What to automate and what not to?

Hi everyone! Ok I've searched all over the place concerning which units I should automate and which one's I should control myself? I found a ton of info on automating workers, but I'm more interested in learning about all the other people and things, such as: Military Units - melee, cannons, ships etc. Not sure what the smart thing to do is.

Any advice? Thanks for your time.

The general rule is to automate nothing.

You certainly do not want to automate military, as a human can destroy the AI with half the units. You don't want to automate workers, as you know exactly what the best tiles are, and you want to make sure they get dealt with first. You don't want to automate specialists either, as the wrong ones will be filled at the wrong times.

The only automation you will use is what worker focus you'll want. And even then, after your city grows, you will often have to readjust what the AI chose. You might also let a caravel auto explore if you've explored everything of importance already, and are tired of sending it places, though I'll generally send it back home for defense instead.

I use automated workers when I get the railroads. That is their top priority. Once all cities are connected I stop it.

The only thing I might automate is my caravels because sometimes it gets boring moving them around to explore. I'll get a couple of them and send them in different directions on auto. But I do check on them once in a while.

Wow, I'm surprised at all this. It would seem that a turn would take forever but i guess that's the price you gotta pay for perfection. Very interesting....I wouldn't have guessed the small percentages of automation. Thanks so much for your feedback.

Prozac1964 said:

Wow, I'm surprised at all this. It would seem that a turn would take forever but i guess that's the price you gotta pay for perfection. Very interesting....I wouldn't have guessed the small percentages of automation. Thanks so much for your feedback.

Click to expand...

It's not that much of a timesink, really. Gotta figure that a worker is building an improvement for 4-8 turns, and that just took 1 button press.

He is building the RIGHT improvement though. Not just trading posts on plains.

Uzael36 said:

The general rule is to automate nothing.

Click to expand...

This!

Ideally nothing.

I automate workers after ~T100 on Deity games It is better not to, but the horror stories about automated workers are typically exaggerated.

Scouts... never. Explore pathing is absolutely terrible, hence the reason some AI will miss ruins right outside their capital for the entire game.

I usually automate caravels though. Large sight radius and moves means they have the entire map explored quickly whether automated or not.

I can't think of what else you could automate. Perhaps specialists or specialist priority. In which case never (never never never). Auto-governor rarely picks scientist slots, and those are the only ones worth working.

Simple, don't automate anything. That includes locking the tiles you want your cities to work yourself rather than relying upon city governor.

BEFanatic said:

I can't think of what else you could automate. Perhaps specialists or specialist priority. In which case never (never never never). Auto-governor rarely picks scientist slots, and those are the only ones worth working.

Click to expand...

I have been frustrated trying to figure out when and which specialist slots to fill. There never seems to be enough pop to fill everything and keep the city growing at a good rate. Definitely something I need to master should I ever take on deity, but in the meantime I just use the auto-governor and the choices mostly seem good when I look at the city screen. I will change from default focus to gold focus (during golden ages) or science focus (iff observatory) or production focus (for the rare hard-built wonder).

Can anyone guide me on balancing growth versus manual specialist control? Can I lock only the scientist slots (as you say, they are definitely worth working) and let the governor do what they want with the others? (I think locking a single one turns on manual specialist control for them all.) Are science slots really the only ones worth working? What about after you unlock the tenant from Rationalism that lets specialist consume less food?

The only thing to really know is to manage growth prior to getting the specialists.
The purpose is to get enough pop BEFORE the new slots so that you can run the specialists at that time. This should never be a problem for capital and second/third cities. Subsequent cities can get some help with a food trade route. Usually once you have finished your university/school you don't have something urgent to build so you will prioritize growth and run at low hammers.

Try to learn to place your citizens yourself rather than relying on automatic. You will need to find that good balance of hammer/food which the game is bad at doing automatically (and shift according to your needs). For example I've seen default focus work a 2F 2G tile before a 2F 1H tile ! You will want to always have a decent growth but you still want your cities to get a minimum number of hammers. For example your expansion should quickly get a granary so that they can work a mine quickly enough.

Science slots are the priority (generates good science and GS) but you don't want to stagnate to run them (>8 turns for growing). Run the rest in food heavy cities (especially engineer to convert some of that food into hammer+science) and only after secularism. Run them all near the end before bulbing GS (8 turns prior).

The policy for specialist food is in Freedom not rationalism. Secularism is in Rationalism and gives 2 science per specialists.

I only automate workers when I've pretty much won the game and most tiles of are improved. At this point, the game is inevitably won so it's just wasting time micromanaging workers.

beetle said:

Are science slots really the only ones worth working? What about after you unlock the tenant from Rationalism that lets specialist consume less food?

Click to expand...

There is a bit more to it. Obviously a high pop. Freedom city with Rationalism (and perhaps Liberty Edit: Statue of, that is. Not the policy ) is going to benefit from working any slot. There is also something to be said about working engineer slots in hammer-starved cities (say an otherwise good coastal location). But what it comes down to is merchants and engineers give no where near the same benefit as scientists, and you don't want spawned GE/GM's to cut into GS count if it is avoidable.

Acken said:

For example I've seen default focus work a 2F 2G tile before a 2F 1H tile !

Click to expand...

Not really shocking. Game values 1g = 1h = 1f.

Yes I understand why the AI does it. My point was just to underline that this is a mistake to let something like that on default.

Right. I figured as much. That exclamation mark though !

(!)

Acken said:

For example I've seen default focus work a 2F 2G tile before a 2F 1H tile!

Click to expand...

Hmm. I will have to keep an eye out for that. I have been pretty happy with the default governor, but have not noticed that particular choice.

2F 1H tile is (early) farmed plains, pretty common. What generates 2F 2G? In GnK that’s grassland with TP (not a good choice, and one that BNW nerfed).

My dilemma is more along the lines of working 2F 1H tile or running a specialist?

The policy for specialist food is in Freedom not rationalism. Secularism is in Rationalism and gives 2 science per specialists.

Click to expand...

Thanks for catching this. That policy from Freedom is when I stop having problems with running specialists. Secularism from Rationalism is when I start having to make difficult choices about which specialists to run! Since they all give science, I want to run them all. But that would mean slow city growth. (My habit has been not to try and master the opportunity costs, and I let the city governor work it all out. Clearly that’s sub-optimal, but it’s not been terrible.)

Grassland marble and grassland stone is usually when I see that choice come up. And yes, I need to manually lock down the stone each time.

Before improvements, that is. I like starts with the extra hammer from stone, wheat, deer, so any time I get marble and one of those it is immediately noticeable.

BEFanatic said:

Grassland marble and grassland stone is usually when I see that choice come up. ... I like starts with the extra hammer from stone, wheat, deer, so any time I get marble and one of those it is immediately noticeable.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I will keep an eye out for that with my early cities.

BEFanatic said:

Before improvements, that is.

Click to expand...

After improvements, the default city governor mostly seems to make the same choices I would. One frequent (but inconsistent) exception is natural wonders. What other poor selections does the governor make?