiles to grow into before moving the worker to the next city.

Therefore in general the lower the difficulty the more workers you need.

I'd disagree. At higher difficulties it can be very benificial to build extra workers prior to drama/monarchy. Either of these techs can be used to significantly increase your hapiness cap. By having extra workers before the cap increases, you can irrigate a large number of tiles in each of your core cities. Once the cap increases you can emphasise growth in these cities letting you grow up to the new cap as fast as possible and then switch back to commerce/production tiles.

The number of workers i build is usually situational. If I'm gonna have to chop an entire jungle down to get my cities doing well, I need more workers than if I don't have to. If i'm stuck in the icy north, with little improvements to do, don't need as many. If I'm on an island and I won't be fighting many battles until astronomy, I make more, cause I won't be capturing any.

I think that in a more standard situation, some forests, no jungle/tundra, I would be around a little more than 1 per city, maybe 1.3. I would fill in the rest by conquering civilizations. ;)

Early game, you will need at least one or two per city. Later in the game I find they are much less important and I basically stop making them after the classical age whether I am expanding or not. Since railroads have been weakened so much from civ 3, I am not in as big a hurry.

Some good advice here.

Couple of things cause me to need more than one worker per city in early game.

1. Is having not just enough tiles to the pop I have, but sometimes several more in a city. This is so I can switch between production/food/commerce when micro-managing cities growth/happiness with timing builds and tech rate discovery.
2. How much chopping I'm going to do. I am currently addicted to the pyramids and at some point a worker will get the task to complete chop it which keeps him busy. This is only when I can get a forest rich location in one of 3 starting cities.

I end up with 1.5-2 workers per city early game and sometimes still have choices and what they should be doing.

Late game...

I dont normally have enough 0.75-1.0 per city, I seem to have a problem keeping track of them later. I think my game would improve if I had more and grouped them to rush certain improvements in new cities or when happiness limit changes, or new city from war etc.....

I'm not a fan of having every city build their own worker. Obviously your capitol needs to be building it's own, but your 4th 5th 6th 7th cities should already have established workers to help them out. Plus, by this time your capitol and 2nd/3rd cities should be hitting it's happy/health cap. Why would you want to force your newly built level 3 city to halt it's growth for 15 crucial turns?? Building a worker instead of a lighthouse/library/granary/temple/barracks etc when your capitol could do it in 3 turns (and more efficiently leverage it's food resources into production.) Probably one of your first three cities is going to be a cottage farm, so that wouldnt be a good one to build workers in, but there's usually a production center and a food center; use your food center once it hits it's cap to pump out those worker/settlers.

I dont normally have enough 0.75-1.0 per city, I seem to have a problem keeping track of them later. I think my game would improve if I had more and grouped them to rush certain improvements in new cities or when happiness limit changes, or new city from war etc.....

Yes. Grouped worker teams of 2 -3 is much more effective then sending them on independent missions. You get the improvement done faster, which provides the benefit of the tile faster to your city - allowing faster growth, production, or access to health/happiness/strategic bonuses that many turns sooner. If ever you have the opportunity to group multiple workers - do it! :hammer:

It may not seem like much to get 1 Wheat tile worked that much faster, but multiply that by every city you build and getting that improved tiles benefit into your coffers that much faster over the course of the game? I'm confidant it loosely translates to hundreds of extra food/hammers/commerce - or dozens - depending on game speed & map size. :eek:

I don't ever do a per city thing. If I don't have enough, I build some more.

Also, I always group my workers into 1-turn road/chop/mine teams (2 workers on normal speed, 3 on epic, not sure what marathon was). Sometimes it's wasteful, if you build a watermill for example, but it's easier to manage. Also the desert tiles take longer and I think you end up wasting a turn with one of the workers there, but I don't care.

So if I felt I needed more workers on epic, I'd build three and group them.

Ditto to using my workers in pairs or trios. Especially if you're playing as India.

Three different workers working on three different projects cheats you out of a few turns of actually using two of those improvements.

e.g. if it takes 1 worker 9 turns to build an improvement, and you have 3 of them to build, you can either put one worker on each of the 3 improvements, all finishing on turn 9, or you can put them all on the first one, finishing in turn 3, move them to the second one, finishing in turn 7 or 8 (including movement), and then finish the third one in turn 11 or 12. While the overall project is completed 2 or 3 turns later because of having to move, you got to use the first improvement for 6 extra turns, and the second one for 1 or 2 extras, for a next gain of 5 turns of using that improvement.

I agree on using multiple workers, but mostly late game. Early on the optimum is to simultaneously develop several cities to build/connect key resouces, and it's more efficient to connect three resources on turn 9 than to connect one on turn 3, spend several turns moving, and then the second on turn 9. The key governor in early city development is that your young cities simply can't use a lot of worked tiles. Multiworker improvements work better when you're upgrading with technology advances (windmills, watermills, lumbermills, railroads). In this case a mature city really can use all of the new improvements all at once, and the timing advantage is real.

I wouldn't say "late" game. I start grouping them whenever I begin feeling annoyed at giving all of them orders.

Early on I micromanage just about everything.

5-10 cities later and I start slacking