The very basics of micromanagement

Ronald

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Lately I started to become interested in the issue of micromanagement. Since I could not find an easy summery, I decided to write down everything I know about the basics. Hopefully others will add their findings here as well.

One of the built in features of civ3 is, that everything produced more than needed for the goal is spoiled.
For an example: every science beaker produced more than needed for the next tech advance is lost, every shield produced more than needed for the next unit or city improvement in this city is lost and every food produced more than needed for the next city growth is lost as well.

Especially at the start when we have very limited resources, every lost shield, food and science beaker counts.

Now that’s when micromanagement starts:

1 Science beakers
That is the easiest one and documented in several other threads, but since it is for me the first step to micromanagement, I am going to include it here as well:
Whenever you come to be just one step away to researching the next tech, go to the city adviser and look at the science slider. Very often you can reduce science by several 10 percents and still finish the tech in the next turn, earning considerably more money.

2 Shields
Also every shield produced more than needed is wasted. As an extreme example: Your city produces 6 shields. To produce a spearman, 20 shields are needed. After 3 turns, already 18 shields are produced, if you do nothing else, with the next turn 4 shield are wasted (you produce 6, 2 are needed to finish the spearman, 4 are wasted)
The easiest thing to do, is to check every city just the turn before it produces something. But you will find, that at that moment you have already rather limited choices remaining.
I found for me, that good results can be achieved when you check every city which is two turns away of producing something.
You can either change to tiles with less shields but more food or more commerce production, if this is not possible, you can at least make one specialist for additional science or money.
Additionally you can check if another city which could use this tile would profit from it.

3 Food
Every city needs a certain amount of excess food to grow (20 up to size 7). Every food produced more than twenty is lost. Same example as above: You have a wonderful city with lots of excess food: +6 After 3 turns, it has already produced 18 of the required 20. If you don’t change anything the last turn, again, 4 food are wasted.
As mentioned above, in the last turn your choices might be limited, so again, my advice is to check every city two turns before it grows for potential waste.
Now you can either switch to tiles with more shields or make a specialist and of course you can check any other city which would be able to use this tile if it can profit from this tile.

Special case: Granaries
There is a best and a worst turn to finish a granary in a city:
The best turn is the turn before the city grows. You get the granary. The next turn the city grows and your granary is already half full.
The worst turn is the turn after a city has grown. Then your granary starts empty.

Micromanaging like described above becomes quite time consuming when you have already a lot of cities. But at the start, when it really makes the most difference, it can be done in a very reasonable time. (Lets say the first 80 to 100 turns)

In the later stages of a game, optimizing production can become a very important issue, You have enough income, but not enough to buy everything the first or second turn:
Let’s again start with an example: You want to build a unit that needs 100 shields and you city produces 24 a turn
If you do nothing, the unit is ready after 5 turns and you wasted 20 shields.
An alternative would be: After two turns (48 shields produced), switch to a unit which costs 60 shields, hurry it for little money, switch back to the original. This is finished after 2 more turns with only 8 shields wasted.
You get the idea I think.

Comments and additional easy micromanagement tips are very welcome.

Ronald
 
Originally posted by Ronald
1 Science beakers
That is the easiest one and documented in several other threads, but since it is for me the first step to micromanagement, I am going to include it here as well:
Whenever you come to be just one step away to researching the next tech, go to the city adviser and look at the science slider. Very often you can reduce science by several 10 percents and still finish the tech in the next turn, earning considerably more money.

I usually do it when I come to two turns away to finish researching the next tech. Some times, when your empire has a lot of libraries and universities, even if you turn the slider down to zero %, you would still be able to discover the next tech by the next turn. Therefore, by adjusting it two turns before then 1 turn before the next tech, you would get the optimal result.

Edit: Here is an example: What if you need only 5% to finish the next tech by the next turn? Since the slider doesn't allow us to set at 5%, we would be loosing 5% of income. Therefore, it would be best if we adjust the slider 2 turns before finishing the next tech.;)
 
Originally posted by Moonsinger


I usually do it when I come to two turns away to finish researching the next tech. Some times, when your empire has a lot of libraries and universities, even if you turn the slider down to zero %, you would still be able to discover the next tech by the next turn. Therefore, by adjusting it two turns before then 1 turn before the next tech, you would get the optimal result.

Edit: Here is an example: What if you need only 5% to finish the next turn in the next turn? Since the slider doesn't allow us to set at 5%, we would be loosing 5% of income. Therefore, it would be best if we adjust the slider 2 turns before finishing the next tech.;)

Yes, you are right, that can happen in the later stages of the game. It happens when you either build a lot of libraries and/or universities during the last few turns ar when you have a lot of specialists/scientists around.
In this stage I also check my science slider 2 turns before finishing the tech.

Ronald
 
Originally posted by Moonsinger


I usually do it when I come to two turns away to finish researching the next tech. Some times, when your empire has a lot of libraries and universities, even if you turn the slider down to zero %, you would still be able to discover the next tech by the next turn. Therefore, by adjusting it two turns before then 1 turn before the next tech, you would get the optimal result.

Edit: Here is an example: What if you need only 5% to finish the next tech by the next turn? Since the slider doesn't allow us to set at 5%, we would be loosing 5% of income. Therefore, it would be best if we adjust the slider 2 turns before finishing the next tech.;)

With science at 0%, you could only possibly get the tech the next turn if you have a scientist (or scientists) somewhere. With no scientists, you can't possibly get any beakers no matter how many libraries or universities you have.

If you really want to micromanage for science, then use Grey Fox's tech calculator and record how much you devote towards the tech each and every turn by using the top left of the F1 screen (scientists don't show up here, so you have to manually count them up). You might find that when it says you have 2 turns remaining, that you only needed 1 more beaker to get the tech the next turn and a little bit of micromanaging can accomplish this. In the first 20 or so turns, changing the science meter will only change the science output by 1 gold, but later on when you have a few more cities, there can be a 5-10+ beakers (and increasingly more as the game progresses) between setting science at 10% or 20%. I know that in a few QSC's (at 1000 B.C.) there would be like a 15-20+ gold/beaker difference in just a 10% difference in what the meters are set at for my games.

And late in the game there is that magic 50% mark. At 50% or above all those ultra corrupt cities you have will devote their 1 gold piece to either tax or science depending on what you are emphasizing. When you have hundreds of these, you could be wasting 100's of beakers if you were only a couple beakers short when you had science at 40%.

You can either change to tiles with less shields but more food or more commerce production, if this is not possible, you can at least make one specialist for additional science or money.

I'd be careful about this one. You will always lose food by making a specialist, since he is eating your food, but not going to help his fellow man farming in the fields (stunts/slows your growth). If the food really isn't needed or you have happiness problems, then that is a different story of course.

The worst turn is the turn after a city has grown. Then your granary starts empty.

The same turn you grow is the worst (empty granary). The turn after you grow, then you would have just 2 food in there, but that is better than nothing. Maybe the same turn is what you meant, we just aren't agreeing on how it should be worded.

In the later stages of a game, optimizing production can become a very important issue, You have enough income, but not enough to buy everything the first or second turn:
Let’s again start with an example: You want to build a unit that needs 100 shields and you city produces 24 a turn
If you do nothing, the unit is ready after 5 turns and you wasted 20 shields.
An alternative would be: After two turns (48 shields produced), switch to a unit which costs 60 shields, hurry it for little money, switch back to the original. This is finished after 2 more turns with only 8 shields wasted.
You get the idea I think.

First, I would do my best to see if that city couldn't be micromanaged (by tile assignments/worker jobs) to produce just 1 more shield/turn for an even 25 shields/turn. A multiple of 10 shields is best (10, 20, 30, etc.), since every single thing you can build in the game is a multiple of 10 shields.

But, yeah, short-rushing (I think that is the slang term for it) can be beneficial. This is where you do some math and see if you can't build a few shields, rush something cheap, then switch back to the original item, so for just a little gold you prevented some shield wastage. This is too much for me, though, as by the time I get to a gold-rushing goverment I have too many cities. People should count shields if they plan on doing any pop-rushes, though.

Comments and additional easy micromanagement tips are very welcome.

Watching for when workers will complete tasks and assign citizens to that tile beforehand. This is easiest and most accurate when you have one worker assigned to a tile. Multiple workers (a stack of workers doing something) will confuse things, if you don't have the precise number of workers that are needed. Just click on the worker and if it says he will complete the task in 1 turn, then you will get the benefit of the tile improvement in between turns if you already have a citizen assigned to that tile.

When you end your turn, the computer then processing the workers assignments (completes irrigation/mine/road), then figures your commerce, then figures food and shields. So in some situations you may have been having your citizen working a different tile because it picked up another shield or 1 gold, but as soon as the worker completed the task you wanted to switch to that new and improved tile. If you switched to it just before the worker improves the tile, you get the benefit of that tile.

Micromanaging combined with ICS (not extreme ICS, but some overlap to allow some cities to share a few good tiles) can be very powerful, as when you realize you don't need a certain tile (due to wastage), another city can pick up that powerful tile for a turn or two. But micromanaging ICS can be :wallbash:.
 
Originally posted by Bamspeedy
With science at 0%, you could only possibly get the tech the next turn if you have a scientist (or scientists) somewhere. With no scientists, you can't possibly get any beakers no matter how many libraries or universities you have.

Yes, you are right about that. The library, university, lab and certain Great Wonder would add bonus to the number of beakers that city produce (not by scientist). Basically, what I was trying to say is that 0% may not be enough to discover the tech by the next turn and 10% may be too much; therefore, we need to adjust the slider at least two turns before the discovery of the tech to get an optimal result. Of course, like you said, you could just manually count the number of beakers but I don't see myself doing that any time soon.;)
 
Originally posted by Bamspeedy


Watching for when workers will complete tasks and assign citizens to that tile beforehand. This is easiest and most accurate when you have one worker assigned to a tile. Multiple workers (a stack of workers doing something) will confuse things, if you don't have the precise number of workers that are needed. Just click on the worker and if it says he will complete the task in 1 turn, then you will get the benefit of the tile improvement in between turns if you already have a citizen assigned to that tile.

When you end your turn, the computer then processing the workers assignments (completes irrigation/mine/road), then figures your commerce, then figures food and shields. So in some situations you may have been having your citizen working a different tile because it picked up another shield or 1 gold, but as soon as the worker completed the task you wanted to switch to that new and improved tile. If you switched to it just before the worker improves the tile, you get the benefit of that tile.


This is one of the most important things I've picked up in the last couple months, mostly on my own. From reading posts by some players (even more advanced players) it seems to be not well known. This is especially important when hooking up luxuries. If you have a city that just grew and now is unhappy (say 1c, 1u), and you have a worker that has one turn left to hook up a luxury, the luxury will be hooked up BEFORE the unhappiness check. This means you don't have to adjust the slider before ending the turn.

As for multiple workers, it can be confusing, especially with foreign workers, and if you are industrious even more difficult. Here's what I've found. Number of turns to complete is divided evenly between workers. I count time to finish an improvement with foreign worker speed and then count a native worker as 2 foreign workers. So a road takes 6 turns to complete (non-industrious). A native worker will finish in 3 turns as will 2 foreign workers. 3 foreign workers or 1 native plus 1 foreign worker will finish in 2 turns, etc. If a native worker starts a road and in the same turn a second native moves onto that tile, starting a road on the next turn, it will finish at the end of that turn. (1 native on first turn plus 2 natives on 2nd turn = 3 native turns).

If you want to get really fancy (and I have been in the early game lately) you can avoid wasting worker turns by using foreign workers with your native workers. With an industrious civ Times are cut in half, but rounded up. For instance a road only takes 3 turns for a foreign worker, but 1.5 turns for native, since this rounds up to 2 you lose half a worker turn using natives to build roads. If I can spare them I like to send a native and a foreigner to build roads. They can finish in one turn. Speeding up a mine runs into the same problem. 3 turns for a native worker, only drops to two turns if you use 2 natives (should be 1.5) wasting another half a turn each. So using a native and foreigner is less wasteful.

You can also avoid losing partial turns by having one of multiple workers stop working and do something else when they would be wasting a turn otherwise. This will only work if the tile in questions is connected (either by road or rail), or you plan on roading an adjacent tile next. Take the previous example of 2 native workers mining a tile. If they start at the same time it will take two turns. After the first turn you only need one of them to finish. So activate one of the workers allowing him to move to another tile to start working. The mine will still finish in 1 turn.
 
Originally posted by Xevious
With an industrious civ Times are cut in half, but rounded up. For instance a road only takes 3 turns for a foreign worker, but 1.5 turns for native, since this rounds up to 2 you lose half a worker turn using natives to build roads. If I can spare them I like to send a native and a foreigner to build roads. They can finish in one turn.
It is more efficient so send the slave on ahead to build the road, and then have the native worker move there without losing a turn to do the mining or irrigating.
 
I have to agree with you guys that proper worker management can make a real difference, especially in the early game.

Knowing the basic "cost" of improvements to the various terrain types allows for much better planning of worker tasks and deciding which "work gang" sizes are most appropriate.


regards

Ted

Edited because I hit submit instead of preview :)
 
Originally posted by Xevious

You can also avoid losing partial turns by having one of multiple workers stop working and do something else when they would be wasting a turn otherwise. This will only work if the tile in questions is connected (either by road or rail), or you plan on roading an adjacent tile next. Take the previous example of 2 native workers mining a tile. If they start at the same time it will take two turns. After the first turn you only need one of them to finish. So activate one of the workers allowing him to move to another tile to start working. The mine will still finish in 1 turn.

Will not work. You will lose all the previous investment from the worker that you activated.
 
Hi Qitai,

Since I saw that you read this little thread, I was curious if you could give us some insights into your remarkable micromanagment capabilities.

I have read your post in the spoiler thread of gotm20. You mentioned that you managed to set up a 4 turn warrior plus settler factory. I have never thought that this is possible and still can't exactly figure out the complete sequence. Maybe you could explain that awesome piece of thought in more details for us.

Thanks in advance

Ronald
 
Which part of the post over there isn't clear? I thought I have outline the process quite well. Here is how I micro manage

Fundamentals
(1) Have city radius overlap, especially bonus food tiles. This allows better combination of tile usage.
(2) Emphasize production in all cities to be micromanage - you want the additional shield on growth.

Food - Use these numbers for excess food - 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10. Keep a record of cities that are going to grow next trun. And check them. Change the worked tiles so you get the numbers above. A forgotton city that the governer choose to work the forest reducing 10 food to 9 food is a waste of 7 food resource!!

Shield - try to use divisor of the target production or at least a number that does not waste too much shield. If necessary, produce the first item will excess food and on the second item, go negative food (if you have no intention to grow). A simple way to do this without maths is just test reducing the number of shield and see if the turns to completion is the same.

And for what I have done in GOTM20, you need advance micromanagement. You need to
(1) do a projection of the number of shields and food you are going to have in the next 2-5 turns and plan ahead. The simplest way to do this is add the excess food and shield together and multiply by number of turns.
(2) Plan how you are going to balance between food and shield.

The details are in GOTM20 spoiler 1. And In fact, I can better myself in that game. Post-mortem review shows that a 3 turn settler factory is possible. I can show you how to do it if you are interested.

Additional
Workers - work on tiles you plan to use within the next 10 turns - don't work on it if you have no plans to use it.
 
HI Qitai,

Of course I'm interested in a 3 turn settler factory. How can you do that?

best regards,

Ronald
 
Had posted it in Spoiler #1 of GOTM20. Find it there. If you want I can post it here too. But those not playing GOTM20 would be total lost.
 
I'll never be a top class CivIII player because I find all the micromanagement rather dull. I'll have to give it a try and see if the effect of more efficient gaming and better games is enough to balance the drudgery.
 
Bear in mind that you only need to MM your productive "core" towns and that it's in the early game that the most benefit is realised.

So it's not really that dull :)


regards

Ted
 
Just to add to the list of tricks that I started using lately after someone mention it in the forum.

Use ctrl-R instead of R if you expect to finish roading in partial turns. This will save the some worker turns. Grip is you need to remember that the worker is under ctrl-R or it has 2/3 movement left if you forget. The gist of this trick is that ctrl-R finishes their work during the turn but a simple R is resolved only at the end of the turn cycle and thus wasting some worker turns.
 
With science at 0%, you could only possibly get the tech the next turn if you have a scientist (or scientists) somewhere. With no scientists, you can't possibly get any beakers no matter how many libraries or universities you have.


not true with the slider at zero you can still produce beakers without scientists, if late in the game your income is quite large it has to round up numbers when dividing out the gold, science might recieve half a percent which could be 1 or 2 gold
 
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