Utilizing Workers Past The Early Game

[Opies]

Sorry I don't have any saves or screenshots, but I'm wondering if anyone has any general advice about utilizing workers past say, the first 80-90 turns. It's pretty evident in the early game that ok, you got to improve those resource tiles, grab some hills for production, some river grass for farms, or some river tiles for cottages. But once you move past that, and you have a few cities down and their main resource tiles are improved, how do you make decisions for what to do with workers?

I find myself often in games, where I have lets say, 5 cities down, they are all size 4-6, and each have size±1 tiles improved. How do you decide what to do with workers? I find myself with my cities roaded together, all resources roaded into the network, and my cities working improved tiles. Now what? Do I chop jungle? Do I ready cottages for future city growth? Do I prep the land for a city I'm going to place in 10 turns? Do I connect my roads to neighbors? (does that even do anything?) I find myself lackadaisically sending workers out and about to do various things with no real amount of thought put into it.

I know the question is very vague, very situational, and hard to answer, so I'm just wondering if anyone has any kind of overall strategy for how to deploy and utilize workers once the obvious tasks are all completed.

Again, sorry, I know this is kind of a bad question to ask, and maybe it doesn't really have an answer and I just need to figure it out on my own, but it is something I feel could be lacking in my games. Do you very good players out there find you always have a good idea what your workers need to do next? Or am I not alone in just shooting them around randomly to do tasks that may or may not be beneficial in the short term.

 

[CaF]

I know this kind of problem: you add the "important tiles" to a city, connect your stuff with roads and now what?

some things come to mind:

- Prepare irrigation farms. At some point you will be irrigating your distant agriculture tiles, might as well start now.
- roading all hills for later windmill/mine switches with rep parts / railroad
- partially workshop over cottages in case you already "plan" on a space victory and you have metal casting. I mean at some point you will steam roll your cottages, might as well pre-improve? But who does that this early in the game?



Special case: you expect a war on your territory:
- get rid of jungle close borders. Even better: modify the jungle so it creates a "path" to to your walled hill city. The AI loves defensive bonusses when moving the stack
- roading borders

I'm interested in what others say to this topic. I find myself doing a lot of weird things with my workers, even turning some into automated trade networkers and all that until basically civil service and replaceable parts.

 

[-Asterix-]

Your cities should keep growing larger over time when more happiness is available so there should be plenty of improving to do in advance. I rarely find my workers to be totally useless due to improving everything necessary until very late.

One thing you didn't mention is pre-chopping (and roading) forests if you happen to have any left.

 

[joanne]

Around that time I start planing out irrigation chains in preparation for Civil Service for future growth, and think of where to start plopping workshops/mills in designated hammer cities. On normal speed I like stacking them to groups of 2-5 so they finish improvements in exactly one or two turns with minimal turns wasted and less worker micro; for example when I chain irrigate, whenever possible I stack them into groups of 5 and shift-click farm->move->farm->move... orders into their move queue so I can forget about them until they finish, then if I need them for other tasks I split them into groups of 2 or 3.

Other than that, if I'm content with my improvements I set them to "build trade network," or automate them with the "automated workers leave forests" and "automated workers leave old improvements" options checked.

Very rarely If I feel I have too many workers, like from earlier conquests, and I'm expecting war I save them for later use as bait

 

[vicawoo]

Irrigation and workshops are useful. But sometimes you still have too many, which suggests you've built too many (or captured) workers.

Some less useful things to do with workers:
Scout the enemies with them, least path roads, strategic forts for defense and anticipating resources, roading hills.

 

[rah]

Build a few forts on the border to use as airbases for bombers if you're in turtle mode.
Keep 5 or so sleeping in a city to respond to sabotage.

As much as people complained about road spam to the point that the devs actually thought it was a good idea to discourage in V, road spam everything for defensive purposes.

When I get bored directing them, I automate some for network connection, some for automate. (don't remove forests and don't modify modified land.) And then sleep some in a city so if I get into a war I have some left after I lose the rest due to inadvertent acting as BAIT.

 

[Seraiel]

I've never found myself in the situation where I didn't know what to do with my Workers. I guess, that you whip too much and don't let the cities grow enough.

 

[civvver]

If you have nothing to do with workers then you aren't settling enough cities or letting your cities grow or possibly building too many workers. Prechopping is a decent task for idle workers on epic and marathon (on normal a chop is only 3 turns so you lose 2 just moving onto the tile twice, not worthwhile).

 

[Opies]

Thanks for the tips guys. I think maybe I made too many workers this last game that inspired me to ask this. The problem was I only had 1 happy resource, so my cities were max size 5/6, and I had nothing to build in cities beside military units/workers/settlers, so I went with workers to avoid over-growth or having to over-produce military.

Any advice for what to do in that spot? Is it best to just make military if you are in that spot without anything to build, pre-currency, and just do a small attack on someone?

 

[Seraiel]

Building too much Military before Currency is not advisable imo. I would just suck up the overgrowth with some very large whips. If you had Alpha, maybe build Research and tech something large giving important buildings like MC or CoL and once you've reached that, kill half of the Population with whipping those buildings. Forges would also ease your Happiness-problem, CoL otoh eases your Economy and makes you rdy to support those units. Don't know how much place there was on the map, but that early, you normally should still be able to rex, so why not build Settlers?

Sera

 

[Opies]

Building too much Military before Currency is not advisable imo. I would just suck up the overgrowth with some very large whips. If you had Alpha, maybe build Research and tech something large giving important buildings like MC or CoL and once you've reached that, kill half of the Population with whipping those buildings. Forges would also ease your Happiness-problem, CoL otoh eases your Economy and makes you rdy to support those units. Don't know how much place there was on the map, but that early, you normally should still be able to rex, so why not build Settlers?

Sera

At this point I had I think 6 cities, and space for 2 more, but pre-currency, the money was tight. I think I was already down to 30% maybe on the slider, running scientists in my food heavy cities to make up the research deficit. Even with 6 cities I was running out of worker tasks because I think I had nearly a dozen workers.

I think you're right and I should have just sucked up the overpopulation. I'm guess I'm pretty fearful of it, but probably because I'm not really sure how it works. Is it just -2 food from the angry extra citizen? I always assumed there are more negative consequences but I'm not sure.

I think in the future I will just put more thought into what to produce in the cities, and try to grab alpha sooner if possible. I think maybe my issue was that after teching Aes, I moved onto a new tech, and the AI won't trade alpha for aes on emperor since they are both 468 beaker or w/e. If I had just put a few turns into alpha I could have gotten it much sooner and started building research instead. It's things like this that I don't really think about while I'm playing the game. I kind of get into a one track mindset and it backfires on me a lot.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I think you're right and I should have just sucked up the overpopulation. I'm guess I'm pretty fearful of it, but probably because I'm not really sure how it works. Is it just -2 food from the angry extra citizen? I always assumed there are more negative consequences but I'm not sure.

It's -2 food and the loss of whatever that angry fellow could have been doing - being a specialist, farming more food, generating production in a mine, or whatever. So, you might as well whip him away to build something useful.

At this point I had I think 6 cities, and space for 2 more, but pre-currency, the money was tight. I think I was already down to 30% maybe on the slider, running scientists in my food heavy cities to make up the research deficit. Even with 6 cities I was running out of worker tasks because I think I had nearly a dozen workers.

In this situation, there is nothing wrong with settling the additional cities and running the research slider all the way down to zero for a bit, while you put things in order. With a couple more cities, those extra workers would have had plenty to do.

 

[Seraiel]

It's -2 food and the loss of whatever that angry fellow could have been doing - being a specialist, farming more food, generating production in a mine, or whatever. So, you might as well whip him away to build something useful.

Not 100% true. Every citizen costs 1 , so if one is already very short on that (which he wasn't if running 30%) every pop can make the difference. But generally it's right, one doesn't have to fear overpopulation as it's only some Food that gets wasted, and it doesn't even get that, if building Workers / Settlers, because then, the unhappy citizen doesn't eat :> .

In this situation, there is nothing wrong with settling the additional cities and running the research slider all the way down to zero for a bit, while you put things in order. With a couple more cities, those extra workers would have had plenty to do.

As long as he has Alpha and can build Research that is right imho, but he didn't. I also go down to 0% and sometimes even negative GPT while expanding, but I do that shortly before I build the GLH, with having Currency or at least Alpha. Expanding further than 6-8 cities without those is not good imho, I remember that one game where I oracled Theology in 2400 BC and after that went broke, and I had 2 Golds and 4 Cottages in my Capital.

I think in the future I will just put more thought into what to produce in the cities, and try to grab alpha sooner if possible. I think maybe my issue was that after teching Aes, I moved onto a new tech, and the AI won't trade alpha for aes on emperor since they are both 468 beaker or w/e. If I had just put a few turns into alpha I could have gotten it much sooner and started building research instead. It's things like this that I don't really think about while I'm playing the game. I kind of get into a one track mindset and it backfires on me a lot.

You have to test a little bit and do some Math. Take a game where you have Currency, trade 2 Techs of equal value, and see, how much Gold the AI wants to have from you. 1 is 1 that you have to invest to get the trade. By that, you can calculate the value of your techs for the AI, i. e. on Deity, your techs are worth 70% of their value when trading with AI. That's very easy Math imho, just multiply your tech-cost with 0.7 (should be higher on Emperor) and you know how much you have to research in the tech you want.

Sera

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

What I tend to do is ROAD EVERY FREAKING TILE EVER until I have CS so I can farm green tiles. But after that they get the good ole automate.

 

[Keilah]

sounds like you're building too many workers and/or teching/growing too slowly.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Don't let them fool you OVER building workers is NOT a bad thing! 3-4 Workers a city gets your empire going fast, but you will have a lot late game that do nothing.

 

[coanda]

Don't let them fool you OVER building workers is NOT a bad thing! 3-4 Workers a city gets your empire going fast, but you will have a lot late game that do nothing.

Over building workers is definitely a bad thing. It's not nearly as bad as under-building workers, but it's still bad. Each worker is 60 hammers/food, plus the delayed growth potentially. Particularly in the Ancient/Classical/Medieval period, that's a big cost.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Over building workers is definitely a bad thing. It's not nearly as bad as under-building workers, but it's still bad. Each worker is 60 hammers/food, plus the delayed growth potentially. Particularly in the Ancient/Classical/Medieval period, that's a big cost.

When you are chopping them out, and whipping them out in 1 turn to get your cottages up and more chops to get out more settlers so you can get to 6 cities before the AI takes every thing it's fine. Think of it as pre building workers for your next cities.

 

[rah]

Or when you are eliminating civs (since playing with the no vassal option on) and their last city has like 8 workers in it. You can end up with a lot of excess workers. I only build a few a game since you can steal them early and get the rest through conquest. Why waste those hammers building them. It seem like a waste.

 

[ahcos]

I've found it pretty useful to build alot of roads INTO the enemy territory if i plan to destroy them. Especially when there's alot of jungle/desert between you and the enemy, the AI tends to not road over these tiles. As soon as you conquer the first cities, you'll be glad you've built the roads. Another aspect here would be to chop spare jungle tiles, so the enemy can't camp out near your cities (2-3 tiles range of your cities/most important roads).