Automated workers ruined me

[Nocturno14]

So.. I started a terra map, huge, with 4 other civs and 6 city states. I started in umm.. Pennsylvania... or some other keystone state ,dunno (I'm from Croatia <.<).
And it went pretty well... I decided to build all of my cities or as many possible, at the coast, so when I secure the Americas I can build a naval super-force and occupy 4 hostile capitals at the same time with a daring ambiguous strike My policy plan was -> tradition > the thingy for wonder building > all of liberty > alot of commerce > and 3/5 social order
So, the first civ I met was Gandhi... Since he is a pus*y I attacked him in the Renaissance and turned his cities into puppets. Yey, I had North America.. Then I started moving around settlers, mass workers (remember this) and enjoy my 4. reich.

But.. I started going bankrupt.. and my happiness was from 1 to -7. At the other hand my Japanese neighbor who was in Africa had 11k gold and 50 happiness (WTH?).. I was playing on lvl 5 I think.. the one where the AI gets a "slight" advantage. Anyway, I was doomed... And I think I figured out what the problem was.. Those pesky workers !
I've put the on autopilot and when I took a look at the capital, 3 tiles next to him were empty.. Nothing built on..and similar sh*t everywhere... What a disappointment.. I exited and deleted the save games out of frustration

Does anyone else have any complaints ?

 

[elthrasher]

Autoworkers are really bad. Don't use them. You're better off just running a few workers and manually controlling them (as opposed to a large number of automated ones).

Also, Pennsylvania is indeed the Keystone State.

 

[stormerne]

You mean... you trusted... ? In the AI ???

 

[Nocturno14]

You mean... you trusted... ? In the AI ???

 

[biohazard72]

Have automated workers EVER been recommended in any civ game? And that was without 1UPT, and where every improvement was positive. I tried automated workers in Civ5 once (after nearly everything was done), and they gutted my economy by railing everywhere.

It really doesn't take long to micro workers. Since improvements take a while without stacking, even with a good fleet you're rarely issuing more than a couple orders in a turn.

 

[Skwink]

Automating workers ruined you.

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

I exited and deleted the save games

Rage quit like a boss

Also, yeah, never automate workers. If you're getting annoyed having to tell them what to do all the time, deleting some would be better than putting the AI in charge.

 

[Kyroshill]

I second all of the above... never automate workers

 

[Ataxerxes]

Have automated workers EVER been recommended in any civ game? And that was without 1UPT, and where every improvement was positive. I tried automated workers in Civ5 once (after nearly everything was done), and they gutted my economy by railing everywhere.

It really doesn't take long to micro workers. Since improvements take a while without stacking, even with a good fleet you're rarely issuing more than a couple orders in a turn.

Agree. I played a lot of Civ3 and 4. I never even considered automating them. There are few areas the AI failed at so badly. Worker management is one of the biggest advantage the human has over the AI. Don't throw it away.

 

[Guru-Meditation]

Another thing that shows that Civ 5 was shipped in the Beta stage.

Automated workers were never as good as manually controlling, but in Civ5 they are grossly incompetent.

 

[stormerne]

I once thought I'd try an experiment with automating workers in Civ5 after the latest patch. In retrospect, I should have taken some screenshots...

I'd captured the cities of a distant civ, on the same land mass, on my way to a cultural victory (which eventually became a domination victory because I got bored). I thought I'd set a worker in one of my original home cities to automatic. It vanished! I eventually found it trying to cross the mountain passes, alone and unescorted, en route to the captured cities at least 30 hexes away.

 

[Armor (Veteran)]

Automated workers in IV weren't the smartest, but they wouldn't bankrupt you like MC Hammer, either. Especially if you told them not to overwrite existing improvements so they wouldn't farm over your towns.

V just seems like it launched WAY too early. It's really hard to see how thinks like this and the similarly overspending puppet states (since patched) were not caught in testing, given how blindly obvious the problems were the first time you'd play the game.

 

[Icekiller]

The automated workers is really a nightmare.
Though useing worker in manual way is boring, I suggest not to use automated worker in any time.

 

[Rudster816]

A tip to keep worker visits to a minimum is to make sure when they need to do multi-turn moves, have the computer calculate the route and automate it. Just point the worker toward the nearest unworked tile and forget about him until you have to click the improvement you want to build.

 

[MuteWolf]

The worker AI isn't really much worse in V than it was in IV, not to say it was good in either. The thing that makes them so much worse is that now when they decide to carpet your continent with roads and rails you have to pay for all of it.

 

[troytheface]

always automate

really try to build just one or no wrker or steal one

then automate

in single- automate- in multi - automate

those that can automate and win can leave micro-move -worker- around- players fumbling with their dreams of a pasture

the evidence is clear- Automation- for the superior

 

[MykC]

I like to minimize the micromangement of my cities and workers so I tend to "default" and "automate". The point I start automating all my workers is around the time the number of captured workers I have is like 20, my core cities have their landed developed well and I'm in a comformtable position and focusing on military campagins.

If I just do your standard rifle rush then I will automate workers around T125-150. Automated workers, suck. I don't know why its so hard for the CIV developers to make them do what I want. It isn't even a complicated programming issue or would it be noticiably in the least in terms of performance. I mean just apply the extra thought to my workers and have the AI workers still leave land near their major cities undeveloped or full of trading posts.

An example of some global options for your workers:

Please select how your workers chooses to where to develop:
The nearest undeveloped tile
The nearest undeveloped tile within X tiles
Undelevoped tiles within current city borders
Undeveloped tiles closests to city X

How should do you want your workers to develop tiles:
General Priority: Farm, Lumbermill, Mine, Trading Post, maximize food/production yield, total yield, food yield, production yield, etc.
Apply order to specific tiles: (River, Hills), etc.

Special Priorities (highest priority):
1. Connect, unconnected cities with roads or railroads
2. Developing luxory resources and strategic resources

Workers will not:
Cut down trees, jungle, cut down trees on tundra, cut down trees with animals, build trading posts, build roads, develop outside cultural borders, will not build roads to city states

 

[firecat318]

I usually manually control workers for the first 100 turns or until I get engineering for lumber mills. I haven't noticed my workers making very dumb decisions. They'll always put a lumbermill on a forest, always put a mine on a hill, always put a trading post on plains or grassland, and always put a farm next to a grassland river.... same thing that I would do. Just make sure you go into the options and have them NOT redo improvements that you've already done... that can be frustrating.