At what level do you have to micro-manage at all times?

Hi, I play noble and turn on worker automation once I have about 8-10 of them (sometimes after that I'll direct a guy when I want something right away).

I also never really micromanage cities other than production; except emphasizing production early during an immortal rush.

TBH I like it this way because I find it fun. I'm wondering if this will kill me though in Prince level?

At what level do you really have to full time micromanage workers and cities?

It really depends on how good you are at the other aspects of the game. Some people only start thinking about micro when playing deity.

Emphasizing production you say? Tell me, how much do you whip?

I don't really whip at all. It doesn't seem worth it to me

Whenever playing a game to try to play quickly, but also to do all the right choices, I've usually waited to use automated workers till every important worker tile or road etc was built that I could see. I build all the farms and cottages and mines etc, then I would automate all the workers, but even though I automated so many times and still won, like Noble, Prince, Monarch etc it was still making the game harder. We have workers running around doing dumb things, they aren't there when you want something like you get Civil Service, they're nowhere near the farms I have to force them to stop mining some random Ice hill. I think we should always, always turn on the Game Options "Workers leave old improvements" and "Workers leave forests" in my opinion. Automated workers will kill cottages to put up farms, chop forests at the wrong time, or waste time making roads that don't go anywhere, etc. I advise don't use Automated workers but I do it myself haha, I'm trying to change my own playing

For overall, when I play the Deity AI its the only one I've seen where they can really force me to micromanage more. Actually I still don't beat Deity but I'm learning from other people and my own efforts. What I've learned I agree with many people, that the most important things have to be emphasized and skip all unnecessary stuff in order to win. Only certain Techs are worth it at a given time, only certain tiles are first priority like high Food tiles and special resources, only a few buildings are truly very good like Granaries and sometimes Libraries or Lighthouses, oh and whipping with Slavery is very good if you do it at the right timing. Can't be afraid to use Slavery even though I was so sad when I first used it but it grows on you, now I definitely would whip Settlers to grow faster and get Granaries etc with overflow too. I used to be like heck no I'm not going to sacrifice 2 population but I was so wrong then. There are so many neat ways to get advantages in the game though, its amazing

iwn said:

It doesn't seem worth it to me

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Let's say we whip 2 of 4 pop on normal speed, with Granary present,

Cost = 27
Gain = 60

Then opportunity cost, and reward gained. Opportunity cost is the missed output of ~1.5 dead guys, times ~10 turns (get them back and remove discontentment)
But you get a reward— the thing you whipped— for the number of turns it would have taken to hammer out.

Without the Granary, it usually makes the most sense to whip the granary. Unless you need those axemen yesterday.

Automating workers I will only do for building trade routes when all tiles have been improved and I'm waiting for railroads. I find the AI doesn't understand my ideas on city specialisation. On noble, prince and maybe monarch you can probably get away with this however, most important is getting the correct tiles improved in new cities so they become functional.

Whipping is such a powerful production tool that if you use it properly (which I find quite difficult) it revolutionises the amount your cities can produce. I'm far too lazy to do the maths but in Tristan C's example above 1 food coverts to 2 hammers. Specially so for a warmonger, lots and lots of extra troops. Took me a long time to get into it, I like to play peacefully and ideologically wanted to win without slavery, but now I'll switch to slavery as soon as it's avaiable and normally not switch again (unless spiritual) unless emancipation unhappiness becomes unmanagable.

On monarch I could win without whipping but not easily. On emperor I don't think I could keep up with the AIs without it.

Pretty much all the time, but more out of choice than a sense of necessity. I find worker automation to be rather annoying, to the point that if I run out of ideas I'll simply put my workers to sleep in a city.

The only point at which I'll start letting things slide is if I'm about to run away with a cultural or science victory.

Also what classes as "micro" management and what is just, like, normal management differs from person to person - spending 10 minutes per turn even in the early game is perfectly normal to some It is definitely the case though that taking more time to manage the details of your empire and army will give better results, on any difficulty level. What else is Civ if not a game of managing the details?!

So I'm not sure about defining micromanagement or saying what level you need it, but I will stick my neck out and say I don't believe on immortal it's possible to win consistently without using one particular piece, namely slavery.

iwn said:

...I play noble and turn on worker automation once I have about 8-10 of them...

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iwn said:

I don't really whip at all. It doesn't seem worth it to me

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If you don't like micro managing workers, slavery is the civic for you! Smaller cities means fewer citizens working BFC tiles, means fewer tile improvements needed, means less worker micro.

Slavery is usually far more efficient at producing than growing a city onto tiles and just working those, plus as Tristan said you get the hurried thing now instead of later.

E.g. simple case of a city with 1 food special and no other tiles worth mentioning, it can whip 2 population down from size 4 to 2 and regrow every 5 turns or so, which means 12 per turn. Add in a grass farm or two and you can be whipping axemen every 3 turns for 20 base hpt. Just think about how large a city would have to get working food and hills to match that, even if the map had the tiles available (which it won't).

I used to stress over the amount of micro involved in slavery, but it's actually not bad if you don't get into the real subtle details of queue management and judging the exact point at which to crack the whip, all of which can eke out even more gains. Plus I realized that micromanaging the workers and city growth and problems and all that to grow huge hammer cities was even more effort

Kid R said:

Plus I realized that micromanaging the workers and city growth and problems and all that to grow huge hammer cities was even more effort

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Interesting.

But at what point does the unhappiness penalty start to catch up with or outweigh the benefits of consistent slave labour?

Does anyone know the actual duration of the penalties?

Also, does anyone notice that slave revolts tend to happen more frequently in large cities?

I remember once trying to find the balance of running slavery with hereditary rule but I think I just ended up with a stunted city full of obsolete units.

Denethor said:

But at what point does the unhappiness penalty start to catch up with or outweigh the benefits of consistent slave labour?

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In my games, I play on Large or Huge maps with 15-18 AIs so they routinely go right up to the end of the tech tree before I win. I spend the entire game cracking the whip as often as practicable, and I've never really run into a situation where a city was crippled by unhappiness. If it gets annoying at all I build a happiness building or two and continue where I left off.

The culture slider is also your friend in these situations.

Kid R said:

I used to stress over the amount of micro involved in slavery, but it's actually not bad if you don't get into the real subtle details of queue management and judging the exact point at which to crack the whip, all of which can eke out even more gains. Plus I realized that micromanaging the workers and city growth and problems and all that to grow huge hammer cities was even more effort

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I've found the same thing, and keeping cities small means you're much less reliant on the map giving you high-food-density city locations to build monster production cities. A few grassland farms are enough to grow quite fast at sizes 2-6 or so. All I do is (try to) make sure I've got enough food stored to grow immediately after cracking the whip, though even there I don't do the math, just eyeball the food/hammer meters.

Denethor said:

Does anyone know the actual duration of the penalties?

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10 turns on normal speed. (20 on epic, 30 on marathon).

On Epic I thought I saw a 15 turn penalty, will update here next time I play.

iwn said:

On Epic I thought I saw a 15 turn penalty, will update here next time I play.

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Yep 10, 15, and 30. Normal, epic, marathon. Not sure about quick

I stand corrected--it's been a long while since I played epic. (Forgot it's 50% longer than normal--not 100%.)

Can someone confirm the time needed in quick? I don't think it's 5 turns like it should.

MrGrandiose said:

Can someone confirm the time needed in quick? I don't think it's 5 turns like it should.

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My guess is 8. 7.5 rounded up. Just need to test it out. Fire up the world builder with a spiritual civ.

On Quick speed, production costs are 2/3 of what they are on Normal speed.

A whip thus adds 6.67 turns of unhappiness. The game rounds down to 6.