Non-Standard Improvements

If you insist on driving your games to completion, there will come a point at which automating workers is the simplest move to get you a quick (real-time) win. That's about the same point at which many players just declare a game "won" and move on to the next though. Whatever floats your boat; it's not like there's much in the way of "strategy" to be discussed from there anyways unless you're going for a high score (in which case, obviously, automating workers is a bad idea).

Intelligently managing workers is probably the single biggest thing you can do to boost your chances of winning, so automating them while the outcome of the game is at all in doubt is a terrible move.
 
I'm a confess worker MM-holic regarding workers but again, with all the mischief that automated workers can do ( even with leave forests and old improvements on ... have you ever tried to have a jungle NP city and automated workers at the same time ? Try it, it is ( not ) fun :p ... I also tend to keep rails to a minimum, since some late units can actually go faster by road than by rails ) the time I feel safe to automate workers is when there is nothing to do, thus I simply keep them quiet at home :D

That said, intelligent worker management is enough to put you a level up ....
 
I also tend to keep rails to a minimum, since some late units can actually go faster by road than by rails )

? It would take a movement speed of 4(x3 for engineering) to be faster on roads. I guess that might apply to choppers, never thought to test it, but it wouldn't apply to anything else in the standard game.

I'm very careful with my rail network too, but it's because I play MP. Same reason I limit roads to neighbors. Roads (instead of rails) at your borders, and only on limited tiles, means you can predict where those darn Commando spies will land. Put a few spies of your own to sleep on those tiles and you have a decent chance to catch them IBT.
 
Eh, I'd bet almost everyone automates the workers at some point in the mid-late game when all the important stuff is built already. I always do it eventually (immortal), no point in wasting time on irrelevant stuff at that point of the game. Even AZ does it in at least some of his deity videos.

With leave forests and leave old improvements on, they at least won't be actively harmful anyway.

Once I've run out of work for them to do, I like to put them on Automated Trade Routes. This speeds up movement through road spam, immediately connects any new resources that pop up, and makes sure that all my roads are upgraded to railroads within a few turns of researching the tech. It's rather nice.
 
I believe I end up using just about every improvement, at some point, if the game is going to go long enough.

In my prime production cities, the ones where I'll build ironworks, I'm often switching between farms, watermills and workshops a lot.

Commerce cities often get windmills that get converted to mines to build stuff and back to windmills.

Tundra forest gets lumbermills. Always. Unless it's my nat park, in which case they get forest preserves.

Late game improvements in tech cities may be watermills, because they start out stronger than cottages.
 
? It would take a movement speed of 4(x3 for engineering) to be faster on roads. I guess that might apply to choppers, never thought to test it, but it wouldn't apply to anything else in the standard game.

I'm very careful with my rail network too, but it's because I play MP. Same reason I limit roads to neighbors. Roads (instead of rails) at your borders, and only on limited tiles, means you can predict where those darn Commando spies will land. Put a few spies of your own to sleep on those tiles and you have a decent chance to catch them IBT.

Interesting, I'd normally road my fronts like crazy, as that way I can blast anything that comes near my front city with catapults. I guess you could only road the tiles next to your city, and restrict roads from actually touching your opponent's culture.
 
If you just keep workers with your stack, you can road any necessary tiles when the stack moves. Granted, you have to be careful about hills (unless playing India).

Handy to have 8 workers with your stack anyway. If it gets caught in the open, you can slam a fort down to keep flanking off your siege and give everyone the defense bonus.

I've been known to build an inland non-river city, not build any roads to it (so no trade network), and let it build warriors until gunpowder. Easy HR happy police.

I really wish I could pillage my own roads.
 
If you just keep workers with your stack, you can road any necessary tiles when the stack moves. Granted, you have to be careful about hills (unless playing India).

Handy to have 8 workers with your stack anyway. If it gets caught in the open, you can slam a fort down to keep flanking off your siege and give everyone the defense bonus.

I've been known to build an inland non-river city, not build any roads to it (so no trade network), and let it build warriors until gunpowder. Easy HR happy police.

I really wish I could pillage my own roads.

Forts in enemy territory don't help you, AFAIK. Maybe you still get the archery units to give you their bonus? Even so, the enemy tends to have city raider promos, so that would often backfire.

Still, it's an interesting idea. Does it really keep your siege from getting flanked?

Are you sure that you can't pillage your own roads? From what I remember, you can pillage them after you pillage any improvements on top of it. If nothing else, you can always pillage roads outside of your culture borders--even if you create them in the first place.
 
Nope, you can't pillage roads that your culture controls.

Forts in enemy territory don't give defence bonuses. However, will they proc the City Raider effect, and will they inactivate Siege Flanking (as cities prevent Siege from being flanked)? I really want to find out. This calls for a world-builder test when I get home.
 
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Forts in enemy territory don't give defence bonuses. However, will they proc the City Raider effect, and will they inactivate Siege Flanking (as cities prevent Siege from being flanked)? I really want to find out. This calls for a world-builder test when I get home.

no need to, from the war academy:

Forts in enemy territory do not provide any benefit to you, not even the +25% defense bonus. To you, the enemy fort may as well not exist unless the enemy is using it! Equally, forts in your territory cannot be used by your enemies. Obviously, a fort in neutral territory benefits whoever controls it.

} City Raider promotions are used against units in forts. (hey it's only fair ;p)
 
I've been known to build an inland non-river city, not build any roads to it (so no trade network), and let it build warriors until gunpowder. Easy HR happy police.

Haha, the much i like the thought i don't think it's that crucial the build a non connected city just for that purpose - just sell your metal, and if you can't just pillage the mine for a few turns. It's not like you need 50 warriors for city police, right? Usually you'll need some for your cap, maybe some additional units for another high-pop city, and leave the rest small.

I really wish I could pillage my own roads.

I'd rather wish i could pillage my own towns/cottages for gold before i bulldoze them for workshops. 8[
 
It can be useful, it'd just never build a strategy around it. MP cost gold as well, unless you're FIN or growing onto riverside cottages, you don't want to spend MP on those citizens. Better to use the food surplus to build up GPPs, or even whip out infrastructure.
 
Haha, the much i like the thought i don't think it's that crucial the build a non connected city just for that purpose - just sell your metal, and if you can't just pillage the mine for a few turns. It's not like you need 50 warriors for city police, right? Usually you'll need some for your cap, maybe some additional units for another high-pop city, and leave the rest small.

In MP selling your metal is generally a bad idea, unless you like declaring war to get it back (even if it's with a friendly ally, you screw up the peace bonus on all your trade routes). Pillaging your own tile works (and you can pre-build a fort so you can hook it back up with a single worker turn. But I'm usually building units in several cities the whole game (and moving them all towards a cold war on one border or another). So having a warrior-pump city works as well as anything. I can put MPs in my cities, and keep building axes/whatever at the same time.



I'd rather wish i could pillage my own towns/cottages for gold before i bulldoze them for workshops. 8[
Yeah, I'd like that one too. Or pillaging riverside farms before I cover them with watermills. But not being able to pull up roads just seems wrong. Or at least rails. Pulling up pavement is difficult, but building a big bonfire out of railroad ties (and piling the rails on top to warp) is a fairly simple operation for a unit.



The fort comments were specifically for defending in my own territory. Though I've built them in neutral territory on occasion. If your opponent has a lot of flanking units, covering all your catapults is important enough to let him take City Raider vs you. And remember CG works in a fort as well. CR1 still leaves you with a 5% bonus in a fort, and while CR2 gives him 20%, that's only minimally better than just taking Combat2

Generally, once you are past the earliest wars, CR is an impediment for human vs human. Battles take place in the open, so they are usually wasted promotions. Especially on offense, your units will get pounded by the defender utilizing his road network, so you want Combat/Drill promotions, since those always work.
 
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