Are governors useful?

[rainmaker]

I have tried to use the governors to control such things as: mood, commerce, food production etc. I haven't seen much if ahy effect. Once I tried to use them to control mood but still had a city go into anarchy due to lack of an entertainer.

Does anyone use them in any meaningful way?

rainmaker

 

[WildFire]

Wrong forum

And I have never used them.

 

[stratego]

I always use my governor, to govern happiness. It doesn't produce shields as efficiently, but it saves my a lot of time, cuz I'm always at war.

 

[dojoboy]

I have to say no. I've not used them for some time now. Most elite players would poo-poo the use of them, encouraging the rest of us to manage things ourselves to capitalize productivity.

 

[zeeter]

I do the same thing with Happiness. Plus, I tell them never to build any wonders and to rebuild previous unit. When you neglect to notice that a city six squares from your capital has begun the Forbidden Palace you will set this too.
Sure, if I went to every city every turn it would be more efficient, but how fun would the game be that way?

 

[handy900]

Lately I'm playing Huge maps where you wind up with loads of cities, so I'm using the city govenor in the totally corrupt cities to maximize food and manage worker happiness. The only thing I ever build in these cities is workers that either go join a productive city or improve my empire. Occasionally I'll build a settler also.

I micro-manage my core high production cities with one exception. I'll let the govenor manage happiness in productive cities if I'm in a long war that will last awhile and am facing growing war weariness.

 

[thedirk]

I tend to micromanage things. I usually disagree with the governor anyway (like builing the FP next to the capital).

 

[gunnerxtr]

i find them usefull to help prevent nuclear meltdowns because when u have the governer moniter happiness there is never disorder in the city

 

[denyd]

The best use of a governor is in a newly conquered city. Turn on the governor's happiness option. You'll reduce the number of times a city goes to disorder and won't have to monitor the city every turn. After all restistance is over, you can turn off the governor and take control of the city yourself. They are also quite useful in cities with Nuclear Plants to prevent disorder and possible meltdowns.

 

[jeffelammar]

I find that for most midsized cities in the late game the governor will do exactly what I want.

In the late game I usually turn all cities to governor control, then immediately do a run through all cities and change those which are not doing what I want to manual.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Using the governor to control happiness works all the time to prevent disorders. The only exception seems to be sometimes when you lose a luxury while it was not your turn (AI cut your road, for example).

I use governors all the time later on in the game. It is definitely not fun micromanaging those >50% corrupt cities, especially when you start (or have well exceeded) the optimal number of cities, and especially on the larger maps.

Never let the governor control production. Don't let him decide what to build. You can set his priorities just to make what pops up in the build queue more likely to be what you want, but you should still want to see the pop-up, so you can verify what the city is building. "Always build previously built unit" works good, but I have noticed a few bugs with it.

 

[Clown2TheLeft]

I use them frequently. I let them manage citizen moods often and generally have them emphazising production. I will, however, take control of a few cities that I especially need to watch for one reason or another (building a wonder, newly captured and bloated to culture-flipping size, a few other reasons...).

Later!

--The Clown to the Left

 

[Pembroke]

I don't use governors. They simply can't make the right decisions regardless whether they are optimizing production or growth. Neither will they minimize/balance them against turns (e.g. output/turn * turns should be exactly the cost of a unit/improvement or the amount needed for growth.) Nor have they heard about the possibility of switching worked tiles shared between two cities.

Ok, I confess, I'm a pea counter. What else is new?

OTOH I play with double corruption (i.e. halved ONC) so there are less core cities to micromanage.

I'd be happy to give the micromanagement to the governors if they had a shred of sense in them. I mean optimizing shield/food output doesn't require intelligence. It's a simple matter of adding up the figures, so it ought to be a perfect job for a computer...

 

[stratego]

In one of my games, I order my governors in all cities to never build stealth bombers, but still they continue to build them.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I often let them control happiness. I'm way to lazy to check manually which cities 'll grow each turn and need an extra entertainer.

Controling production is a big no-no. They've got absolutely zero sense of priority.

 

[Gainy]

I say poo-poo to governors

 

[Sodfather]

As many above me have probably said (God forbid I should read their posts. ), using governors is like automating your workers. If you want it done right, do it yourself.

 

[PolishAssassin]

governors suck. they never build the right things. although i do automate my workers cuz i have tons of em and i cant keep track of them!

 

[dreamdeferred]

Governors are more useful than the game manual.

 

[WickedSmurf]

I never ever use them. Never. Probably why my games last so gdmn long... =/