reddishrecue
Some dude on civfans
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Micromanaging really is worth it. It really is.
Micromanaging citizens- worth it?
- Thread starter Meyerm
- Start date
That is a good example but I don't think I have had that particular one. When I take a look at what the governor is working, he mostly makes the same choices I would. I tend to favor the faith mountains more is the biggest difference. Stone on grassland is good candidate for the governor to miss behave, so I will keep an eye out for that one.
Micromanaging citizens is worth it, an overwhelming majority of the community agrees.
Even if sometimes the default governor makes very good decisions, and even the same decisions you would make, it is still worth meddling with your citizens to see if you can finish your project sooner without delaying growth, or grow sooner without delaying your project. Sometimes you are just waiting to unlock something and working on something that is not really a priority, in that case you can work your maximum food tiles to grow faster. Sometimes you need to finish things faster and you may sacrifice growth, even for a short time getting in negative food. You can use the default governors for production or food, but microing would give significant better results (saving one or more turns). If you save a turn here, and a turn there, it really adds up, especially in the early game when each decision is important, and a turn saved in the first 60 turns may account to many more turns saved in the finish time.
And microing is also part of the fun in civ games, throughout the series I remember being the most significant component of the game, and especially in civ 5 since the emphasis is on smaller empires you can really get into it a lot because you don't have too many cities.
Even if sometimes the default governor makes very good decisions, and even the same decisions you would make, it is still worth meddling with your citizens to see if you can finish your project sooner without delaying growth, or grow sooner without delaying your project. Sometimes you are just waiting to unlock something and working on something that is not really a priority, in that case you can work your maximum food tiles to grow faster. Sometimes you need to finish things faster and you may sacrifice growth, even for a short time getting in negative food. You can use the default governors for production or food, but microing would give significant better results (saving one or more turns). If you save a turn here, and a turn there, it really adds up, especially in the early game when each decision is important, and a turn saved in the first 60 turns may account to many more turns saved in the finish time.
And microing is also part of the fun in civ games, throughout the series I remember being the most significant component of the game, and especially in civ 5 since the emphasis is on smaller empires you can really get into it a lot because you don't have too many cities.
One might think then, that there would be lots of compelling examples! Do you disagree with any of the math from this post?
Yes, that is the conventional wisdom. But the CW has turned 180 degrees before!
I do wish I enjoyed it. Your observation about empires being smaller in V as compared to IV and III is quite valid. Also I feel like tile yields and the buffs from improvements are significantly less than what we had from before. But does that result in making micro more or less important?
Acken
Deity
The maths you're referring to are about the Production focus exploit. It also underestimates I think since you usually have a better production tile than a plain way before size 10 and did not account for production % bonus.
That's only a part of micromanaging.
If you let the game decide it will put some citizens on 2F 2G tiles before 2F 1P tiles. You don't want to do that, getting 1P when you have only 5 is a 20% boost of production. You also can choose to taylor your focus as you like. If it's a growth phase or if it's a production phase. Using the city focus is an approximative way of doing it which is too "all or nothing".
You can already achieve good results by managing mistakes of the governor. If you don't like micromanaging then I'd just do that, checking once in a while what is being worked and act on potential problems.
That's only a part of micromanaging.
If you let the game decide it will put some citizens on 2F 2G tiles before 2F 1P tiles. You don't want to do that, getting 1P when you have only 5 is a 20% boost of production. You also can choose to taylor your focus as you like. If it's a growth phase or if it's a production phase. Using the city focus is an approximative way of doing it which is too "all or nothing".
You can already achieve good results by managing mistakes of the governor. If you don't like micromanaging then I'd just do that, checking once in a while what is being worked and act on potential problems.
I would add that it's true that you can mathematically approximate the advantage you get with microing vs using in-game governor, and you can do this with a satisfying approximation, it is really hard to evaluate the results. The main dilemma is how do you value early yield vs late yield. Specifically early hammers vs late hammers, early food vs late food. In civ 5 the key to fast win times is of course good timing, and sometimes this requires synchronization of independent events (like getting a certain building/unit before reaching a certain tech), and even missing this by a single turn could translate into a whole lot of problems later on and sometimes greatly increases your finish time.
For example in the Shoshone DCL, had I attacked my E neighbor just 5-10 turns earlier, I would have been able to capture all their core cities and the capital before they managed to bring a big number of their UUs to cause great trouble for me. Instead I was forced into a somewhat attrition war, where each turn I captured it's capital and lost it, and in the mean time that AI conquered mostly everything on it's E, and out-teched me with rifling, so I was forced to get peace until I teched artillery and rifling. Instead of finishing in the T180s or even earlier, I finished in T217, so that 5-10 turn delay in the mid game accounted to almost 50 turns delay in the finishing time. Delays in early game account for even more, but most of the time we don't even notice them.
Another clear example is let's say a capital start with no hill, stone and cotton in first ring. The governor will work the cotton, meaning you will get your first scout in 7 turns instead of 5, so that is already a 2 turn delay. Now you start working on a second scout, and if the governor does not assign your 2nd citizen to a hammer tile, this is also going to mean 7 turns, so just with 14 turns to go you are already 4 turns late (that is a 40% delay!). Now let's say that you go for a pantheon, so you start on Pottery first, in order to get an early shrine. You finish pottery in 10 turns or 9 if you meet 2 AIs in the first 9 turns (not considering a population ruin). This timing is pretty good with the 2 scout start, if your scout costs 5 turns each. You start working on the shrine at best exactly the turn you discovery pottery, and at worst a turn later. With scouts costing 7 turns, this means a 4 turn delay, and because there is a race to pantheons this may cost you a lot, getting pantheon later, and in extreme cases even missing on pantheon entirely. Those 4 turns may not seem much but they can stop you from snowballing.
For example in the Shoshone DCL, had I attacked my E neighbor just 5-10 turns earlier, I would have been able to capture all their core cities and the capital before they managed to bring a big number of their UUs to cause great trouble for me. Instead I was forced into a somewhat attrition war, where each turn I captured it's capital and lost it, and in the mean time that AI conquered mostly everything on it's E, and out-teched me with rifling, so I was forced to get peace until I teched artillery and rifling. Instead of finishing in the T180s or even earlier, I finished in T217, so that 5-10 turn delay in the mid game accounted to almost 50 turns delay in the finishing time. Delays in early game account for even more, but most of the time we don't even notice them.
Another clear example is let's say a capital start with no hill, stone and cotton in first ring. The governor will work the cotton, meaning you will get your first scout in 7 turns instead of 5, so that is already a 2 turn delay. Now you start working on a second scout, and if the governor does not assign your 2nd citizen to a hammer tile, this is also going to mean 7 turns, so just with 14 turns to go you are already 4 turns late (that is a 40% delay!). Now let's say that you go for a pantheon, so you start on Pottery first, in order to get an early shrine. You finish pottery in 10 turns or 9 if you meet 2 AIs in the first 9 turns (not considering a population ruin). This timing is pretty good with the 2 scout start, if your scout costs 5 turns each. You start working on the shrine at best exactly the turn you discovery pottery, and at worst a turn later. With scouts costing 7 turns, this means a 4 turn delay, and because there is a race to pantheons this may cost you a lot, getting pantheon later, and in extreme cases even missing on pantheon entirely. Those 4 turns may not seem much but they can stop you from snowballing.
Your example assumes the city wasn't founded on a hill. If it *was* founded on a hill, I believe the scout gets built in 5 turns whether you work stone or sugar. In that case, obviously, working the sugar is better.
BTW, I'm not saying that micromanagement isn't worth it. Far from it. But the optimal choice for a city isn't as simple as Production > gold. (Also, this is a great example showing how incredibly advantageous it is to found your cities on hills... especially your capital. I'll happily spend 1 or even 2 turns moving my initial settler around so I can settle on a hill.)
Acken
Deity
You're aware of production overflow right ? That while both take 5 turns one still has more production for the next thing.
While we are on this topic how exactly does production overflow work? I am interested when you get production bonuses for certain project types. For example you have 1 hammer to finish a wonder, and your city produces 20 hammers, plus an additional 6 because you have a 30% wonder bonus. Do you get a 25 hammer overflow, or do you get 19? Does it matter what you start working on next?
Acken
Deity
You get 25 regardless of what comes next.
Please provide some screen shots or other evidence and/or explanation.
You can get +4 hammers per pop growth at the end of the game, and that is like maybe ten times so by no means alot of turns. Other times you are juggling food and other priorities.
I would love to see some examples where early or mid games manual selection nets +4 hammers over what one of the governors gets you.
Here for example, the AI default would work the stone and the sugar for 3 turns resulting in growth over 3 turns and 6x3 +1 = 19 production over 3 turns (1 from growth to horses)
if you work iron and stone for a turn, you get +2 food and 10 production for that turn, bringing you to 8/16 food, after that you can work stone and horses with production focus locked so you get iron tile when you grow aswell. this will result in:
3 turn growh: (6/16), (8/16), (12/16) (16/16)
and production: 10+7+7+4=28
in each case you grow over 3 turns and the production difference is 28 compared to 19, which is really really significant
Moderator Action: Wide image wrapped inside spoiler tags
if you work iron and stone for a turn, you get +2 food and 10 production for that turn, bringing you to 8/16 food, after that you can work stone and horses with production focus locked so you get iron tile when you grow aswell. this will result in:
3 turn growh: (6/16), (8/16), (12/16) (16/16)
and production: 10+7+7+4=28
in each case you grow over 3 turns and the production difference is 28 compared to 19, which is really really significant
Spoiler :
Moderator Action: Wide image wrapped inside spoiler tags
Thanks! Do you have the save file? This might be a good setup for me to practice and learn from! (But maybe add a spoiler tag?)
So you actually gain free hammers if you switch to working as many hammer tiles as possible, with one turn into finishing a project in this situation? With Egypt you can theoretically get 65% bonus for ancient and classical era wonders. And with a forge you can get 30% for some units if you add another modifier from Stable, ToA or Warrior Code. Would this thing be worth doing?
Acken
Deity
Yes that's how it works. You can try to maximize these bonuses 1 turn before completion if you have some high mods.
I'd say it's worth it in some cases where the prod bonus is good enough.
How do people who don't micro their tiles decide what to do with their Workers? Workers improve tiles, but how do you know which tiles you want to improve if you don't know which tiles you want to be working?
How do you decide where to place your cities if you aren't managing your tiles? The tiles you expect to be working are like 90% of the city-placement decision.
Decisions in this game tend to be linked. Managing your tiles improves your efficiency in ways far, far beyond just immediate yield improvements.
How do you decide where to place your cities if you aren't managing your tiles? The tiles you expect to be working are like 90% of the city-placement decision.
Decisions in this game tend to be linked. Managing your tiles improves your efficiency in ways far, far beyond just immediate yield improvements.
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