automate workers?

adog

Prince
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
442
I've always automated them, just because it seems so tedious to control all of them. But I activate them every once in a while when something has to get done immediately.
 
I don't automate workers. EVER. It is horribly inefficient, and really slows down your progress. After I have rails I do use the "Automate Clear Damage" button repeatedly on a stack of workers to clear pollution. This way the workers go straigt to the pollution on their own. I'll re-fortify them when all of the pollution is gone. Generally at this point my workers are'nt doing much, just fortified and waiting for either pollution, or newly acquired territory to improve.

Again I point you to the War Academy. Here is an excellent article by Cracker on opening moves. It covers many aspects of the early game including expansion, worker moves, and production. Reading this made my skill level jump immediately.
There is also a very in-depth article on worker moves in .pdf format here (Also from the War Academy).
 
All vets will tell you that they will not automate anything in the game, and especially not workers. Automated workers do as the AI workers will do, you are basically letting your enemy handle your economy. And you remove any chance to be better than the AI, that will kill you above regent diffeculty becouse the AI gets bonuses and you do not.

The only exception is the clear polution option, but that is only becouse most games are already won by the time pollution starts popping up, so it no longer matters. But if it does matter, even that, the human can do more efficient.
 
The general "rule of thumb" is mine green, irrigate brown. There are some notable exceptions to this in the later parts of the game, but following that rule works well. Automated workers don't follow that rule, so you lose a lot of production in the early game when you need it most.

I used automated workers when I was new to Civ and they were always wandering into the territory of other civs, trying to improve their land, and I'd get warnings from the AI about "troop buildup" in their borders. :rolleyes:

Once you get used to managing workers yourself, you'll never want to go back to automating them, and it gets faster as you become familiar with doing it.
 
thanks, I've always automated, but won't from now, I just got tired of the workers doing ******ed stuff.
 
Automate some of them by the time you are done with all that needs to be cultivated/built. This is because of the pollution effect which is somewhat frustrating.
 
I first learned not automate my worker on this site!:)
Since then I find that I am able to play on a higher difficulty.

The thing is, that to play on a large map with all of your workers not automated can be tedious. One turn tends to take twice as long!
:cry:
 
The general "rule of thumb" is mine green, irrigate brown.
I hate when people keep on giving this advice :D The general rule is to think before doing something with your workers, otherwise just automate them and they'll do a better job :), and you'll be able to win on emperor and below if you do everything else right. First of all this rule is only for despotism when there is a tile penalty. In despotism if a tile is producing more then 2 food/shields/commerce one is taken away. This means that irrigting grass without food bonuses is pointless. That is where that rule actually comes from. But as soon as you get out of despotism (and this should be one of your primary goals in the early game) the tile penalty doesn't work any more and you should irrigate some grass tiles. If you mine all the grass your cities will have +2 fpt and will take forever to grow beyong size 7. But if you irrigate 2-3 grass tiles per city you'll have 4-5 fpt and you'll be able to get your cities to size 12 in the BC era. Note that you also need to MM your cities during this period because the governor always tries to balance production and growth which is just wrong :D After you maxed your population you can mine those tiles again and you can even put the governors on if you feel lazy. Another case is irrigating food bonuses - it does give you +food even despotism and as you know food is power in the early game. Always irrigate cows, wheat, game (after chopping down forest), etc. The lesser food bonuses such as wines will only work in despotism if they are on grass.
 
Thanks for pointing out the shortcomings of the "mine green, irrigate brown" advice, Obormot. In addition to understanding the Despotism penalty and what stage of development your city is in (emphasizing growth vs. emphasizing production), one should also consider how corrupt your city is. Distant conquered lands are often only going to provide one shield per turn on their own, and so should often be developed to mazimize food in order to support specialists, whether taxmen, scientists, civil engineers (if you want to build infrastructure in the late game -- say if you want to push for a culture victory, for example) or police (good for getting middlingly corrupt cities back to serious production).

Also, you should think about the limits of how big your city can get. Putting more than 24 food in any city before you get hospitals is wasted. (Of course, producing more than 24 food will help a city get up to 12 pop faster, but they're wasted after that.) So think -- how can I get the most shields (or specialists) out of my 24 food? Is it worth irrigating a grassland if that produces enough excess food that I can now place a worker on a mined mountain? The "mine green etc." advice only gets you average growth/production rather than maximized growth/production.

Also, if you're putting out an odd number of food, eventually you'll put your city in a growth/starvation cycle.

If you read Cracker's article, you'll find all kinds of vital info about the relative value of improved tiles. I never knew how useful mined plains were until I went back and re-read it.
 
Yes, of course the best thing to do is to irrigate all corrupt land and build ICS towns there. Then you can support scientists, pop-rush, draft, etc. This is quite tedious though (the most irritating thing in civ3 actually) and i was talking about the most basic MM that is a must for games above emperor.
 
Yes, there are exceptions to the general rule of mining green and irrigating brown, but it is usually stated as a general rule, that is, a very flexible one.

That bit of nit-picking aside, I'm with the majority on automation. Never automate anything. The human is usually smarter than the pooter in worker management.
 
Try not to automate your workers, even for pollution, I dare say, or you'll find them cleaning up some far-off volcano.
 
Hi. This is my first post. I generally don't automate any workers. Sometimes I automate a couple in the modern to clean up pollution, but I usually control them.
 
Never automate workers. Only automate them to clean pollution, but nothing else.

If you have spare workers, either make a SOD of workers, for quick use, or join cities with them.
 
Besides late game pollution patrol,there is only one time when you might consider automating workers,and its somewhat unpredictable,but if you ever find yourself barren of any water supply,an automated worker can irrigate without an adjacent water source.

Once you had your "spring well" you would de-automate.
 
Smash said:
Besides late game pollution patrol,there is only one time when you might consider automating workers,and its somewhat unpredictable,but if you ever find yourself barren of any water supply,an automated worker can irrigate without an adjacent water source.

Once you had your "spring well" you would de-automate.

Wait, doesn't the discovery of electricity allow irrigation without freshwater?
 
That would be an interesting and abusable glitch if true. I don't think it is though as in my games I have yet to notice the AI having irrigation where it shouldn't be able to.
 
I sometimes automate for rail roads, but only when I have already finished most of the rails near important cities. Less micromanaging and something the AI can't screw up, though it's still slow/inefficient.
I auto for pollution too.
 
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