What to do with workers

Hi, Im still learning to play this game right, I need some tips regarding the workers. My CIV4 skill lvl lies somewhere between warlord and Noble. Before I always used to Automate the workers, but I read somewhere that wont help u at higher dif settings. So now Im learning to manually fill the landscape with what I think is right.

Ok so far I noticed Im doin something like this:
1)all river adjacent squares get farms 60%/city
2)all specials (deer, spices etc.) get the building needed (plantation, camp etc. 20%/city
3) Hills get Mines 10%/city
4) all other get a cottage. 10%/city

But there are a lot of other things I never use like a workshop, watermill, windmill and eh... some other things. How do u guys form your landscape?? Also I like to learn and specialize cities, but somehow I fail to do that. Any tips are very welcome.

farms or cottages: depends on your style of playing and the civ you have.
CE (cottage economy) is the more simple imo, SE (specialist economy) a more difficult (more micromanagement) but also more flexible style.

tiles should be iimproved as they are needed. If your city has a large food surplus and you need production you are going to need mines, for sure.
wind- and watermills come later in the game and start to shine when they are improved by techs. If your city has a lot of hills but not enough food to work all mines you can build windmills.

city specialization is a very important thing to do, you can look up some guides for this in the strategy articles forum or linked in the war academy.

and i suggest you go to the succession games and/or story forum and read some storys of the (very) good players like acidsatyr, mutineer etc, they write good reports and explain a lot of what they are doing. Things that work on immortal tend to work on noble, too

howdy, welcome to CFC

if you haven't found it yet, the war academy has a lot of good articles in it. too many to read all at once i think!

this one goes into quite a bit of detail about workers and terrain improvements.

Before I always used to Automate the workers, but I read somewhere that wont help u at higher dif settings.

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you're definitely on the right track! your first games, automated workers make it a lot easier to focus on learning the rest of the game. there's a lot to learn in this game! but you do want to manage them yourself as you play on higher levels, i agree with that 100%.

But there are a lot of other things I never use like a workshop, watermill, windmill

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all 3 of those things get quite a bit better at the game goes on, and don't start out really great when you first build them. higher techs give them more production or commerce. so, you do want to learn about them and when it's best to use them, but they're not usually a priority early game. so it sounds like you're learning quite well already and your focus is on the right things!

for workshops and watermills, they can be fantastic when you're using the State Property civic. that's pretty late-game tho. the best part is, they don't need time to develop like cottages do, so i tend to send workers over to transform certain cities at that point from whatever improvements they did have, if i'm going to change civics and that city will work better with a bunch of watermills and workshops.

Also I like to learn and specialize cities, but somehow I fail to do that. Any tips are very welcome.

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there are articles about that in the link too, but the best way to learn is to see screenshots of cities set up by a very good player (i'm not one).

all river adjacent squares get farms 60%/city

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especially if i'm a financial leader, i like to cottage some river squares, not irrigate them all. one thing you learn as you play is to pay attention to "chain irrigation" ... preplanning how to get fresh-water access to the food resources that benefit from it. if there's a wheat tile not next to fresh water for example, after Civil Service you can irrigate other squares from a fresh water source until your chain reaches that tile, and then get another food from the square. your chain can be anywhere in your cultural borders, it doesn't have to be in your city squares, if that doesn't fit in with your plans for the rest of the city. and some food resources are just plain hard (in a few cases impossible) to irrigate with fresh water. those cases make me sad, but they can still turn out to be quite useful cities.

and my #1 tip is always: have fun!

Thnx for the replies, it helped me a lot. When I have time I will check out those articles.. I didn't know about that irrigation thing, I thought it was kicked out in part 4, but I can be mistaken.

So u say depending on your chosen civic you choose what u will put around your city? This game goes really far in tactics.. I like that . Still this game is pretyy hard to handle so many options and so many ways to win or lose.

Wolfwindrunner said:

So u say depending on your chosen civic you choose what u will put around your city? This game goes really far in tactics.. I like that .

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that civic is pretty late, and the improvements that work best for it you can just build then. so it's more like "i improve my city the way that's best early on, and later if i use State Property then i change the improvements." i don't need to plan out square-by-square early on, i just change tactics so yes, it's a good thing, keeps the game interesting long-term but doesn't drive me crazy at the very beginning going "oh i can't do ABC now since 5500 years from now i'll want to do XYZ".

it does affect where i place my cities, since sometimes i give rivers more emphasis if i know i'll be running a large empire and using that civic later. i always like rivers anyway, health and commerce. picking which exact square to put your cities on is one of the most fun and most frustrating things for me *giggle*.

I didn't know about that irrigation thing

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sometimes the city itself can take care that. a city on counts for spreading irrigation, but cities on hills don't. you'll learn as you go