How to improve KI/AI use of Workers?

As you all know the KI (keine Intelligenz = No Intelligence) often refuse to build workers.

A typical example are the Koreans in my current game: Believe it or not, they are the industrial age and have reached Flight. In a brief war my Second Fleet (slow and old ships) and carrier based bombers disconnected all their resources as my First Fleet and my ground forces have been busy taking out their chinese allies. The game is on Regent level.



And that was 100 years ago! The Koreans are rich (about 1000 gold), but have not build a single worker since the war.

My first attempt was disabling the "Disband" button on Workers, but the KI is simply ignoring this ("What, disbanding one of our Warriors? Never! Lets disband instead the worker, that is just building a road to iron").

Enabling the Palace to autoproduce a Worker every 10 rounds, did not work out as the KI was simply disbanding them even faster.

Then I enabled the Scout and Explorer to build roads and outposts at half speed. The KI is using them both (in the screenshot one can see an egyptian Explorer). At least the country sites of expansionist civilisations are now usually well roaded.

Next step was adding road building and clear jungle for the roman Legionar and Elephant units using Quintillus editor as the Firaxis editor did not allow to set the KI strategy checkmarks for part time workers. This is also in good use by the KI.

To my surprise the KI is also able to clear pollution with these units, despite the fact, that they are not enabled to do so.

My most successful additions are combatants with full building abilities. These are the Peasant Militia (1/2/1, Feudalism), the Pioneer (1/4/1, Nationalism) and the Combat Engineer (3/6/1, Replacable Parts). Like normal workers they use a population point from the city building them. And usually the KI loves to build them.

What else can be done to improve the KI work force?

Strange things indeed...
The Egyptians seem to fare well in your screenshot, at least concerning improvements.
Do you have any upgrade paths for your workers? / Do they become obsolete?
Is the AI-KI using it's only workers to build radar outpost/airbases or anything else which might consume built workers?

Samez said:

Strange things indeed...
The Egyptians seem to fare well in your screenshot, at least concerning improvements.
Do you have any upgrade paths for your workers? / Do they become obsolete?
Is the AI-KI using it's only workers to build radar outpost/airbases or anything else which might consume built workers?

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No, the workers are unmodded (except for the removed "Disband" button). But the KI is disbanding their workers once they finished all tasks or if they run out of money, which the KI allways do at some point in the game (they do so in unmodded game too ).

And workers seems to have a very low priority in the building list. If there are city improvements, wonders or military units to be build, who needs workers even if the country side is a complete mess?

The Eqyptians have been in no war so far and currently their only working force are one or two explorers and maybee some Elephant Archers (I have not checked their cities).

I normally see the AI has way more than 1 worker running around even on lower levels (no extra free units). So I don't usually experience what you are gripping about.

Anyway. ... I can think of one obvious solution for your mod to have the AI produce workers consistently, is to assign "don't require support" to the worker then the AI doesn't disband them due to lack of gold ever. If you're worried about the AI making too many no-support workers, have them auto-produced if you like.

I believe that should make the AI become more able to maintain a larger workforce.

As near as I can make out, based on my latest war with the Aztecs, the only thing the AI makes during a war are military units and oddly enough, Settlers. The Settlers may be to replace the cities that I had been taking, but did give me a lot of Aztec worker captives that I had to absorb in the newly captured cities.

But what about peacetime between wars? Did the Aztecs made some after the wars are over? and is the land fully developed in their terrority?

I don't recommend joining enslaved workers to your newly captured cities. Those cities already has problems with happiness since they are foreign, plus the more foreign % of population, they are more liable to culture flip to their home civ. I prefer to reduce them to 1 and join MY settlers/surplus workers to instill a population that matches my own civ quickly as possible.

Also while enslaved workers function more slowly than regular, they aren't included in your unit support limit as regular ones. Free slaves may be crap but at least you're not paying for them. Even if my land is fully developed, I like to use them to clean up pollution while some of my regular workers can join a newly captured city.

Kitomakazu said:

But what about peacetime between wars? Did the Aztecs made some after the wars are over? and is the land fully developed in their terrority?

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Once the war started, I kept going until the Aztecs were wiped out, so when the war ended, the Aztecs were no more. The land was not fully developed in their territory prior to the war starting, but improvements had been made, such as roads, mines, and irrigation.

I don't recommend joining enslaved workers to your newly captured cities. Those cities already has problems with happiness since they are foreign, plus the more foreign % of population, they are more liable to culture flip to their home civ. I prefer to reduce them to 1 and join MY settlers/surplus workers to instill a population that matches my own civ quickly as possible.

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I kept the captured workers under guard while the cities grew with my own citizens. As the Aztecs appeared to be rushing units by sacrificing their citizens, most of the cities had only a population of 2 or 3. I garrisoned them thoroughly with wounded units recovering from combat. Because of the way the mod is set up, I do not have problems with happiness issues. As my own citizen population grew, I gradually fed in an Aztec worker at a time.

Also while enslaved workers function more slowly than regular, they aren't included in your unit support limit as regular ones. Free slaves may be crap but at least you're not paying for them. Even if my land is fully developed, I like to use them to clean up pollution while some of my regular workers can join a newly captured city.

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I have a rule that I will not use captive workers for anything except increasing citizen population of cities. As for pollution, I have not reached that as yet, and I have other means of dealing with that. I am not a fan of either the algorithm for pollution or corruption, so I have developed work arounds that greatly reduce both.

Kitomakazu said:

I don't recommend joining enslaved workers to your newly captured cities. Those cities already has problems with happiness since they are foreign, plus the more foreign % of population, they are more liable to culture flip to their home civ. I prefer to reduce them to 1 and join MY settlers/surplus workers to instill a population that matches my own civ quickly as possible.

Also while enslaved workers function more slowly than regular, they aren't included in your unit support limit as regular ones. Free slaves may be crap but at least you're not paying for them. Even if my land is fully developed, I like to use them to clean up pollution while some of my regular workers can join a newly captured city.

Click to expand...

Most people do the same, and at least I do. That's common sense in an unmodded game.