Newly conquered ares. Do you rework tiles?

simple question, really. do you send in your army of workers to rebuild and rework the conquered cities? is the AI useless at city building, unable to create commerce or production cities?

Yes of course, the AI always builds too many workshops so you usually want to farm or cottage them.

I often find conquered cities have too many cottages, particularly plains ones, that haven't been worked and so some of those get turned into farms or workshops. Also I often have to plough through some improvements (even towns) to chain irrigate as the AI is really bad at that.

really depends ... if its not that bad i might overwork a few tiles but it really depends on how they do it

Yes.

But unlike the above respondents, I find the AI builds too many farms so I normally cottage or workshop them. So it seems that we agree the AI improves their cities incorrectly but we can't agree exactly what they do wrong

The AI towns are awful. At the same time I've seen AI towns with 12 population in the middle of the ice/tundra. Besides I have to disband many AI towns because of the city spamming they often are build just at just 2 tiles from each other. At the same time the next tile offers relatively good place for a town - but for unknown reason the AI often picks the worst possible tiles.

AndrewN said:

Yes.

But unlike the above respondents, I find the AI builds too many farms so I normally cottage or workshop them. So it seems that we agree the AI improves their cities incorrectly but we can't agree exactly what they do wrong

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I agree, also I gladly chop every single tree they've left me.

Even if the AI were good at city management, you may find you need to rework them;for instance, if you are running a specialist economy and the AI is working a cottage economy, you may need to rework. Your civics can impact how you want to build your towns.

Given that the AI city management is poor even relative to mid-strength Civ players, though, you want to strongly consider working them over.

Best wishes,

Bruenor

Sure I rework them.

With automated workers.

I occasionally find cities improperly specialized but a click of a governor is an automated worker improvement fest from being a strong city.

When I started as a beginner I used auto workers a lot. Then, I went to micro of all of them. Now, I'm tired of doing that and only micro them in the early game, having learned to use automation to decent results.

You should still find some way to optimize the cities you took though...otherwise why take them?

TheMeInTeam said:

You should still find some way to optimize the cities you took though...otherwise why take them?

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Well, really useless cities can still be useful (I know, contradiction but ) as a base of operation, i.e. to launch bombers from.
Or to block off enemy trade. Or to have a probable focal point for an enemy counterattack. Or just because it has a pretty name.
But these are all exceptional situations of course

Ericino said:

Well, really useless cities can still be useful (I know, contradiction but ) as a base of operation, i.e. to launch bombers from.
Or to block off enemy trade. Or to have a probable focal point for an enemy counterattack. Or just because it has a pretty name.
But these are all exceptional situations of course

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Those sound like situation-dependent optimizations to me .

TheMeInTeam said:

Those sound like situation-dependent optimizations to me .

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Lol you have a point there

I will rework them, with two exceptions:
1) When I hit the tipping point and the cities become redundant except for healing (the stack that just took it), and basing aircraft or whatever, as I am going to win no matter what. Then I just automate workers (with them not building over improvements, so they leave my cities alone).
2) When the tile is suboptimal, but not worth the opportunity cost to rework. Maybe they have a cottage on a tile I would prefer to be farmed (or work-shopped or whatever depending on the situation). While that farm might be better, it would cost the turns of moving the worker, and building the improvement, and whatever turns have been put into that cottage. Instead it may be better to leave it be and go improve a different city, or road or something. This especially appears just after railroad during the rush to get rails down, captured cities are not the priority if they have reasonable (but not great) improvements.

I'll do a complete re-work early in the game but once I really get moving with my conquering, I just don't want to spend the time managing my cities that will take until way past I win to be useful.

Pretty much BC era => Rework while AD era => Automate workers and hope for the best/ignore.

I guess, if you like micro managing, it is essential to rebuild tiles... Besides if AI had better worked cities, you would be the one that is being conquered