Automated workers...Good or Bad?

[BAD MOJO]

In several the few games I've played i put every worker i pump out on auto right off the gate.
According to the manual they build the best improvement they can on the tile they proced to work on.
After reading quite a few of the post over here I realize this might be a bad idea at least at the begining of the game.
Is this a correct assumption or leaving them on auto makes little difference?

 

[Volstag]

Well, generally speaking, I think it's better to manually control your workers... at least until the later stages of the game (or when they have absolutely nothing better to do). Just make sure you select the "keep old improvements" flag.

 

[Oni]

I like the networking auto and use it once I have a few workers. After I have many I use the standard auto. I have no complaints, but I am not watching them like a hawk as I have better things to do... but I guess that is the purpose of automating them

 

[BAD MOJO]

Thanks for the tip.
Where is the flag?
I'm not home right now so I can't double check
And should I prioritise cottages over food?

 

[Volstag]

Thanks for the tip.
Where is the flag?
I'm not home right now so I can't double check
And should I prioritise cottages over food?

You can find it under the options menu. As for your second question: that totally depends on what you need. If the city is growing slowly, or having food problems, you'll want to build farms, etc. If you're cash poor, or have no food issues, build cottages. In short: there's no hard 'n' fast rule.... but some would probably argue that, in the early stages of the game, city growth is more important than cash. YMMV, of course.

 

[Arkanin]

I'd just add that early, food can be important (it depends -- too much food can almost be a problem before you assign specialists), but by the mid-game, you should probably have far more cottages than farms, especially if you're trying to compete in the technology race.

 

[guspasho]

Will workers cut down forests if automated? I don't think I'd mind automating them as long as I had control over what forests got chopped and when, since they provide health and don't grow back easily.

 

[Brutus2]

Do you find that workers make good choices in the mid game about replacing old improvments? I dont usually bother with windmills, watermills, lumber mills or workshops because I usually have all tiles within city radius improved and have "Keep old improvments" turned on.

Should i trust the automated workers to know when to rip out my old improvments for something better?

 

[Elhoim]

The only thing that I don´t like is that they still put a road in every tile... It should be SMAC style, with automatization options, were you could check what you want them to build and what not...

 

[bayareastank]

Yes workers cut down forest when automated. I think they're good doing the trade routes automated. In the early stages i like to control them because i'm trying to accomplish some specific things. But once a city gets established, i set them on automated so i can concentrate on my expansion cities.

 

[Aurelius321]

I'm with elhoim, I think there needs to be some mircomanagement of the Automated Workers in Civ4. In Civ3 I didn't mind if my city which was previously completely surrounded by mines (do to lack of fresh water source before tech would let me irrigate) be replaced with some farms... But this new game has a heavy focus on resources and resource management. If you have KOI off than you can get screwed out of a fort or a cottage later in the game, but if you have KOI on your going to have no windmills, watermills, lumbermills or workshops later (IMHO these later in the game improvements are worth having)

 

[Astax]

Manual is the best. I only go auto when I really stop caring cause its giving me a headache

 

[MerakSpielman]

The only thing that I don´t like is that they still put a road in every tile... It should be SMAC style, with automatization options, were you could check what you want them to build and what not...

Yeah, they do this, but it doesn't bother me too much. I like having roads everywhere because it's harder for pillagers to cut off cities. If you have a city with 2 roads connecting it to your trade network, it just takes two *snips* to cut them off.

However, mass-producing roads should be at the bottom of the priority list for bored workers.

 

[Pinstar]

In addition to having the ability to limit what your automated workers can do...I wish they could do the same for my cities. I hate to turn a city on auto-build and have the first thing they produce be a settler when all the neutral land is filled already.

 

[gravix]

Manually managing your workers can be a pain (especially if you are playing on a large map and have a lot of terrain to improve), but in automating them you give up a lot of the human advantage. It's impossible to prioritize improvements if your workers are automated, and it's more difficult to specialize cities when you don't decide which improvements to place.

On higher difficulty levels, you will certainly want to manually control every worker until all your terrain is improved.

 

[Rellin]

Really bad.

 

[Vizzini]

I can think of no worse strategy than to automate my workers at the beginning of a game... or even the middle of a game. They're guaranteed to make really bad decisions.

Late late late game I'll automate workers, because by then (with KOI active) it usually no longer matters what they do.

 

[JaniSpetke]

I used to automate my workes in Civ III, since there were nice features like "No Altering" and such.

At first I MM'ed my workers in Civ IV, got bored and automated them. As a result, stupid workers removed my strategically placed Forts and replaced them with mines.
I didn't notice that until I was attacked by evil Spanish. Conquistadors just wiped my first defenders since they were standing on a bare ground!
So I just need to MM my citizens to protect them from their own stupidity!

 

[Abacus]

I've never automated workers, even in SMAC. But in this game I've been running out of things for them to do and putting them to sleep. There might be some small advantage in automating them with KOI rather than having them do nothing, if they didn't love to cut down forests.

I might use an option to "automatically build X" - like watermills - if it existed.

(Off topic, but in SMAC the one option I really wanted, plant fungus, also didn't exist!)

 

[hahntsak]

I generally manually control them only for few reasons:
chop forests to rush early projects
build roads between early cities
prioritize resource developement. [marble, stone, horses]
later on auto can leave me to more important things.

workers can also just happen to walk into that nearby village if your scout or warrior exploring missed it. [manually]