Automating Workers

[greenday_234]

I'm just wondering, do automated workers know what they're doing? I've been contemplating turning it on but they seem to want to do things that don't make sense to me. A few I've noticed:

• My worker recommended that I build a farm on a desert hill tile, where to me it'd make more sense to place a mine?
• My workers seem to want to put trading camps on...well everything...Plains tiles especially. Don't I want farms on those?

So does this make sense and I just don't know what I'm doing or is it the other way around?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

I never turn on Auto nothing in CiV games, they do stupid things for instance, will be working a tile on ring 3 in north ring, rather then do a normal thing and move one Hex, it moves to ring 3 south. Plus like you noticed, it does not mine where I want mines. Scouts, do not get me started, I sent an atuo scout out, all kinds of fog everywhere, it goes down south, there is one little piece off fog it can not reach, rather then move on, it moves one square then back, it did this for 189 turns, i finally took pity and moved him myslef, and yes i wanted to see how long he would stay, as far as I know he would have stayed there till end game.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I never auto anything either. When I have tried it with scouts they always end up in coastal water when there is still land to explore. "What are you doing there, little scout? You can't cross oceans. Go explore that fog patch on land."

 

[Khadroth]

It's been my experience that they build roads suboptimally, prefer farms to trading posts, and tend to manuever themselves right into unescapable situations with barbs/enemy players.

Micro-managing sucks, but it's far more rewarding.

 

[greenday_234]

I never really understood how to use trading camps. CivIV villages and towns I understood but not these things. Can someone explain how I should/shouldn't be using them. Because, to be honest, it almost seems more sensible to spam farms and then build Markets/Banks etc. as opposed to sitting on a ton of tiny cities with trading camps.

 

[katanalauncher]

I never really understood how to use trading camps. CivIV villages and towns I understood but not these things. Can someone explain how I should/shouldn't be using them. Because, to be honest, it almost seems more sensible to spam farms and then build Markets/Banks etc. as opposed to sitting on a ton of tiny cities with trading camps.

Science boost in late game, that's why.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

If you are on Grasslands on river, build trade post that is my rule, some people go even more crazy then that. It really depends on how big you want your cities, every trade post or mine ruins how big your city can become.

 

[greenday_234]

Okay, I'll give that a shot. Did you mean Grasslands AND river or Grasslands OR River. It's too bad they're so ugly

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Grasslands on the river. The have 2 food and 1 gold, so with trade post it goes 2 food and 2 gold, farm plains that will give them 2 food 1 hammer and 1 gold if on river. Also, you can if you like Trade up flood plains or desert tiles as you will. Me, I love large cities, so i do not trade post much,I think it averages out vs trade post science boost. But anyways, I like my cities to look good also, and the trade post are butt ugly, so that kind of makes me not like them.

 

[Darac]

In a tall empire, farms make more sense, in a wide empire I like trading posts, i keep my puppets small with enough trading posts for their population to gain cash and not grow fast. Then the happiness not wasted on large puppets is used to grow a huge science and wonder building capital and possibly 1 or 2 more 'super cities'

 

[Jimbo30]

Build farms on grasslands/river and trading posts on grasslands without river. Works for me at least.

As for workers, I quite often just let them run around improving in the later game (make sure they actually keep working as often they just stand in your cities doing nothing). Make sure you have "workers don't change current improvements" box ticked in options and they shouldn't do anything really stupid.

 

[Brichals]

If you set you city on commercial bias the workers will build trading posts, production they will build mines etc. It actually works pretty well that way. Pathing is not optimal and they have some crazy preferences but it's not bad. Generally a lot of people automate when they don't really care anymore what gets built. It's not perfect but its not bad. They get the job done.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I usually put trading posts on Plains tiles anyway. Putting food on them seems pointless, food as a resource isn't an end unto itself, all it does is let you get more guys to work more tiles, which you don't need to do if you can just get the resource you want out of the tile to begin with. The only time I build farms on Plains normally is if I have no grassland or fish nearby. I usually farm grasslands so that I can use the excess food for Specialists and TP plains for extra moneys, unless I have a good reason not to.

 

[Darac]

I usually put trading posts on Plains tiles anyway. Putting food on them seems pointless, food as a resource isn't an end unto itself, all it does is let you get more guys to work more tiles, which you don't need to do if you can just get the resource you want out of the tile to begin with. The only time I build farms on Plains normally is if I have no grassland or fish nearby. I usually farm grasslands so that I can use the excess food for Specialists and TP plains for extra moneys, unless I have a good reason not to.

this is wrong. working food tiles give you more population. population on its own gives you science. So there is very good reason to just have food tiles.

* edit *

Sorry, they give you science with libraries and public schools. As well as gold with one of the tradition social policies in your capital.

 

[Peacemongerer]

Trade posts are better later in the game once you have researched Economics to get +2 gold out of them instead of +1 or adopted the policy from Rationalism to give them +1 science.

They are also good choices around puppet cities to ensure that you maximize gold output in them and stunt their population growth. Runaway population in puppet cities will kill your happiness and it is doubtlessly a less effecient use of your happiness points spending them on civilians in cities that you can't direct production and which suffer from a -25% science penalty. The science from trade posts also helps pick-up this slack. That's the main thing I use them for.

You generally want to build farms near fresh water bc they get +2 food instead of +1 and on plains tiles so they produce 2 food and a hammer. Also, if you get a hill next to a river, it's almost always a better option to take the +2 food AND +2 hammers than the +4 hammers bc if you need more hammers, you can always look for another hill, a lumber mill or train a specialist... having a citizen feed himself and give you 2 hammers is invaluble (Enough so that they gave the Inca the ability to farm any hill tile with Terrace Farms).

In short, fresh water = farms, elsewhere = trading posts.

 

[R17MCMLXXIX]

Food tiles for every tile in your capital and hopefullly your second and third cities are on the river. Later on every river tile gets extra production, and will have at least 4 food per tile, and also gold.

You want your major cities as big as possible to reap the science benefit, and to utilize as many tiles as you can. The other thing is that every tile created for food will have gold and or production on the tile also. If you have a mine with 4 production, you have no food. When you have 30+ citizens, you're going to have at least 30-50 base production, add the modifiers, and your up to 100 easily. I think you should only use trading posts in smaller cities and when you want to start making some coin.

 

[Miravlix]

If you set your city to "default" then depending on various factors like how old the game is, how big you empire is, the automated worker will choose trade post over farm, but if you choose something else than default the automated worker will put trade post on a gold town and farms on a food town or favor production in a production town.

If you don't turn on leave improvements, they will even swarm and change tiles around a town based on your setting changes.

Like Diplomacy pre-G&K it is possible to predict what will happen, but it's not a well documented system and confuses us a lot.

Default has some complicated algorithm for choosing food/productivity that I doubt I will ever figure out, but the automated worker understands the strategy and implement tiles that match the town.

If you want manual workers, perhaps you should consider manual labor assignment in towns too, so you don't get strategy conflicts.

 

[robal1991]

I wanna add here, that I miss some worker actions from Civ 3 Conquests.
I remember there were options like:
- improve nearest city only
- build trade network
and others.

I mean that "auto workers" is just too general and doesnt give much variety of auto actions.


I dunno why did they remove these features.

 

[Brichals]

- improve nearest city only

this would be wonderful.

 

[Darac]

I wanna add here, that I miss some worker actions from Civ 3 Conquests.
I remember there were options like:
- improve nearest city only
- build trade network
and others.

I mean that "auto workers" is just too general and doesnt give much variety of auto actions.


I dunno why did they remove these features.

They didn't remove these features, more like they haven't had a chance to reimplement them in the new engine.