Auto Workers?

[dfer]

I am beginning to wonder if I am being a huge newb by just putting my workers on auto. I realized in a game I am currently playing as Montezuma that my workers have done a terrible job of connecting my cities with roads and have went crazy with trading posts leaving all my cities to have relatively low population.

1) Is it a huge newb thing to put on auto?
2) What dictates whether your workers will go trading post vs. farm? Usually it is much more even but this game it is unreal the ratio of post to farm.

 

[Chee]

I usually switch mine to auto after getting access to railways. I really cannot be bothered to lay them all down by that point so leave it to them (lazy, I know).

I just make sure game is set so they don't touch old improvements.

 

[Poomermon]

Some players don't ever use auto-workers because they are far more efficient if you direct them yourself. Personally I start turning them to auto-mode in mid-game when critical improvements are done and I can't think of immediate use for workers. I will assume direct control if something comes up like building a road for next invasion or settling a new city. It is just a matter of me being lazy I guess. Still for maximum potential don't automate them.

 

[Scars n Stripes]

Some players don't ever use auto-workers because they are far more efficient if you direct them yourself. Personally I start turning them to auto-mode in mid-game when critical improvements are done and I can't think of immediate use for workers. I will assume direct control if something comes up like building a road for next invasion or settling a new city. It is just a matter of me being lazy I guess. Still for maximum potential don't automate them.

I agree with this take on it. Basically, what you are assured of when you use the auto feature is that the AI will build for you whatever the usual "suggested" build is for that tile. For example, when you hover the pointer over the tile (I think you have to have the feature turned on for recommendations for improvements) it will say construct a trading post like 99% of the time.. Ok ok so that's a stretch but you get the point. I'd suggest to start looking at that, and see just how often you disagree with the suggested strategy the AI says to use. I find I barely ever agree unless it is like a special resource tile or something in which the improvement is already blatantly obvious.

 

[Amagius]

I am beginning to wonder if I am being a huge newb by just putting my workers on auto. I realized in a game I am currently playing as Montezuma that my workers have done a terrible job of connecting my cities with roads and have went crazy with trading posts leaving all my cities to have relatively low population.

1) Is it a huge newb thing to put on auto?
2) What dictates whether your workers will go trading post vs. farm? Usually it is much more even but this game it is unreal the ratio of post to farm.

I wouldn't worry about perception. Think about this though. How good is the opponent AI?

Civilization V isn't too complex; it's a fairly balanced game where there are very few non-choices. Each decision is a trade-off between gold, production, science, culture, military, and a few other factors. The differences between them are subtle, but they add up over turns.

When you set your workers to automate, you miss out on the beauty of trade-offs. Some occasions call for an extra food or two. Another time, you might need to trade that gold you're getting to pump out a building or military unit two turns quicker.

It isn't that Worker AI is horrible (debatable), but that those small differences can matter in your execution of tactics and strategy. It's easy to write off the value of three culture, two GE points per turn, a stone tile, a fogbusting Archer, or the spacing between two units. But, it scales. It adds up. God and the Devil live in those details.

Again, Worker AI isn't horrible, but you are settling for an average economic game each game. Automate them, but if you want to get better, you have to first move those %$*@ers around.

 

[Brichals]

If you set a city to gold focus, workers will prefer to build trading posts, if you set it to food they will prefer farms etc. This can give some control but I only do it once my cities have got all the tiles upgraded I care about. Otherwise they do do stupid stuff. Like try to build a road to a city state on the other side of the map. At this stage I prefer to disband workers than automate them.

If I do automate I have the don't go over old upgrades and dont chop forests ticked in options. Otherwise they do run riot.

A pain for me is when you puppet a city that city always goes on gold focus. But it is often full of farms. This equals rapid pop growth (unhappiness for you) but no gold. Here automated workers enabled to replace old improvements would be helpful, but they don't necessarily stay on that city. I manually replace farms with TPs in puppet cities unless I plan to annex them soon. This is boring of course.

We need an "only upgrade nearest city" option. Then I think it would actually be pretty good.

 

[MasterMishi]

1. yes its newby
2. the focus of the city

workers will ignore the fact that your city is already working all the tiles it will for 20 turns and start farming a standard grassland when unhappy, leaving a new resource like iron unmined!

agree that i will auto if im i na really busy clickfest war and cant take my eyes of the action or its late game and im already coasting to a win

CHOPPING forest early is such a massive advantage to get early hammers that it cannot be ignored.
At least learn to micro workers until you have lots of other important actions to manage.

 

[Brigg]

Do not do it, they form unions and increase your maint costs

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I always leave my workers at auto :/ I tried to keep manually do it but I don't knwo why I can't get comfortable with it, besides, I pretty much always go for the recommended improvement anyways.

 

[Mariner91]

Automating workers is not necessarily newbish, but know that you are (most likely) more intelligent than the AI

Be sure to at least set the city/ies to what you want it to concentrate on, so that workers working nearby will act appropriately. If you want them to create farms more than trading posts, set the city to concentrate on Food, for example.

I don't automate mine, but honestly, around mid game, I usually have workers either re-purposing some places (like changing farms to trading posts because I have surplus food from other sources) or just standing around smoking cigars doing nothing (and that's after deleting half of them).

 

[shaglio]

Manually ordering your workers is essential to win games on higher difficulties. I always try to order them manually, but usually get annoyed pretty early on and just automate them. Maybe that's why I've never beaten a game higher than Prince. So it all comes down to this: are you a player who strives to beat the game on the highest difficulty you can, or do you just like to kick back and kill a few hours playing a video game? There's no wrong answer to that question; it's all about personal preference. If you're happy not beating the game on Deity, then don't stress yourself out and just automate them. Otherwise, you might want to learn to start micromanaging them.

 

[FeiLing]

If people don't micro workers, citizens, hardly have any units and don't trade resources etc... is them sitting there pressing the next turn button 400 times until all the wonders have been build and choosing a social policy every now and then all they do when they play this game?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

If people don't micro workers, citizens, hardly have any units and don't trade resources etc... is them sitting there pressing the next turn button 400 times until all the wonders have been build and choosing a social policy every now and then all they do when they play this game?

I do that.. I don't micromanage my citienz, I don't manually work my workers.. and I hardly ever have any units except the ones stationed in my cities (and ocassionaly build an army to conquer a civ if it's annoying me) I also don't trade resources.

And I find it very fun, because the Diplomacy tends to be so unpredicatable... well. most of the time... and I always find a way to make it fun.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I do that.. I don't micromanage my citienz, I don't manually work my workers.. and I hardly ever have any units except the ones stationed in my cities (and ocassionaly build an army to conquer a civ if it's annoying me) I also don't trade resources.

And I find it very fun, because the Diplomacy tends to be so unpredicatable... well. most of the time... and I always find a way to make it fun.

I would get board to tears with this, but to each his own.

As others have said automating workers is incredibly inefficient. They don't build the most efficient trade routes, once you get railroads (which I rarely build) they will build them over ALL of your roads (regardless of your current gold income). They improve useless tiles you'll never use before good ones (I never improve non-resource desert tiles even when I have idle workers). All this slows down your development and wastes gold. The AI can afford to do this because of their bonuses, but the player cannot afford such waste above Prince.

Normally when I take over a big AI civ I rework their roads (making the most efficient path and deleting unnecessary roads). Normally by redoing their road systems I can increase my gold income by about .75 gold per city. If I puppet I also kill all their farms and TP any tile that has any gold income. If I annex I make the appropriate improvements for the city and ignore cities I'm razing.

By having workers improve useless tiles you're wasting worker turns (which cost gold). Normally by mid game if I haven't conquered a civ recently I wind up deleting most of my workers. By that stage in the game they normally only take a few turns to replace if I need them again and I save my self a lot in maintenance by keeping my worker population to a minimum.

So as others have said if you want to be able to progress from low difficulty levels you will have to manually control workers and get to the point where you're manually controller your citizens. However if you like playing at low difficulties it doesn't really matter.

 

[Mariner91]

If people don't micro workers, citizens, hardly have any units and don't trade resources etc... is them sitting there pressing the next turn button 400 times until all the wonders have been build and choosing a social policy every now and then all they do when they play this game?

Pretty much, lol

At this point, I usually read a book while waiting for the next turn to press Next


Seriously tho, this is only true for the first 50 turns, usually. After that, some AI moron's declaring war on you and you will have units to control

 

[civplay]

I autoworker once the main improvements are done then auto. Just make sure the don't change all ready build improvemts option is on. And when discover new resources or just in general need an imporvement build asap do it yourself. Just use common sense. Also who cares if anyone thinks its "newby"

 

[Kaosprophet]

I autoworker once the main improvements are done then auto. Just make sure the don't change all ready build improvemts option is on. And when discover new resources or just in general need an imporvement build asap do it yourself. Just use common sense. Also who cares if anyone thinks its "newby"

I'm actually curious to try leaving that 'don't change' option off and macro-controlling them late game through city focus - so I don't have to micro any mid or late-game repurposing. Leave one or two on manual for picking up newly uncovered resources ASAP, of course.

 

[joshua43214]

Reasons not to automate;
They will build railroads to puppets that are not strategic, and so do not need a RR.
They will build farms arround puppets potentialy giving you a massive happiness issue.
They will improve a tile, and then decide it needs something different, and re-improve it.
They will ignore a resource you want for trading.

If you play on higher difficulty, you really want to manage the workers, you want farms, mines, luxery resources built in a sensible order that balances cash, growth, and production. The AI sucks at this and you will almost always end up with something out of balance.

I automate when I have a huge puppet empire and it gets had to find a nearby tile to improve.
If you take rationalism - automating is very bad. You want your whole empire to be a huge carpet of trading posts. You need to crush every puppet sheep pasture, and then replace all the and farms, and mines with TP's. This will starve down the puppets, while giving you the research bonus. Only let puppets that you will annex late in the game keep any population. You can easily hit over a 1000beakers a turn doing this.

 

[snarzberry]

At this point, I usually read a book while waiting for the next turn to press Next

Heh, same here

Automating workers is bad. Civ is a game of lots of small decisions, like military unit control and build choices. Worker moves are part of that and in the early to mid game especially automating is not a good idea. The only time to automate is the time when you may just as well delete - the time when no worker moves will change the outcome of the game as you're just mopping up the last pieces, or are in such a strong position that it really doesn't matter.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I autoworker once the main improvements are done then auto. Just make sure the don't change all ready build improvemts option is on. And when discover new resources or just in general need an imporvement build asap do it yourself. Just use common sense. Also who cares if anyone thinks its "newby"

Even when all the main and not so main improvements are done it's still bad. Automated workers cost you maintenance and bring almost zero benefit. What to keep them for? Civ4 days when they could just cover everything with free roads are gone.
Personally I don't think I've ever automated a worker in Civ5. Usually I keep 2-3 at most for hooking up late resources and building roads to newly acquired cities and railroads. All the rest get deleted. If something unusually bizarre requires more work force later I'd better kick out couple of new ones really quickly than paying for centuries of idle time.