Hello forumers!

Welcome to a new mini-series, my first since the AP Gauntlets. This is a set of games open to the forums to participate in with a spot in my signature on the line ;).

The name of the series is:

THE AUTOMATON

I have a number of purposes for hosting this series:

- I seem to shadow games faster than they come out
- I need to build my guide to speed civving
- I'd like to show how worker automation can be made to go from horrible to average, or at least less horrible

The Rules:

- Workers have to be automated the entire game. Not a single turn of worker micro!
- It is illegal to disable the governor.

Anything else goes!

For game one, we pick a leader that is...not so good for this:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0001.jpg

And a start that...possibly could be slightly better:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

But hey! It's "only" a monarch game. How hard could it be :rolleyes:? Later games will go up if it's too easy!

Notes:

- I've decided that I'll extend an offer - the fastest posted play time for each game will get mention in my signature.
- This is an ongoing series. The schedule? When I run out of games I feel like/can shadow! Haha!

203677

Ha, this totally cracks me up. I might have to have a go at it this weekend. I can't wait until my workers farm over my forests :lol:

Ha, this totally cracks me up. I might have to have a go at it this weekend. I can't wait until my workers farm over my forests :lol:

I should be merciful and offer a hint ;).

The governor affects what improvements workers create!

Yeah, the governor isn't terrible. And I think there is a setting so that workers will leave forests. I have never looked into it because I never automate my workers. I'll have to look into it if I go for this :p

Kind of reminds me of Slobberin Bear's George Dubya RPC. By "it's illegal to disable the governor," do you mean we CAN or CANNOT tell the governor what the city is to emphasize?

This is not done yet??? whats the hold up?

1 AD built 12 cities, 15 workers, no defense to speak of.
1943 I just looked at save and declared it won, 1943 HA HA speed civ'ing at its best

time spent 5 minutes writing this up :lol:, just declared won at start, movecd onto next game in series. I've just won that game as well

@ TMIT Sorry light hearted dig at you, I have lots of time to waste, so I take my time, look forward to the series

Options are, Workers start automated, automated workers leave improvements, Automated workers leave forests.203686

This is not done yet??? whats the hold up?

I have to write the summary! That's what!

I'm putting my effort in spoilers. In part, because it fits my shadow spam play, but mostly because I don't want to ruin it for my shadows. Although the fastest time goes into my sig, that doesn't count me. Still, I'll be impressed if someone beats my time here ;).

To 1 AD:

In true speed fashion, we settle in place without moving anything, instantly!

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0000-1.jpg

City is set to emphasize commerce for most of the game. No worker boxes checked - they'll chop and they'll over-ride old improvements, if city governors allow that.

Lose a scouting warrior.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0001-1.jpg

We have a close neighbor and not good amounts of land!

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg

Second city. It runs scientists but emphasizes hammers. Note, this is the only city I place on the eastern side, and it happens to be a hill city. Wonder why...

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg

More cities

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0004.jpg

I'm a king

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0005.jpg

Snag a barb city. I can settle the stone for #6.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0006.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0007.jpg

Hmmm. Expected? He had enough on his hands for a while. The stack:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0008.jpg

Not gonna cut it vs 5 hill archers.

Other side of empire at 1 AD

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0009.jpg

To 1100 AD

His stack fails as expected

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0010.jpg

Trades

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0011.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0012.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0013.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0014.jpg

Hannibal gave me construction for peace. I went to attack one of his cities but his garrisons were a bit tough so I just quit on the war. He's a backward heathen, I will kill him later.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0015.jpg

And liberalism. Sank a bulb into education to speed things up marginally.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0016.jpg

Fun fun fun, keep it coming. And report the strange stuff the workers are doing if you can.

To 1892 UN victory

Waypoint to border city, near rifling.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0017.jpg

Grab some island cities

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0018.jpg

Prep a dogpile

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0019.jpg

Gogogo

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0020.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0021.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0022.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0023.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0024.jpg

Spies drop D since rifles are annoying.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0025.jpg

Death.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0026.jpg

I am near #1 in pop but not quite. MM and Ram both pushing culture wins. I decide to just UN it since ram built the UN (didn't matter who built it if I get #1 pop in this game). I move in on SB

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0028.jpg

Well, more like bait his stack into japanese territory then go.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0029.jpg

Wha bam.

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/1892UN0000.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0030.jpg

Let's see how this happened:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0034.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0031.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0032.jpg

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/themelnteam/Autowin%201/Civ4ScreenShot0033.jpg

Fun fun fun, keep it coming. And report the strange stuff the workers are doing if you can.

Hmmm, TBH I wasn't paying attention to them :eek:. Early on they stuck cottages in hammer cities, but later in the game once the workshops were halfway ok improvements the cottages were replaced. Capitol was obviously commerce, most other cities were hammer. I forced some specs (which can be done leaving the governor on) to get my scientists, but mostly played this like a cottage game. It's a hard-ish start and would probably be murder on higher levels.

Kind of reminds me of Slobberin Bear's George Dubya RPC. By "it's illegal to disable the governor," do you mean we CAN or CANNOT tell the governor what the city is to emphasize?

You can tell the governor to emphasize anything. You just can't turn it off by switching tiles yourself. Emphasizing isn't disabling :lol:.

In fact, using emphasize in this series might wind up being crucial, especially later when I kick it to EMP and possibly IMM. Workers will seriously build improvements based on what the governor's ordered to do. Once the full line of improvements is open, they're not even bad at it, which makes the default AI auto workers without emphasize all the more pitiful...

A quick report to 600 BC. Doubt I'm gonna finish though: my empire is FUBAR thanks to these idiot workers.

I should not have found that copper near Hannibal's borders. I'm Toku, with copper and 2 levels beneath my skill, so what do I do?

AXERUUUUUUSH!!!

Hannibal is six feet underground now.

But nevertheless.... I want to MICRO my start and axerushes, dammit. My workers are acting like total twits as are the city governors. I don't think this is a very fun way to play. I have 13 minutes on the clock now, and an empire that would already have been far ahead of everyone were it not that I'm the only sane man in there.

Seems like an interesting little idea this one. I haven't picked up civ for a few weeks now so it might be time to do a quick game this weekend. Now, on automation, I guess I'd need to uncheck "leave forests" and "old improvements" for auto workers, else there'll not be much improvement going on at all with all that forest around Kyoto. As I understand it you're not even allowed to tell a worker to chop a forest for a speedbuild.

On specialists, for true automation you shouldn't be allowed to set specialist either but trust the governor to do it for you. who can say lot's of great spies with that setup... ;)

On specialists, for true automation you shouldn't be allowed to set specialist either but trust the governor to do it for you. who can say lot's of great spies with that setup...

Yeah, I was wondering about specialists. If I go for this I will just set emphasize food and emphasize great people. This will likely generate a lot of GSpies, which means emphasizing aspects of an EE.

Interesting concept; I may just start doing that for my normal offline games. :)

On specialists, for true automation you shouldn't be allowed to set specialist either but trust the governor to do it for you. who can say lot's of great spies with that setup...

I'm deliberately allowing things like this in the rules. The rules are set because they encourage speed play, not because I'm trying to make it extra hard on myself or other participants.

For specialists, you can run as many as you want, just remember the governor has to stay on. If you don't like spies, by the way, you can keep the governor from running any specialists at all using emphasize food, or you can force assign something like a scientist or merchant, and that will be the only type the governor will assign.

I'm seriously thinking about doing another one of these on monarch, but running PARCS/SE. I think if I did that and showed the cities it would tell a lot about how the governor and workers interact.

Fun concept, but I can't stomach automated workers.
And 1:34 is amazing...I'm happy with my average 4 hours on epic games (more when I alt-tab to write reports :rolleyes: ).

or you can force assign something like a scientist or merchant, and that will be the only type the governor will assign.


How do you do that and how do you know if you've done it?

How do you do that and how do you know if you've done it?

Assign a specialist. If he has a gold highlight around him, the governor can't assign any other specialist type. Even in my normal games, I often do this in my GP farm. I will assign a scientist, build food improvements there, put "emphasize great people" on, and then leave the city. It will grow and assign specialists while working all your food specials. It tends not to work farms though, so if you want it to work farms until the pop has grown more also emphasize food for a bit.

Is it possible to do this with more than one kind of specialist, e.g. merchants and priests at the same time?

Is it possible to do this with more than one kind of specialist, e.g. merchants and priests at the same time?

Yes, highlight one of each, and they will try to assign them in that ratio. So, if you get the gold highlight around a scientist and an engineer, when it assigns, them, it will make sure they're as even as they get (so if you only have 2 engineer spots but have 6 specialists, it will assign the 2 engineers and 4 scientists, if it can). I use this all the time. Especially good when you have your GP farm that has like 12 specialists in it. Say I want to switch from scientists to merchants - I just have to unclick on scientist and click on one merchant, and then they all switch over.

You guys keep saying "if it has a gold highlight around it". How do you do that

You guys keep saying "if it has a gold highlight around it". How do you do that

You assign the specialist with the governor on, when it wouldn't otherwise run one.

Interestingly enough, and somewhat embarrassingly . . . this has improved my game.

It has improved it because I'm not a number-cruncher -- I can't be bothered to micromanage. Since the emphasize buttons determine what a worker builds, the game itself will often micromanage the growth and hammer counts FOR me. The workers themselves I have yet to catch making an improvement that I did not have in mind for the city's job unless there were no valid improvements of that type to be made. In both the games I've tried with this, my economy's been in a stronger position because the emphasize buttons are doing the math I could never be bothered to do in relation to growth.

My typical tactic for, say, a commerce/cottage city (keeping in mind that I avoid Slavery) is to turn on emphasize growth/production while building necessary infrastructure and then switching to emphasize commerce once I've got that up. I'm fairly certain I'm squeezing more early hammers out of my military cities than I could do controlling the workers on my own, and I think I'm even shaving turns off of early wonders.

I have yet to see the Workers make completely dumb decisions if the proper emphasize buttons are chosen. In fact, if you're like me and don't do growth math, they might make better decisions than you would.

On a related note, I've enabled the option to make sure that Workers can't chop forests (I like the early health and happiness, and combined with my anti-Slavery policy ensures the AI has a good production bonus over me at the beginning), but the workers will still chop forests to:

1) Access a special resource (mainly Calendar resources); and
2) Irrigate when necessary.

Which was one of the worries I had at the start of this.

Pretty cool.

When it's 1:34 on the clock, I'm usually in 1000BC, creating dotmap and MM chops :lol:
I'm more with Paulus, it would drive me nuts if the game would build and work cottages in my hammer cities.
Still I learned something about forcing specs, but these days I usually catch unwanted spies thanks to the growth reminders from BUG.
And your speed thread is very welcome, I now usually trust those waypoints late game, most of the time :mischief:

I knew the workers would chop to get to resources, but they'll really chop to irrigate too? That's cool. I mainly just don't want them chopping those friggin' plains until later in the game. Which brings me to a couple of questions:

1. Can we liberally play with the worker auto options like leave improvements, leave forests, etc? I mean can we flip back and forth if we want to for some reason?

2. What's more efficient-emphasizing multiple things, like hammers AND food, or just emphasizing one thing, like hammers for a unit city? So far I've been just using one button for the most part, and not really using any until the city is at or near it's cap.

3. Any rules about replays? I've restarted this one a couple of times already, just trying to get a feel for what my workers are doing. It's really not that terrible, but I do hate waiting for them to hook my cities up.

I knew the workers would chop to get to resources, but they'll really chop to irrigate too? That's cool. I mainly just don't want them chopping those friggin' plains until later in the game. Which brings me to a couple of questions:

1. Can we liberally play with the worker auto options like leave improvements, leave forests, etc? I mean can we flip back and forth if we want to for some reason?

2. What's more efficient-emphasizing multiple things, like hammers AND food, or just emphasizing one thing, like hammers for a unit city? So far I've been just using one button for the most part, and not really using any until the city is at or near it's cap.

3. Any rules about replays? I've restarted this one a couple of times already, just trying to get a feel for what my workers are doing. It's really not that terrible, but I do hate waiting for them to hook my cities up.

1. Yes. Learning to do that is part of the intent of this series.

2. Usually just one thing, especially from a worker improvement standpoint. GP farms and your commerce capitol with bureaucracy may be exceptions (food and great people/commerce). Workers do funny stuff if you emphasize multiple things.

3. Replay as much as you want. I will evaluate everyone's summaries in terms of fastest though. I'm not sure I would put someone who goes faster on his 5th try on the map than someone who was close with 1 try. I doubt participation will be at that level though, so I'll just say replay all you want. I don't have any way to enforce it anyhow :p.

Another interesting point: even if you have emphasize hammers turned on, Workers will still automatically build Forest Preserves in your National Park city (at least, they did in the last game I played).

WoW man one and a half hour 1800AD victory. That is some seriously quick game play bro, impressive. I'm not quite a Monarch skilled player but I'm going to shadow this game Sunday, ty.

I understand the governor option to be on, but is the autobuild on also, or are you picking what to build? Also on research are you selecting what the computer suggest or just picking what you want?

It'll be tough for anyone to beat your time of an hour and a half! :goodjob:

I understand the governor option to be on, but is the autobuild on also, or are you picking what to build? Also on research are you selecting what the computer suggest or just picking what you want?

It'll be tough for anyone to beat your time of an hour and a half! :goodjob:

The rules are just what they say. You don't have to have auto build on, just the citizen governor.

:lol:

Man, Photobucket hates your guts, I'm seeing "bandwith exceeded" everywhere. Maybe you could open up multiple accounts?