City Governor force-works new improvements

I have already witnessed (CONFIRMED) City Governor works suboptimal tiles. Though similar, this is a different bug.

City Governor force-works new improvements (even when turned off).

Regardless of whether the City Governor is turned on/off, the City Governor intervenes and forces a citizen to work newly-created tile improvements even at the expense of forced Specialists and quality tiles.

I have so far noticed this bug with every land and sea tile improvement.

To reproduce this very annoying bug:

1. Start building a tile improvement in a city's Fat Cross.
2. Turn off the City Governor and work any tile(s) except the tile being improved.
3. Once the tile improvement is complete, examine the city, and you'll see the tile with new improvement is being worked despite the City Governor still being off.

Especially with the City Governor turned off, new tiles should not automatically be force-worked.

Attached is a saved game on the same turn a Farm will be finished. I force-assigned a Forested Plains Hill. Once the Scout moves, the Worker will have his turn and finish the Farm -- at which point the City Governor (turned off) intervenes and forces the new improvement to be worked.

OTAKUjbski said:

Especially with the City Governor turned off, new tiles should not automatically be force-worked.

Click to expand...

I agree. It is very annoying to check the city at any improvement finished and every time it grows in population. Sometimes 3 hammers are better than 5 food, sometimes 3 food are better than 5 hammers. Sometimes (as in the example you linked) a couple of squares are just a better choice than the couple of squares the governor switch to. This production switch is very annoying.

I can confirm that the bug doesn't function exactly as stated. I had a city with a Rice (beside river), Cow and Gold square. I tested it in various ways. What happened:

If any square other than the Rice was worked, and the Rice was improved, it would automatically switch to the Rice. If the Rice was being worked, it wouldn't switch to either the Gold or Cows when they were improved. If it was working the Gold, it would switch to the Cows when they were improved (even if the Rice square was improved).

So at least in my example scenario, it would only switch squares to a higher food producing one - although it wouldn't switch to the highest food producing square if it wasn't the one being improved. So yes, probably a bug, but not exactly as you described it.

Bh

OTAKUjbski said:

Especially with the City Governor turned off, new tiles should not automatically be force-worked.

Click to expand...

When you say "turned off", do you mean that he has not been explicitly set to 'emphasise' anything?

Personally, I prefer if the governor starts working newly improved tiles - why bother to improve them if you're not going to use them?

As eluded to by Bhruic, it is a bit more complex than "always" - I believe that if the city is not at its maximum size (limited by happiness - maybe health too?), then the governor will try to grow the city.

I would agree that removing forced specialists to try and grow the city is wrong though.

ainwood said:

Personally, I prefer if the governor starts working newly improved tiles - why bother to improve them if you're not going to use them?

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Most of the times yes, but sometimes no. Like when I'm close to finishing building a wonder, I would evaluate a 3 hammer square (hill+forest, no improvements) more than a 5 food square (rice+farm+irrigation).
So for me I would like a "never allow the city governor take any decision" option in the option screen where you choose whatever you want to automatize. And I also would like the option to get a message every time one of my cities grow (or lose population) to be able to choose which squares in the fat cross to work.
I could be weird, but this is to me (micromanagement and optimizing of the production) is part of the fun of the game!

ainwood said:

Personally, I prefer if the governor starts working newly improved tiles - why bother to improve them if you're not going to use them?

Click to expand...

Well, I think my example illustrates that it's not doing so in an intelligent manner. If it's going to switch tiles when an improvement is finished, it should choose the best tile available, not simply the latest one to be finished. For instance, in my example, it should always switch to the Rice (if maximizing food) tile, even if the Cow tile just got improved. That is - if it's going to auto-switch. That really should be an option, considering that the Player knows what he wants maximized, and the AI doesn't.

Whether this qualifies as a "bug" is rather dubious, however. It doesn't seem to pick horrible tiles, it just picks sub-optimal ones.

Bh

ainwood said:

When you say "turned off", do you mean that he has not been explicitly set to 'emphasise' anything?

Click to expand...

Yes. Not only are all the 'emphasize' buttons turned off, but the City Governor button is also off.

Bhruic said:

I can confirm that the bug doesn't function exactly as stated. I had a city with a Rice (beside river), Cow and Gold square. I tested it in various ways. What happened:

If any square other than the Rice was worked, and the Rice was improved, it would automatically switch to the Rice. If the Rice was being worked, it wouldn't switch to either the Gold or Cows when they were improved. If it was working the Gold, it would switch to the Cows when they were improved (even if the Rice square was improved).

So at least in my example scenario, it would only switch squares to a higher food producing one - although it wouldn't switch to the highest food producing square if it wasn't the one being improved. So yes, probably a bug, but not exactly as you described it.

Bh

Click to expand...

After playing a couple more games this weekend [paying closer attention to this bug], I noticed this too.

It seems this primarily only happens with small cities (probably because that's when the most MM happens and also because there are more tile varieties and options) and only when you are forcing tiles the City Governor thinks are suboptimal.

Bhruic said:

Whether this qualifies as a "bug" is rather dubious, however. It doesn't seem to pick horrible tiles, it just picks sub-optimal ones.

Click to expand...

At least the part where the City Governor does this while turned off, I definitely think it's a bug.

As Ainwood said, I don't really mind the City Governor automatically switches tiles on me, so long as I've turned him on. But like yatta77 said, when I'm forcing a mined tile over a Farmed Rice to hurry a Work Boat or a Wonder, I don't want the City Governor messing up the program after I explicitly turned him off.

Sorry, missed the part about turning off the Governor - yeah, if it's off, it shouldn't change tiles unless you tell it to. That'd be a bug in my books.

Bh

OTAKUjbski said:

but the City Governor button is also off.

Click to expand...

I just discovered I'm really ignorant... I play Civ IV since vanilla and ever know about a "general" City Governor button and forced tiles. Weere is that button?

I thought that if there's nothing been emphatized (I'm sorry about the surely wrong spelling of that word ) the city governor would be set off (at least that was my experience for vanilla and warlords). And when the city grows the CG just makes a default choice for the extra tile (or specialist) to work (or turn the citizen to), basing the choice on the / / / situation of the city.

Another things really frustrates me:
Let's say I have a size 3 city, no library, no lighthouse, not mines in the fat cross, and I'm running Representation as a Civic (from The Pyramids).
Let's say I have 3 citizen in a recently founded city and the city can't grow more because of the happiness cap (I play on harder levels and often on smaller maps - less cities get the bonus -, if you wonder why so low happiness with representation on), and in the small 9 squares fatcross I have:
- 1 seafood square (4 / 2 );
- 2 grassland forest square (2 / 1 );
- few plains ( 1 / 1 ) or water (1 / 2 ).
In few words, no tiles that gives more than 1 and no tiles that gives more than 2 (let's say other resources and the hill squares are just outside the first 9 squares, and the culture production is = 0 for now).

In this situation I want produce only 4 (+2 from the city square = 6), the AI simple don't get that the best choice to do it is:
seefood + 2 citizen = 4 / 2 / 2 / 6

If I irrigate a plain because I have a worker there which can't work what's outside the cultural border, it doesn't mean I want the CG to start working that tile right after been improved, messing up all my work in optimizing whatever.

So this imposed automation it's really annoying to me, especially after I lose some time optimizing the production of my "not growing for now cities".

also annoying, when changing sliders around and happiness goes up or down based on culture, any unhappy citizens that become happy once again are made into spies if there all 20 tiles are being worked.

also, the free specialist with statue of liberty is always made an engineer (for me)

I agree this is annoying. And, ainwood, with all due respect, if anyone decides citizen should work a new tile, it should be me if I want so. This governor is abusive even when turned off.

I just discovered I'm really ignorant... I play Civ IV since vanilla and ever know about a "general" City Governor button and forced tiles. Weere is that button?

Click to expand...

Never mind. I never used the CG panel, so I thought to activate it was enough to emphatize something, never read the pop up of the buttons.

Back to topic: check the SS before and after finishing a forest preserve (this happened 3 times for 3 different forest preserves in the city fatcross).

Another example to show it is a bug: later the city had the National Park, so every forest reserve is +1 free specialist. But I had a war and two of my FP were destroyed. When I improved again my forest with a preserve, the Ai (it always does if you already have citizens turned into specialists), instead of adding a specialist it worked one extra tile keeping the number of specialists I had before (it does the same with the free specialist when switching to Mercantilism).

This is a little wrong: if I got a free specialist, just add my city a free specialist! But it is also true that if not having the Caste System and not having many buildings which allow specialists, this might result in adding a +1 citizen instead of working a good tile, which as a default choice would be silly. Beside it cannot know which kind of extra specialist I'd like to have.

So I can be ok with giving the free specialist (when there are already few specialists in the city) under the shape of a -1 population cost for the specialists you already have (=get one more tile worked).

So what's my complain? It is that the AI choose as extra tile to work, once again, the _forest reserve_ , the improvement finished in that turn even when there are many highly better tiles to work; and did that for both the Forests I had to improve after the war (only for those forest preserves, I had to modify the CG silly decisions 5 times in this game, and this was a OCC!). Imagine a big empire where you have many workers improving around if this would be fun.

So now I'm really convinced to think about this feature as a bug that happens when finishing an improvement: beside being a change in production I'm not asking for (just to clarify: _I never automatize workers, I never activate the CG in my games and I never emphatize anything_); it just doesn't have any logic. I'm fine with the new CG of the Better AI, but not with the imposition to take its (often stupid) choices if I don't want to, or have to impose myself to check the city screens every time I finish an improvement in one of my cities fatcross. It doesn't make the life easier at all!

OP is right, i would say like 95% of the time your worker finish an improvement the governor changes one of your citizens to work on that improved tile even if the one he was before was 100s times better. you have to check the city everytime a worker finish an improvement

And thats with everything off, i never automate anything, governor or workers.

LunaticSlave said:

OP is right, i would say like 85% of the time your worker finish an improvement the governor changes one of your citizens to work on that improved tile even if the one he was before was 100s times better. you have to check the city everytime a worker finish an improvement

And thats with everything off, i never automate anything, governor or workers.

Click to expand...

Hey! You just said in 3 line what I tried to say needing probably 200.

Lexad said:

I agree this is annoying. And, ainwood, with all due respect, if anyone decides citizen should work a new tile, it should be me if I want so. This governor is abusive even when turned off.

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Cheers to that! If the governor is off, he ought to be off!

The governor has NO business assigning anything if he's off, unless:


It's a new population, and then and only then that one citizen.

OR

He's putting someone back to work where you had him before that got displaced either by becoming unhappy or an enemy unit occupying his tile.

OR

A newly improved tile is strictly better in all respects than a currently worked tile.

Any other time he ought to mind his own business unless you give him the authority, which considering their massively bad decisions, I don't know why you would ever give them authority in their current state.

@Ghandi33
100% agreed

yatta77 said:

Hey! You just said in 3 line what I tried to say needing probably 200.

Click to expand...

hehe

back to topic, yes as everyone states is very annoying especialy when you have a city in happines cap and all citizen are arranged to no more growth and optimum hammer output, the you finish a new improved tile and the damn governor rearranges the city to growth status The "Off governor" always emphasizes food

Has anyone noticed the city moving specialists around also?

I have been playing for a culture win and had a GP Farm set up with all artist specialist but every once in awhile when I check back on the city I find my specialists have been moved around (a couple scientist, a couple priests, etc).

And yes, having the AI change what tiles are worked after you have selected which ones you want worked is really annoying. I had moved all my workers onto mines to get Hermitage built in a reasonable time and a few turns later noticed the turns left to build had gone way up because the city moved back to working the cottages on its own.

I guess there is no way to stop this??

Brutus2 said:

Has anyone noticed the city moving specialists around also?

I have been playing for a culture win and had a GP Farm set up with all artist specialist but every once in awhile when I check back on the city I find my specialists have been moved around (a couple scientist, a couple priests, etc).

And yes, having the AI change what tiles are worked after you have selected which ones you want worked is really annoying. I had moved all my workers onto mines to get Hermitage built in a reasonable time and a few turns later noticed the turns left to build had gone way up because the city moved back to working the cottages on its own.

I guess there is no way to stop this??

Click to expand...

I have witnessed what you state as well, and is very very annoying. Hopefuly a pacth will fix all this annoyances (hope comes out soon )

As a workaround, you can turn on Avoid Growth.