Reconfiguring worker behaviour

Heya, apologies if this has been suggested before!

In big empires, I always get frustrated at worker micro. Especially when there's a big war going on, I usually end up putting them on sleep and forgetting about them.

I'd propose instead of/as an alternative to the current system, the player can "mark" tiles with the desired improvement (trading post, mine, farm, etc). This could be done en masse - eg, designating 20 trading posts. Then the AI could automatically do all the routing/building - like a simple version of how it works in Dwarf Fortress I guess. Seems a simple idea to me but I guess would take a lot of coding!

While I'm at it, could there be a "yes I know there's an enemy 5 hexes away, shut up and keep working" button?

I really like this idea of queing up more commands for a worker. In Civ IV I know I used to be able to tell a worker to (chop+build improvement+road) That would keep him busy for a little while.

Being able to queue workers would be excellent. I'm all for this idea. I don't think it would take much coding; the commands to direct the worker the same, it just needs to be put in a list up front rather than after each action.

Good idea!

How about using the workers as labour for resource gathering? You could assign a worker gather resources from city tiles or make them form colonies on remote resources

I like this. Good idea.

I like the idea of giving workers a specific task the way it was in Civ 3. e.g. build trade network, build farms, etc. Road/RR maintenance should be reduced or eliminated. Idle workers should not occupy cities because of the one unit per tile restriction.