Reinventing the Workers system

Cities should be able to build things in order to modify the main map. Like, for example, what usually workers do.

I already said elsewhere that the city builds and the workers jobs were kinda redundant : for example, you can cut trees that give instant production bonuses to the nearest city, or you can "work" a forest tile within a city, possibly with a lumber mill on it, which is meant to represent the exact same action in reality. (cutting wood)

Of course, gameplay-wise it's not the same, the first can be seen as an opportunity bonus, while the second is more related to your cities strategies, in theory, because in practice it is rarely used. (if we need a city that needs to build things fast, we will set it near hills, not near plain/grassland forests)

But, can't the "opportunity bonus" be harvested within the city ? For example, a citizen working the tile could as well cut the forest past a certain number of turn passed on it. Same for improving grassland or plain into farms.

The thing is, the worker have been here since the start as to give "something to do" to the player. Civ1 was an experimental game, as to make feel the player the overwhelming course of History, but wasn't a dedicated strategy game at first. It was a simulation. A pretty kind one. Now that it has been pushed more towards a strategy game, "thanks" to players feedback, one could imagine that we need to streamline a little the old mechanics like the workers one, which haven't anymore any reason to exist. (except for luring newbies into the game, who would have been, as I have been in a too consequent number of games to my taste, mistaken on the product, which isn't fair and counter-productive)

So the city screen should allow several things like exploiting the land fully, making bigger instant profits but at the cost of degradating the tile, or exploiting it more cautiously (like fallows or rational wood cutting) and then avoid food or production lacks by the future.

This could also be the reason of expansion, as to catch more fertile lands, and even conquests. (as in some Sci-Fi works that envision space races conquering one planet after the other, devastating them and needing to find another victim in order to continue their way of life)

You are proposing eliminating the worker unit and replacing its function with the city itself, by means of the city screen, in order to modify the tiles that the city can work; much like choosing what tiles to work or what tiles to purchase.

Reasons I could be against this idea:
- I actually like the current system that has a unit “workers” that can modify local resources to be used or worked by the city.
- I think the pace of development of tiles is set by how many worker units you can afford.
- How would you build roads to distant, un-connected cities or city states?
- How would you build strategic Forts outside city boarder?

I like having worker units. They force you to make choices.

Do you devote a military unit to protect the worker, or hope that you can respond if a barbarian comes close? In this way, the workers represent (to a degree) the people who live outside of the cities. The ones who'll be ravished by the hoards first. They need protection; or maybe they don't. It depends what risks you take.

How many workers should you have? They take time to build and cost unit upkeep, so there's a price for getting things done quickly. But taking too long to improve your tiles means missed opportunities.

Of course, I can imagine some UI changes to how the workers behave. I'd love to have the option for workers set to automatic, but still dictate which improvements go where. It would be nice to flag a tile as, "Build a farm here when you get around to it", for instance.

It's unique but it is actually in civilization revolution but it gets really boring without workers so I could never play without workers.

Teleon22 said:

Reasons I could be against this idea:
- I actually like the current system that has a unit “workers” that can modify local resources to be used or worked by the city.

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The "city" workers would do the exact same thing.

- I think the pace of development of tiles is set by how many worker units you can afford.

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Usually, the player is happy when all the tiles he is working are improved. So it's more a no brainer than anything else.

- How would you build roads to distant, un-connected cities or city states?
- How would you build strategic Forts outside city boarder?

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Those are really minor concerns that can be treated with various means. For example, roads could be created automatically. If you want to keep more control of them, you can create a road editor, showing you the portion of the land betwen two cities/spots. As to strategic forts, really ? Who ever use them ? Especially outside of borders ? I think that the construction of a fort needs to be inside controlled territory. And if you think not, you can still imagine a kind of worker dedicated to fort building but consuming building it.

Spiceweasel said:

I like having worker units. They force you to make choices.

Do you devote a military unit to protect the worker, or hope that you can respond if a barbarian comes close? In this way, the workers represent (to a degree) the people who live outside of the cities. The ones who'll be ravished by the hoards first. They need protection; or maybe they don't. It depends what risks you take.

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Having to protect workers stands really for only the very beginning of the game, when barbs can be everywhere. And it's anecdotic at best. The need to streamline it is bigger than the need to keep a worker protection.

How many workers should you have? They take time to build and cost unit upkeep, so there's a price for getting things done quickly. But taking too long to improve your tiles means missed opportunities.

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You should have as many workers as to improve your worked lands in time. After, you can disband some of them. See, it's a no brainer.

fuzzatron717 said:

It's unique but it is actually in civilization revolution but it gets really boring without workers so I could never play without workers.

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Civ Rev is not boring because of a lack of workers. It is boring because the AIs will constantly ask you ALL your gold for 7 turn of rest or enter war. You are at war with every AI in Civ Rev. That's why this game doesn't worth the shot.

Plus the end of workers would mean less things to calculate between turns, it would sure reduce the waiting time of some people, and make possible really huge maps with smaller hexagons shown on map, and pre-globalization eras. (in Civ5 the globalization starts whenever you have contact with every civs, 5 for my part who plays only on small map without altering the civs count)

You are suggesting a solution that previously existed in Call to Power. Instead of workers, you allocated a portion of your budget to 'public works' or something. Public works were like a currency you spent on tile improvements. Certain improvements became available after certain techs, and eventually you could actually terraform the earth, build sea and space cities, etc.

I liked this system a lot. I find that having workers becomes tedious to manage, especially on large maps or epic and marathon speeds where they take forever to build stuff. Now that we can't stack workers to build faster, it's even more tedious, IMO.

However, any changes along the lines you suggested or more in line with CtP would require a serious rework of the game in many areas other than just the workers. I'm not holding my breath.

hobbsyoyo said:

However, any changes along the lines you suggested or more in line with CtP would require a serious rework of the game in many areas other than just the workers.

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How that ? For now, I don't think so : the idea is to transfer the workers abilities to the cities workers. For example, if a Civ5 worker puts 4 turns to improve a grassland tile into a farm, Civ6 city workers would work a grassland tile and 4, 5 or maybe 6 turns later, the tile transforms into farms. I say more turns because of 1) the time the city worker works the land, it can't improve the tile in the same time. (even if in reality that is only one move) 2) Gameplay wise, for the statu quo, we need a drawback approximatively equal to the need to build a worker, so a slightly longer improving time would be needed. (even if one can withdraw completely the worker build drawback without replacing it, just as in CivRev, it's a possibility also)

The workers system of Civ1~5 is really simple. It can be replaced with anything. (replaced with public work like in CtP, or scrapped as in CivRev) It is just a gimmick that gives newcommers something to do.

Naokaukodem said:

How that ? For now, I don't think so : the idea is to transfer the workers abilities to the cities workers. For example, if a Civ5 worker puts 4 turns to improve a grassland tile into a farm, Civ6 city workers would work a grassland tile and 4, 5 or maybe 6 turns later, the tile transforms into farms. I say more turns because of 1) the time the city worker works the land, it can't improve the tile in the same time. (even if in reality that is only one move) 2) Gameplay wise, for the statu quo, we need a drawback approximatively equal to the need to build a worker, so a slightly longer improving time would be needed. (even if one can withdraw completely the worker build drawback without replacing it, just as in CivRev, it's a possibility also)

The workers system of Civ1~5 is really simple. It can be replaced with anything. (replaced with public work like in CtP, or scrapped as in CivRev) It is just a gimmick that gives newcommers something to do.

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CiVI? That is exactly what I meant by requiring a major rework, as in a new game. I'm not saying it's not doable, just that it's not going to happen in CiV as it would change a major mechanic in the game, even if changing the mechanic didn't require massive recoding (which it will - you'd have to throw out every line that has to do with workers and start over to implement a new mechanic - this takes more effort than I think you realize).

Edit: In any case, I'm kind of sick of workers but the more I think about it, I'm not sure that having something like what you suggested or bringing back public works would result in less mouse clicks per game.

Oh yes, I'm not imagining it to be in Civ5... it would, indeed, be too much changes. But no more changes that it appears. (that's what I thought you were saying)

In fact, I'm thinking that city workers should work immediately any tile with the latest technology, like Civ5 Administration and Fertilizers. The difference being that you wouldn't need to create a farm first.

Now, there's still the problem of creating not the same improvments on a same tile. You can "strategize" your different cities, the biggest choice being IMO farms/trading posts. I had an idea about the "economic cities" here : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=471560
Or, more simply, there would still have emphasis choices for your cities, like production, gold, etc... when you emphasis food, tiles transform into farm, when you emphasis gold, they transform into trading posts... ideally you would have a slider allowing you to determine which proportion of each you want, and eventually the possibility to switch the tiles individually. That way, you would have very quick maneers to manage your cities, while still having the choice for those who like micromanaging.

Naokaukodem said:

Oh yes, I'm not imagining it to be in Civ5... it would, indeed, be too much changes. But no more changes that it appears. (that's what I thought you were saying)

In fact, I'm thinking that city workers should work immediately any tile with the latest technology, like Civ5 Administration and Fertilizers. The difference being that you wouldn't need to create a farm first.

Now, there's still the problem of creating not the same improvments on a same tile. You can "strategize" your different cities, the biggest choice being IMO farms/trading posts. I had an idea about the "economic cities" here : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=471560
Or, more simply, there would still have emphasis choices for your cities, like production, gold, etc... when you emphasis food, tiles transform into farm, when you emphasis gold, they transform into trading posts... ideally you would have a slider allowing you to determine which proportion of each you want, and eventually the possibility to switch the tiles individually. That way, you would have very quick maneers to manage your cities, while still having the choice for those who like micromanaging.

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Actually that would be a good way of handling it. It would cut down on the number clicks significantly if you could use a slider or check a box and let the AI automate it.

My only worry is that automated workers suck in CiV, I just hope this system would work as intended in CiVI, hahaha.

hobbsyoyo said:

Actually that would be a good way of handling it. It would cut down on the number clicks significantly if you could use a slider or check a box and let the AI automate it.

My only worry is that automated workers suck in CiV, I just hope this system would work as intended in CiVI, hahaha.

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Automated workers may suck, but here it's more about internal city priorities. Those functions worked very well in Civ4/5, despite some worrying "features" like the unworked tiles becoming back worked when you go out of the city panel in civ5.

Roads and tile improvements should be created not automatically, but through a global empire screen, and take x number of turns to complete. This will end the outside of city radius problem. Basically, this screen will work by allowing, every turn, the player to assign a given number of citizens to improve a tile or add a route to it.

Something like the public work system in CTP should replace worker in future civ games, but unlike PW in CTP, which is pre-funded, I think PW in civ should be post-funded. I envision that it should work like the following:

1. you place order for tile improvement directly on the map, a temporary icon should indicate where you have work-in-progress
2. tile improvements cost certain amount of production points and take certain numbers of minimum turns to complete (example: farm - 20 points, 2 turns min.)
3. you can rush crucial improvements by spending gold
4. you have a PW slider that decides how much production to dedicate to building tile improvements (similar to science slider, but obviously, if the slider is more than what you need to complete current PW projects, it should only deduct what’s needed); this amount is then distributed to all current public work projects nationwide;
5. some cities can be exempted from contributing to PW (when building wonders or trying to build basic infrastructure in fringe cities)
6. tile improvements outside cities will cost more, those outside national border will cost even more
7. work-in-progress can be pillaged by invading army or barbarians; work-in-progress should give greater yield to the pillager than finished improvements (simulating worker capture)
8. there should be an “engineer” unit for special projects such as building military base or laying land mines, etc

I think the only aspect of worker that is hard to simulate with PW is chopping. I guess this can be simulated by a free tile improvement - costs nothing and the only thing it accomplishes is converting forest to production.

i would like to see basic improvements (farms, mines, lumber mills, etc) be automatically built not by workers but simply by being worked by the city. 5 turns worked, and the basic improvement pops up. i think this is more realistic than both the city and worker working the same hex.

now for the more advanced improvements (village (sorry, prefer these over markets), airfields, roads, rails, canals, seaports for non coastal cities, forts, etc, that is where the worker/engineer comes into play. some like roads the worker would do then move on, while others like village, fort (forts would be like weaker citadels) would disband the worker. because i build tall, i usually have a bunch of workers doing nothing for parts of the game.

Usually, the player is happy when all the tiles he is working are improved. So it's more a no brainer than anything else.

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Then usually the player is not playing with any forethought. You should have a wide variety of tiles improved around a city for each situation.e.g. when a city is growing you may work only food tiles where as when trying to rush production of something you may work a lot more production tiles. If you only have the tiles you are working improved then when you switch focus you have an inefficient city.

Those are really minor concerns that can be treated with various means. For example, roads could be created automatically. If you want to keep more control of them, you can create a road editor, showing you the portion of the land betwen two cities/spots. As to strategic forts, really ? Who ever use them ? Especially outside of borders ? I think that the construction of a fort needs to be inside controlled territory. And if you think not, you can still imagine a kind of worker dedicated to fort building but consuming building it.

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Minor concerns?
I will make a brief note on forts firsts for flow reasons, just because you have never used forts does not mean they are useless. In traditional terms they are quite situational, especially as they overwrite other improvements and this makes them much more appealing outside of your territory but can be very useful inside as well.
In slightly more creative terms they can be very useful for handling puppets.e.g. you can put a fort over wheat to greatly diminish a puppets growth.
That does lead to a question about puppets, how would they be controlled in puppets. Going by the puppet model they would not be controlled which only serves to create a whole new set of issues for the player with even more uncontrolled puppet growth and development.

Onto roads.
In previous civ games where you spammed roads on every tile then i might agree with that statement of it being a minor concern but in the current and vastly improved system where road placement and efficiency makes a significant impact i would not call the utilization of roads a minor concern.
The only way i could see this implemented without it being automatic, which as can be seen from the history of automated workers and city governors is never optimal, is to have an overarching developments screen so you could work tiles outside of a city radius.
This leads on to...

You should have as many workers as to improve your worked lands in time. After, you can disband some of them. See, it's a no brainer.

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As it is a no brainer, how does that work? Can you have a worker for every single tile which would be imbalanced and take away the point? Do you restrict the number of workers? If so in what way? One per city? Do you have to buy them? Can you buy as many as you want? Do they cost maintenance to have them? Plus a whole lot more questions that need to be answered.

As it is i see the current improvement and worker system as pretty good. You get plenty of choices.e.g. you can either build, capture or buy workers depending on your needs, preferences desires. You can choose how many workers are right for you, you can choose where and when they go places while also making that choice a balance decision.i.e. in most cases you have to make a priority decision of what and where to improve first. There are also sometimes risks involved.e..g. with workers on the front line and the need to protect them.
That leads to another question as well...How would/can these imaginary interface workers improve lands in other civs territories?.e.g. helping a CS connect a road to your empire or starting to pre-build roads to a city you are moving to capture. If not then you remove some utility and choice, if so then what conditions do you implement. You could say then could work on a tile where you have another unit but then how do you represent where the worker is on the main map so you don't have to keep bringing up the worker map to see if you can move your unit or not(without making the main screen a mess)?

Overall i see this as another, make civ simpler suggestion which always bemuses me in a game which is essentially about organising.
Civ is often compared to chess and some people seem to want the complexity of chess but with the rules of draughts (checkers for those speaking American).

I've been toying with an idea like this for a while. I tend to agree with the nay-sayers that Workers make for interesting choices, at least early in the game. However, they feel really artificial and unrealistic to me. Throughout most of history farms, mines, etc. were built by the people that worked them, not roving bands of workers.

In my case at least, my motivation to change this is not to make Civ simpler, but to make it better match reality. Or at least reality as Jared Diamond tells it.

In any case, here's my vision, which is similar to Naokaukodem's.

I would prefer for cities to expand in a more organic fashion. The city governor calls for more food, so over the course of several turns you start to see farms and ranches pop up around the city outskirts. Ask for production and you'll see some farms go fallow only to be replaced by miners, lumberjacks, and craftsmen. In this concept the player only steers the cities development at a high level rather than micromanaging which tiles are worked. In this case, the nearby tiles determine how effective the farmers and other workers are or perhaps puts a cap on them.

As the city gets bigger, its "reach" gets correspondingly larger. Cities automatically claim special resources nearby within their reach, and connected cities will start to share resources. If you found a new city in North America with access to corn, you should not be surprised later when you see corn farms outside of your European cities with an appropriate climate. Similarly I would like to see agricultural resources expanded through neighbor's trade routes as well, much as wheat expanded from the Middle East through Europe. This generally would not apply to strategic resources; after all, you can't plant iron or oil.

I would handle things like roads and forts with a mixed passive and public works system. If you have two nearby cities, you'll start to see paths develop in the terrain passively from all of the traffic of merchants and traders between them. Similarly, I would like to see sea trade routes represented by merchant ship traffic. Real roads should be built through a public works system which would handle non-city-specific improvements.

I am surprised that nobody has gone in this direction with this thread. The main complaint about workers seems to be that they seem artificial and don't provide any interesting choices that couldn't be handled by the city screen or some other mechanic. If the problem is that the choices are not interesting then I would think a better development would be to make the choices matter more.

While some good arguments have been made that the choices are still interesting. I agree with the OP that in the current versions of the franchise cities could just as easily improve their own tiles (with maybe a provision for improving the occasional tile outside of the fat cross).

In my favorite version of the civ franchise, SMAC, formers were a must and the choices you made with them much more interesting. (and also justified in terms of realism, but civ is not really about realistic simulation so I don't put much stock in that). This was for a couple of reasons. One, you could use supply crawlers to work tiles outside the fat cross of a city. This led the gloriously fun strategies of constructing energy parks and fields of boreholes, after and while improving the fat cross tiles. Two, SMAC had a much larger set of improvements, which were unlocked progressively across the whole tech tree giving formers something to do later in the game. Admittedly, SMAC was not always balanced, but there is no reason that it couldn't be.

More worker/former choices lead to more paths to victory. Do you build more specialized higher output improvements, or more general improvements? Rather than the current: oh, its a hill better build a mine mentality that leads to boringly similar looking empires.

Aside from planning the layout, workers force you to plan the order of improvement across your entire empire, trading off improvements in one area for improvements elsewhere. This gives you an inter-temporal planning problem, which is unique to a lot of civ decisions. To improve this aspect I would suggest making workers more expensive, and some improvements more time intensive.

The joy of civ to me is optimization and planning, so making the optimization problems more complicated, diverse, and frequent is the only thing that improves gameplay.

Honestly, I enjoy managing workers more than any other aspect of the game. If this was removed I would not play.

Absolutely agree with removing the worker units, they are an unnecessary feature at this point. Whatever benefit they add (protecting them, stealing them, considering when they should go where...) is imo more than weighted up by the convenience gained by removing them. Maybe a button could take us to a "improvement management mode", where we could place the improvements we want, and click and drag roads. All yield enhancing improvements would then be built by a citizen as soon as it is assigned to that tile (either by the player or the governor), and one citizen from each city would build forts and roads in its city area, reverting to normal work when they're all finished. This would let the player improve his land with far fewer clicks than the current system requires.

Btw, I'm also in favor of having no other "fiddly units", such as spies, missionaries or executives. I'd rather have these handled by some sort of "assign mission"-screen,and have the map reserved for military units.

Although I like the worker system as-is, I thought of this after reading the "workers build cities" thread": You could do both. Have the city improve the tiles around existing cities per whatever focus system Firaxis comes up with, and also keep workers as a unit that must be trained(built) in a city in order to do special things like improving tiles too far away from the city to connect resources, build new cities, and even things like canals, or do terra-forming (I've often thought it would be cool to have the ability to turn a mountain into plains and use the soil to fill in a coastal tile. Also, why not be able to make a lake tile by damming a river? Instead of just workers they could be engineers. Thoughts?

And I know the map is set at generation and does not update, but just because it doesn't, that doesn't mean it is impossible. They just haven't done it yet.