Sometime around 1000-1500 AD (standard map size, epic speed), I just can't handle the tedious worker management. Then I put the workers on auto and they starve my cities running specialists with workshops. :mad:

I think one of the other reasons I've tried auto is to get a feel for the mid-game improvements (workshop, watermill, etc.). I figured I could learn something from the AI. I just make sure I click the "leave forests" option so they don't chop everything in sight.

On the plus side, putting them on auto means that no stone is left unturned. If I miss a resource, the auto workers won't. Other than that, I mostly feel that the fair-to-poor worker AI is a big price to pay for my laziness in not wanting to manage the workers.

I guess I'll have to get over it and manage them myself.

To answer your question - I have never put Workers on auto in any shape or form from the time I first played Prince level having realised what damage they were doing to my game at Noble level.

I feel that players looking for Strategies and Tips in this forum in order to improve their gameplay should be advised to steer clear of Worker automation. Automated workers make a lot of mistakes to begin with, they don't understand city specialisation, and they don't understand your grand strategy. I'm not even sure if they understand the need to set pathways for chain-irrigation (but I suspect that they don't). They also have an annoying habit of wanting to build useless roads on tiles where Barbarians roam or a war is about to be declared.

'Sure' - manually controlling Workers has its potential pitfalls - you may set some to sleep in cities when there is a war going on, and forget about them when 'the coast is clear' - or you miss a border pop that allows for a new resource tile to be worked, etc. But all this is not worth imho the dangers of the automated worker. Tedious? Perhaps a little, but if players find directing Workers around to be intolerably tedious, then Civ might not be the right game for them.

While I'm at it, I'm not a big fan of grouping Workers beyond groups of two. It's been elsewhere noted that most Worker actions take an 'even' number of turns to complete, so pairing them up is arguably a bit of a time saver, but more than twos, and you run the risk of wasted Worker turns.

While I'm at it, I'm not a big fan of grouping Workers beyond groups of two. It's been elsewhere noted that most Worker actions take an 'even' number of turns to complete, so pairing them up is arguably a bit of a time saver, but more than twos, and you run the risk of wasted Worker turns.

I used to only pair in 2 also, but then I noticed that on epic speed which I normally play on a road takes 3 turns to build... So I've learned to not group workers, but I will still run them together, I just issue orders to them seperately. So for example, if I have 2 workers build a road, on the 2nd turn 1 worker will be busy and 1 will be free to move ahead and start the next road/improvement.

Thorban,

OK - thanks for that! I tend to play my games on 'normal' speed, so that's good to know. :)

Cam - do you feel the same about automating trade routes? They won't build anything on an improved tile and won't touch anything without a specific resource on it (so you don't have to worry about them plowing over your farms for workshops in your GPF or poorly chaining farms and stuff). They'll just build roads and improve that random resource tile that you got from a border pop or when the tech is unlocked to improve it.

AnaNg,

Frankly I do, but less so! ;)

I think that their only 'saving grace' is exactly as you suggest - they pick up the occasional fringe undeveloped resource tile where the semi-intoxicated player may not be so quick on the uptake :shifty: :lol:.

Putting roads 'all over the shop' is possibly the lowest priority activity for a Worker to perform in that 'Wow!' you might pop an Oil tile somewhere in a Desert in some far flung part of your empire and at least you can get your Workers there to build a Well fairly quickly.

Conversely, my early experience with getting Railroad is that Automated 'Trade Network' Workers will not focus on Quarries, Mines and Lumbermills in your :hammers:-heavy cities as manually managed Workers should. They just want to connect the cities as quickly as possible without regard for the cities' respective roles or the :hammers: bonus from the Railroad improvement.

Because you've constrained their 'job specifications' - they won't make 'good' enhancements, e.g. building Workshops and Windmills in State Property. Your empire is dynamic and your use of your terrain should also be dynamic, keeping up with new technologies, specialisation balance, and civics. Constraining Workers to the 'Trade Network' option seems to me to limit their potential.

Now - this was all my experience when on Vanilla - things may have changed with Warlords and/or BtS.

I find auto useful only for hooking up resources after I've done all the improvements necessary for my cities. They're great for when you are being sabotaged as they immediately go and hook up the resource. For improving your cities, not so much.

I put mine on auto after I have developed my cities and can't really think of anything else for them to do.

I very rarely automate my workers, even with big empires. As has been said, at first I want to improve my cities in MY order of preferences. Then the road network has a purpose, linking cities, setting up paths for future wars, etc. I might build extra roads, but only when I'm done with the rest. Next stop, railroads, are again something to be built with a plan: mines, quarries & lumbermills first, production cities first, also paths for military troops to the war-front or to loading sites. Once I'm done with all that I might consider automating them to build a road network, but only if I'm not at war. It's too risky to let the stupid worker wander around at the border.

About pairing up in groups of more than 2, there are several cases in which I do this:
- linking a strategic resource (usually a problem with Oil, or Coal under a forest) when I want it available as soon as possible
- building lumbermills in a high production city especially if it has something important to build
- changing a city's overall purpose, like building watermills and workshops when in State Property
- developing a newly conquered city after the war is over; I might pillage the resource tiles during the war, and I want to rebuild it fast in order to get the infrastructure up

That's about all the cases I can think of right now.

After I learn railroad, and have set up my initial network of railroads (express routes throughout my empire, and on mines/lumbermills in my ironworks and military build cities) I will often put several on 'N': so that they finish my railroading all squares. It depends a little bit on how the game is going and how obsessive I'm feeling. Sometimes I will wait a long time before doing this, other times a bit earlier.

I NEVER put them on any other sort of auto.

Rather than group my workers, I'll do the same as thorban. It's a bit of a pain, but I'm too anal retentive to give up worker turns. Civ has very poor User Interface for selecting/deselecting/grouped actions, which is unfortunate. I figure that my games take about 5 or 10% longer because of this. It's especially noticeable with workers, and bombers/siege weapons.

Civ has very poor User Interface for selecting/deselecting/grouped actions, which is unfortunate. I figure that my games take about 5 or 10% longer because of this. It's especially noticeable with workers, and bombers/siege weapons.

This is worthy of its own thread ... BTS has somehow messed up the Cntrl/Alt lclick selection method, essentially so you can't deselect like you were able to in Vanilla/Warlords.

The only time I ever put workers on any auto aspect is to build a trade route, which they did very well in warlords and vanilla. In BTS this option leads tehm to build other improvements once they are done with the routes which can be disasterous (I have caught workers building workshops ontop of towns!!). Now I make my ownt rade routes, then park the workers in thier cities until needs.

Tedious? Yes very much so especially on teh huge/marathon games I play. But worth it to me.

OH NO! That's terrible to hear Madscientist! That's it, I'm not getting BTS.

Cam, I agree they're largely inefficient at the whole railroad thing.

I'll often (mid-game or later when I have some to spare usually after taking that city with 4-5 workers hanging about in it) set one to auto trade route just to pick up anything that I missed.

If he wanders too close to the action, well, it's just one likely dumb worker that was lost. But usually I manage workers inside city crosses myself. That goes for improving tiles as well as laying railroads for lumbermills and such.

And like illram said, they're good for the random pillage/sabotage scenario on a resource.

Once I researched Railroads, I used to put them on autopilot in the Vanilla version, because there was a setting that would have them leave existing farms, towns, etc. alone so they would focus on upgrading roads and then go sleep in the cities. That option seems to have disappeared in Warlords.

No, it's still in warlords.

"Automated workers leave old improvements" on the Options->Game tab.

I also stopped automating my Workers a while back after noticing how inept and inefficient they are.

Most peculiar is when they build a railroad on one tile, move 12 tiles away and build another then return to their starting location to continue the link, bouncing all over the map instead of steadily building one continuous link. :confused:

Most annoying is when they railroad the Town instead of the Mine right next to it. :mad:

It's tedious but well worth the extra time to ensure you don't have to play clean up crew later.

I used to only pair in 2 also, but then I noticed that on epic speed which I normally play on a road takes 3 turns to build... So I've learned to not group workers, but I will still run them together, I just issue orders to them seperately. So for example, if I have 2 workers build a road, on the 2nd turn 1 worker will be busy and 1 will be free to move ahead and start the next road/improvement.

:agree:

Group your Workers based on the types of improvements they're building.

Workers building Roads should be in groups of 1 or 3.

This also applies to any other odd-valued turn calculations. Only 1 Worker or an amount of Workers equal to that of the number of turns should be used.

It takes 1 Worker 3 turns to build a Road (3 Worker turns).
It takes 2 Workers 2 turns to build a Road (4 Worker turns).
It takes 3 Workers 1 turn to build a Road (3 Worker turns).

Workers building Mines should be in groups of 1, 2, 3 or 6.

This also applies to any other even-valued turn calculations. Any multiple of the number of turns it takes to build the improvement can be used (so in the case of a 10-turn Flood Plain Farm; 1, 2, 5 or 10 Workers should be used).

It takes 1 Worker 6 turns to build a Mine (6 Worker turns).
It takes 2 Workers 3 turns to build a Mine (6 Worker turns).
It takes 3 Workers 2 turns to build a Mine (6 Worker turns).
It takes 4 Workers 2 turns to build a Mine (8 Worker turns).
It takes 5 Workers 2 turns to build a Mine (10 Worker turns).
It takes 6 Workers 1 turn to build a Mine (6 Worker turns).
Ideally, Workers should not be grouped when improving non-roaded tiles.

[On a non-roaded Forest, Jungle or Hill, adding in the Worker's movement onto the tile:]

It takes 1 Worker 4 turns to build a Road (4 Worker turns).
It takes 2 Workers 3 turns to build a Road (6 Worker turns).
It takes 3 Workers 2 turn to build a Road (6 Worker turns).

It takes 1 Worker 6 turns to chop a forest (6 Worker turns).
It takes 2 Workers 4 turns to chop a forest (8 Worker turns).
It takes 3 Workers 3 turns to chop a forest (9 Worker turns).
It takes 4 Workers 3 turns to chop a forest (12 Worker turns).
It takes 5 Workers 2 turns to chop a forest (10 Worker turns).

It takes 1 Worker 7 turns to chop a jungle or build a mine (7 Worker turns).
It takes 2 Workers 4 turns to chop a jungle or build a mine (8 Worker turns).
It takes 3 Workers 3 turns to chop a jungle or build a mine (9 Worker turns).
It takes 4 Workers 3 turns to chop a jungle or build a mine (12 Worker turns).
It takes 5 Workers 3 turns to chop a jungle or build a mine (15 Worker turns).
It takes 6 Workers 2 turns to chop a jungle or build a mine (12 Worker turns).

Only trade network, only when nothing else to do, sometimes for a short period before railroads, only for railroads after all cities are connected and mines and lumbermills railed. I may still delay it if I have a probable war front to get a railroad ring at the edge of my borders with spokes so that all possible invasion points are quickly reached. Yeah, running a lot of workers is tedious, but there really isn't a choice if you want to play the game as well as possible.

I ususally manually control the workers until I finished railroading the +1 hammer tiles, and have every city connected by railroad. Then I'll automate about 2/3s of them to build trade network.

I also ran into the problem mentioned by madscientist, when every square of the empire has railroad, it start to automate and destroy my old improvements. selecting the "leave old improvement" in the options menu seemed to have cured that.

Never.

There's always something useful for them to do.

I've never tried auto-worker, but putting a scout or warrior in "explore" mode will almost always lead to their early demise. I think the A.I. scripts for your units were purposefully created to screw you.

In my 15-odd years of playing different incarnations of civ I have only automated a worker on one occasion (vanilla civ4). It lasted one turn. I will never do so again.

Ideally, Workers should not be grouped when improving non-roaded tiles.

I agree with this and here's another situation where you can save a lot of Worker turns:

Say you have a city with 3 mines. You want to put a road on each mine for faster movement and the eventual railroad. Since I play Epic, a road takes 3 turns. So you move your 3 Workers onto hill #1 and build a road. Repeat for hills 2 and 3. This has taken you 6 turns. Instead, you should move each of your 3 Workers onto a separate hill. Then they all build roads on their hill. Now all 3 roads are done in only 4 turns!

This is especially useful for clear-cutting those jungle cities. Move 1 individual Worker into each jungle and clear them all at the same time.


Oh, and I never automate Workers. If you want it done right, do it yourself. :)

No, it's still in warlords.

"Automated workers leave old improvements" on the Options->Game tab.

That is where I expected to find it! It might be in your Warlords version but, for some reason, it is not present on mine (and I do have the latest patch installed).

I automate them when i have improved every square of all my cities that im going to work, then they still do the little jobs that need to be done without me having to bother, im sure they still do things wrong and it costs me points, but meh.

I do tell them to leave old improvements and forests though, i once automated them without that and they turned all my capital's towns into farms... sad times.

That is where I expected to find it! It might be in your Warlords version but, for some reason, it is not present on mine (and I do have the latest patch installed).


You drinky-drinky when you play, don't you :D

Build trade network is useful after I have manually placed railways on everything i want them on, i let the workers have fun building countless railroads that would take me forever to do myself, I auto all of them with leave improvements turned on in the end game, as repair crews to espionage. But beyond that they are just stupid on their own. Why would I ever want a windmill.

never. i did once by accident last week, with horrifying results, related to this:

The only time I ever put workers on any auto aspect is to build a trade route, which they did very well in warlords and vanilla. In BTS this option leads tehm to build other improvements once they are done with the routes which can be disasterous (I have caught workers building workshops ontop of towns!!). Now I make my ownt rade routes, then park the workers in thier cities until needs.

the other day apparently i clicked a wrong key and a worker thought i'd told him to "auto trade route", since a sudden a forest preserve at my national park city turned into a farm :mad:! i flipped out, since even tho i never automate them i do have preserve forests and preserve old improvements checked. he should not have done that even if i had told him to auto-improve things, which i hadn't, i'd only told him (accidentally) to auto-trade-route things. what was he thinking???

i found the offender, and did the alt-backspace to cancel order on all unit types, so that if anybody else thought i'd told them to do that they'd quit too. i mean seriously, i don't even know what key to push if i DO want them to do that *giggle*.

my gosh i was upset. a freaking free specialist gone due to a misclick and then buggy AI worker logic. i didn't have LMA so i went into WB and gave myself back the forest and the preserve, that fixed that. it made me wonder tho, does the game not consider "forest preserve" an existing improvement that should be kept? i swear i had that checkbox marked. then again, it was a forest in the first place and i also had leave existing forests marked. i think the better AI messed up automated worker logic in new and freaky ways.

and don't even get me started on how it changes the tiles being worked in your cities when you adjust the slider. even when you're not using the governor. if i hand-assign the tiles, i want them to stay that way, no matter what happens afterwards. slider rearrangements, nuclear disasters, city growth, whatever, if i fired my city governor then i'm in charge and you ignore him ok? geez!!!!! oops i got myself started, clearly i need to eat lunch.

I usually don't use auto workers in single player. It can save a lot of time in Multi-player where you need focus more on the combat than worker actions. On auto they may not do the best things but at least they're not just standing around.

When I capture new territory, but I really don't care about it (i.e. I only need to hold it for the pop and land count in domination), I will have the worker automated to the nearest city.

once i hit the mid-game around 1300AD +, and I get too lazy to handle all the micro management, I usually put a few workers on auto, most often 2 on "build trade route" and 2 on "build automated improvements", I know the automated worker ai is basically retarded and they will build workshops over your towns if you have "automated workers leave old improvements" checked, and make other dumb moves like chopping forests in low health cities if you have "automated workers leave forests checked", but I ALWAYS make sure theses are both checked before I put them on auto. It does save time/hassle having 2/3rds of them on auto and then build the "important" improvements/and railroading mines with manual workers.

i use auto workers when i improve all my tiles and dont have any importan improvement to make..

You drinky-drinky when you play, don't you :D

Nope! Actually I do not. If there was some way to take a screen shot of the Options portion of the startup screen, I would post it here for you.

The only automation my workers use is networking my territory. Building roads/railroads on every tile in my borders.

Playing on lower levels under noble after you just don't care to guide them anymore . Have them auto work new citys you captured that you just dont care about . But it's nice to manage the workers in city spots you do care about . Since auto workers ain't really smart about your goals !