Automating cities - how many of you have actually tried it?

[Ibian]

One of my biggest problems with civ is that the more successful my game is, the more time i spend managing my cities instead of looking at the big picture in my empire.

I know it is commonly accepted around here that automating almost anything is bad, and for the most part i agree, but when you have a dozen cities or more just how much of a benefit can there be to microing every little tile in every single commerce city if it has already been set to focus on commerce? Has anyone actually tried some automated games to get something to compare to?

 

[HoustonsOwn]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=284027&highlight=dubya+automate

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I always tell it what to produces (often using queue or loops). Start practicing using the governor. You'd be surprised how combinations of emphasize priorities can get the tiles to shift around...sometimes EXACTLY how you like or very close. Top ones are emphasize food, great people, hammers, and commerce for me.

Note that the above affects worker automation also - to get a feel for this, worldbuilder in an island, give yourself all techs, a bunch of cities, and a bunch of workers. Try automating the cities with emphasize, and watch how the workers improve them differently, and also which tiles the city elects to work. Automation wastes a lot of worker turns, however if you use emphasize the cities turn out surprisingly well if you know what you're doing. Usually my early cities are manual but as time goes on more and more things get effectively automated.

This is also why a lot (most) of my games are less than 4 hours.

 

[DaveMcW]

I turn the governor on every time I look at a city. Then I play with the emphasize buttons until she gets it right.

Sometimes she just won't get it, so I cry silently and assign the citizens myself.

 

[Ibian]

Ba... wha? The workers actually pay attention to what the city is doing and adjust accordingly?

If thats true then there seems to be very little reason not to automate your run of the mill commerce city and just run the military ones manually, plus maybe my super science city and GP farm if i have those. Time to get some test games in.

 

[Joshua368]

If I have a large sprawling empire in a military game, and the whole thing is already won and I'm just wrapping it up, then yes I'll automate my cities' production just to speed things along. I also automate my workers, but usually only after already carefully improving all the tiles in my cities' fat crosses myself, letting the workers take care of roading everything and creating lumbermills when that time comes. (though I'll usually railroad by hand) And yes of course I have them leave old improvements and forests.

Whatever you do though do not automatic city production while in universal sufferage. Those greedy governors will empty your wallet faster than you can blink.

 

[dutchfire]

I turn the governor on every time I look at a city. Then I play with the emphasize buttons until she gets it right.

Sometimes she just won't get it, so I cry silently and assign the citizens myself.

She?

(Of course, you are probably running the Emancipation civic most of the time...)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't know about you, but all of MY governors are *really* attractive women. I have a hiring bias and in my empire that's legal, because I rule by decree. Some are even intelligent! However, all have to do what they're told...

 

[Bleys]

Sarah Palin is my city Governess, thats why I make my own decisions!!

Ba-dum-DUM!

Seriously though, I dont mind the pop-ups in between turns, I tend to know in my head what I am focusing on, so it goes quickly. Occasionally, I get into a certain "mood", like "ok, I can build Factories now, but I havent built a single Aqueduct", so I go through all my cities and the bigger ones get an Aqueduct queued up in front of the line. I wish I could get into the habit of doing that a few turns before the tech comes in, so when it is finished, I can build those Factories ASAP in my production cities without wasting a few turns building the Ducts.

I have also noticed (mostly from looking at my autolog posts) that I tend to whip in cycles, like over half my cities in a single turn. I didnt even realize I did this til I saw an autolog and it had these "chunks" of whipping messages, then none for a long while, then another big chunk of them, heh.

 

[Crighton]

The "Whipping Cycle" should be re-named to the "Harvest Season" or somesuch.

Personally I don't automate mainly since I don't trust the computer, I usually qeue up the best choices in production then let it do it's thing. I manually control the workers on improving tiles, but after things are the way I wan't them I tell the to go road-building or just put them to sleep.

 

[wannabewarlord]

Funnily enough I used to micro everything myself. Then I saw in a lot of screenshots by a lot of (supposedly) skilled players that the governor button was always highlighted (activated) so I thought "if they do it that way, it can't be that bad". So now I am having the governor run my cities with emphasize buttons just as TMIT explained, and it works wonders (not the world ones...). the only thing I do is to force specialists, since sometimes he has odd ideas about assigning them. Of course build queues and workers are handled by myself. So far I haven't had any problems and I play Monarch now (just switched recently).

cheers,
wannabewarlord

 

[Iranon]

It works quite well on the whole, I'm only running into trouble during the late game when I put down filler cities everwhere never intending to work any land with them (for freebies and corporations). They tend to steal tiles from established cities when I'm not looking.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Funnily enough I used to micro everything myself. Then I saw in a lot of screenshots by a lot of (supposedly) skilled players that the governor button was always highlighted (activated) so I thought "if they do it that way, it can't be that bad". So now I am having the governor run my cities with emphasize buttons just as TMIT explained, and it works wonders (not the world ones...). the only thing I do is to force specialists, since sometimes he has odd ideas about assigning them. Of course build queues and workers are handled by myself. So far I haven't had any problems and I play Monarch now (just switched recently).

cheers,
wannabewarlord

Emphasize specialists will work if you force one of the kind you want. Any time you force a specialist (so that the icon surrounding it is highlighted), the city will ONLY assign that specialist type. If you want multiple types (say, both merchants and scientists) just go one of each. Usually people farm 1 kind though such as caste system + scientists in a GP farm. If you're doing that the governor will work great with emphasize great people provided you highlight a scientist so that's all it can run!

 

[Joshua368]

How do you make it so the governor automatically picks the scientist in all the cities? Is there anyway to have it highlight them nationwide without going through every city? It can be a pain if I get mercantilism/statue of liberty and I have to go around removing all the spy specialists.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't know of any way that you can do that...as far as I can tell it isn't possible in default civ. You could try the "emphasize science" button but that will interact ponderously with other emphasize buttons in some situations.