Is it still important to improve tiles manually?

There's 3 kinds of players...

1) Hate micromanagement and put workers on auto so they can just explore and kill/conquer stuff

2) Love micromanagement and get their kicks carefully choosing every tile to be worked and in what order, to lovingly max out their civ's potential

3) Don't particularly love micromanagement, but realize it's the key to mo bettah fastah success in the game, so they do it anyway.

I'm kindof a blend of 2 & 3.

I was notorious for automating workers before, which is probably a sign that I was bored with the game at that point. Automated workers are extremely inefficient though, as they never work in one specific spot on the map (they work a tile, run to another city across the map, then work another, rinse and repeat). Need I say more. NEVER automate workers if you want and efficient empire.

pspboy7 said:

I was notorious for automating workers before, which is probably a sign that I was bored with the game at that point. Automated workers are extremely inefficient though, as they never work in one specific spot on the map (they work a tile, run to another city across the map, then work another, rinse and repeat). Need I say more. NEVER automate workers if you want and efficient empire.

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Automated workers are one of the biggest reasons the AI loses. If they were as efficient as you are, you'd be in real trouble.

I know that posting here everyone will just say that you shouldn't automate workers.

However playing Devils Advocate here... Unless you are playing on Deity, maybe sometimes on Immortal, they have put a decent number of improvements in the AI that you likely will have zero regrets automating them.

They now know to put TPs around Puppeted cities. They generally leave forests alone, except to put lumbermills, they usually mine hills, they connect cities only when the traderoute cost is made up.

Just saying that unless you are going for tip top efficiency and can play on the higher difficulties, you are most likely to be less efficient with the workers by not automating them.

The only things that are still questionable, but far from game breaking decisions, is that the AI won't hesitate as much to get rid of a jungle for a plantation, but this is kinda a grey zone change. Once you get Economics, it also has a few issues when you might still want a mine, but putting a Trading post will generate more resources.

Smokeybear said:

Automated workers are one of the biggest reasons the AI loses. If they were as efficient as you are, you'd be in real trouble.

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..................... Ok sorry... but I'm finding this hilarious.

The number 1 reason the AI loses is the tactical AI, and usually involves poor decisions because of sudden changes in defense, ranged units, or rough terrain. I play on Immortal/Deity most of the time, and whenever I take an AI city, I never go : Damn these tile improvement suck!

The reason why I don't like automated workers is that they have an extremely high addiction to building trading posts. I only automate them after railroads so I don't have to do it all manually or when it doesn't matter for the end result of the game. But still I have to keep an eye on them to prevent my new settlements being surrounded by trading posts.

Actually I do spam trading posts in my puppets, since they're on a gold focus anyway. Most puppets you get from AI will more often than not be spammed with farms, which can get expensive in happiness because they'll grow so big. So I went and replaced most of them with trading posts. Besides, trading posts eventually gives science as well.

I generally don't automate workers but I believe there are settings in the options such as
'Workers do not remove terrain features while automated'
'Workers do not remove tile improvements while automated' etc.
You could try using these settings and see if it makes a difference. You would of course have to manually improve some tiles but it would still likely take away the 'grind' of manually controlling workers

There is an option to turn off automated workers replacing existing improvements.

The only time I can see automated workers being okay is if that option is selected, you are playing a very wide empire with lots of workers, and your core cities are already fully or near-fully improved. Even then it'll probably mess things up and not build the ideal improvements. I assume that because I never trust the AI's recommenations or its ability to pick the best option. They are also not efficient in the order they automate and do not prioritize appropriately based on your needs. Manual is always the best.

pspboy7 said:

[...] Automated workers are extremely inefficient though, as they never work in one specific spot on the map (they work a tile, run to another city across the map, then work another, rinse and repeat). Need I say more. NEVER automate workers if you want and efficient empire.

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That's a good point. Obvious but I never thought about that.

I would like to see automatic falloout scrubbing or automatic repair as a setting. I especially dislike the warning before I scrub fallout.

Does anyone know if automated workers are actually smart enough to improve tiles near cities that actually need improvements? That's another concern. If you settle/capture a small city and the workers start improving 10-30 tiles around it while it's still size 4 while leaving your moderately improved but much larger cities that actually need the improvements, you're not just getting a poorer improvement mix. You're getting worse placement too, which can be even worse.

I usually go about half and half so I don't have to wait for workers to get around to improving that iron deposit that just opened up but I still don't have to auto-improve every farm either.

Haha, have you ever had a late game war where you pushed into the AI territory? Did you ever see how laughably bad their tiles and economy is? That's what you get with automated workers. There's a reason why the AI gets huge happiness and gold and everything boosts. You don't, you can't just make up for terrible worker decisions with cheats like the computer does. It might take a game or two, but learning how to task your workers is probably one of the most crucial steps in improving I think.

Erneiz Hyde said:

Actually I do spam trading posts in my puppets, since they're on a gold focus anyway. Most puppets you get from AI will more often than not be spammed with farms, which can get expensive in happiness because they'll grow so big. So I went and replaced most of them with trading posts. Besides, trading posts eventually gives science as well.

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The AI actually knows how to do this now, it won't do it before most if not all tiles on your good cities are worked, but it will show up on recommended tile improvements, which means that it will flip them, but since a lot of people who do automate also disable the AI's ability to change improvements, you'll never see it.

Like I said, I'm just playing devil's advocate here, I don't automate myself unless it gets into late game of a game I have in the bag with a ton of cities, however I'm reading posts here from people way too confident of their ability to manually control them.

The only real advantages you can get now since it largely doesn't do really stupid decisions (since they modeled it after what we did in Vanilla and is still true).

The AI has a small laundry list before it might get to things like:
Mining hills when you want production faster than growth.
Cutting down a forest for an instant hammer boost for early wonders. (it doesn't touch em really anymore except for Lumbermills)
Not putting a plantation on a Banana. (I've noticed however that this shows up much lower on the list, so you might not see it either, it won't touch them if you got a University in the City)
After Economics it can sometimes favor Trading Posts on hills you might have otherwise mined.


Everything else it does reasonably well now. It favors Strategics and Luxuries. It won't go city hopping too much unless there isn't a worker near a strategic/luxury in another city. It connects cities at appropriate times.

Anyways... On Emperor or below, you won't lose because you decide to automate workers (you'll lose to the ton of other decisions you did wrong) It might be a good habit to pick up, but when someone comes in here who doesn't even know how to micromanage citizens, you are almost wasting their time trying to tell them that auto improving is bad.

I think there's one or two posts that are saying the AI are terrible at it because of it. Even one boasted that when he takes over a city. He thinks the AI's improvements are always terrible. I haven't seen much or any of this. Post screenshots of what you are saying. Firaxis often reads these. They can look at them and keep improving the worker AI.

@OP

Yes I believe Manually assigning Workers is very important, and really easy once you get the hang of it.

As important as I think that is, I feel manually assigning city production plots is even more important, and again easy and quick once you get the hang of it.

If you start playing multiplayer then some use of automation may be the way to go.

Thats my 2 cents. Overvlaued I know

Erneiz Hyde said:

Manually improving tiles are pretty much mandatory. What I still find rather hard to make a habit on is to manually assign which tiles to work. I keep forgetting to lock and set production focus when a town is about to grow.

Btw I had a bitter experience with automated worker. I was on my way to science victory, and I had one last part that I still haven't the tech on (it's on the lower end of the tech tree, past the jet fighters. I usually stop advancing from that line by Combined Arms, finished the upper tree first). In between that time, I finally got lazy and simply put all my workers on automate. After a while and I finished the last part I went and send it to my capital only to find that a worker is sitting there, with no movement left due to the automation. It only delayed one turn to my victory, but I still remember that raging feeling to the unexpected setback.

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I never understand that either. Even if they are automated, if they haven't actually done anything that turn, you should still be able to select them and have them do something.

hobbsyoyo said:

If you automate after getting Railroads, will the workers focus on building railroads over your roads? And if you set them to leave old improvements alone, will this force them to NOT build railroads?

I've always wondered how well this works, but I'm too afraid of the automated AI to try it.

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I always have it set to not replace improvements and my workers have upgraded roads to railroads. Although for some reason in the game last night, at least one of the just sat there and didn't do anything once i researched Railroad. I've also noticed that workers will still change improvements even with the setting on to acquire a strategic resource that appears due to a tech research.

Lyoncet said:

Does anyone know if automated workers are actually smart enough to improve tiles near cities that actually need improvements? That's another concern. If you settle/capture a small city and the workers start improving 10-30 tiles around it while it's still size 4 while leaving your moderately improved but much larger cities that actually need the improvements, you're not just getting a poorer improvement mix. You're getting worse placement too, which can be even worse.

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Yes, I don't usually like auto with multiple cities. They need back the autoimprove THIS city choice. Also I wish the workers would autoimprove based on the focus you selected for the city instead of like mentioned earlier. Don't build trading posts if I want food or production.

And I haven't done much automating in G&K because I want achievements, and I like to have improved notifications if I automate. They need to just make it so mods that don't change the rules of the game don't disable achievements.

Louis8k8 said:

Never automate if you're playing a challenging opponent you're serious about.

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I would change this to never automate if you ever plan on playing a challenging opponent you're serious about. It's just a bad habit to get into. And if you make mistakes on your own, you'll at least remember and fix them the next time. If the AI does them, you may never even notice that they were mistakes.

Furycrab said:

..................... Ok sorry... but I'm finding this hilarious.

The number 1 reason the AI loses is the tactical AI, and usually involves poor decisions because of sudden changes in defense, ranged units, or rough terrain. I play on Immortal/Deity most of the time, and whenever I take an AI city, I never go : Damn these tile improvement suck!

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Didn't say it was the *only* reason, but it is a big part of it. If you've ever noticed how most civs' lands have been mis-managed and under-utilized by their workers, you know what I mean. You beat some civ that has extensive lands and incredible amounts of resources, and then you go look at it and scratch your head at how poorly their lands were managed, and you wonder how they didn't just implode from stupidity 2000 years earlier. And I almost always find examples in *every* game where I think "damn, those AI tile improvements really suck".