Automating Workers

Automate them when you get railroads because they don't seem to do anything else as soon as the tech is unlocked.

Saves a lot of time.

Automated workers are also quite good for a huge puppet empire later in the game. They spam trading posts everywhere which is exactly what you want in puppet cities anyway. And I'm pretty sure they don't destroy improvements you've already built so you don't have to babysit them. I could be wrong though.
 
I usually automate scouts if I get too bored and ships for exploring. I automate workers when there's nothing important left to do (usually about the time I get to railway). I might stop automatin scouts as they do a rather poor job, but automating ships always seems to work well enough for me.

And I'm pretty sure they don't destroy improvements you've already built so you don't have to babysit them. I could be wrong though.

Typically they will destroy your improvements. You have to go into advanced settings to stop it.
 
I permanently turned them off. If you get a quest to connect a far off cs via road to your empire they will do it no matter what the cost in maintenance or their lives lost to hostiles. Besides I manage my resources better than they do.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
If I know I'm gonna win the next few turns, then I auto. I used to auto scout and worker but I find they do stupid things, like improve a tile in one city, then run to a city on the other side and work instead of concentrating in one city for awhile, which really bugs me hehe.
 
I automate some workers, and keep a couple to do things I need done that won't happen (late or not at all) if I don't do it manually....hmmmmm
 
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:
I would never use automated workers. Doing it yourself is one of the key advantages you have over the AI. By all means, take their recommendations into account, but doing it yourself will give you a significant advantage, and you'll really learn the nuances of terrain and productivity as well.

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?
They're probably right. Farm on a hill (which means freshwater nearby) gives 1f/2h as opposed to 3h for a mine. BUT with Civil Service, that then becomes 2f/2h which is an exceptional tile, and one which you can always work. It takes a lot longer for you to get 4h from a mine, so two farmed hills will be ahead of one farmed grassland and one mined hill for a long time. Plus 2f/2h is just a versatile tile that's useful whatever the circumstances, whereas too many mines can really stunt your growth (and the default governor tends to avoid them). Especially in the desert where food is at a premium.

Similarly, it's usually a good idea to chop down a forest on a waterside hill and build a farm - you get the same or better output than a lumbermill for a long time, plus you get the extra hammers for the deforestation early that helps your early production.

My workers seem to want to put trading camps on...well everything...Plains tiles especially. Don't I want farms on those?
You'll probably do better specialising a couple of cities to have a couple of food-rich tiles and heaps of trading posts, and have the others with farms/lumbermills/mines. Good candidates are grassland or jungle cities with lots of flatland and lots of riverside tiles. Trading posts on jungle are especially great because you get 2 food plus heaps of gold and 2 science once you get a university (they take a horribly long time to build though).
 
Once you manually build all the major roads, you can automate the workers without too much dumbassery. In fact, by late game you kind of have to automate most of your workforce. I like to micromanage as much as the next guy, but on large maps there is no way I'd keep interest in Civ if I had to manually control 20 workers every other turn.
 
I generally Automate settlers as they are smarter than they used to be in previous Civs and I don't want the hassle of figuring out what to build which they can do for me and 90% of the time they do pretty good.

Things they do well imo.

Build improvements based on specialisation/puppet status of the nearest city i.e. near commerce/puppets cities they'll spam Trade Posts, near production cities they will generally build more mines etc and near growth cities they spam farms and near default cities they will try and balance it out Early on putting mostly farms but later on down the line they will mix in trading posts as well.

Hook up your trade routes pretty well (not completely optimal but not bad).

Hook up Luxuries pretty fast (all though they don't seem to differentiate a luxury you don't have over one you already do nor that Marble is better than other luxuries)

Hook up strategic resources fast. Including those like coal and uranium when the tech required is unlock (as long as you have improvement replacement left ON)

Upgrade roads to Railroads fast.



Things they do poorly...

Run back and forth between cities too much, like someone said before they don't concentrate on a city and move on they often move around too much.

Get scared of barbs too easily wasting you valuable time on the resources.

Run towards waring city states too much to improve land and get captured. And improve land near your enemies borders because they can't "see"/have line of sight on the enemies units therefore think "oh it is ok to improve over there, there's no one over there that can capture me... DOH they were hidden durrrr...."

Prioritise hooking up stone too low. They only seem to value this based on the +1/(2 at chemistry) :c5production: from just the quarry rather than the fact it unlocks the stoneworks. Therefore they might take forever to hook this up.


(and for me the automated workers when playing with the Netherlands seemed to be bugged as they NEVER build any food improving improvements except Polders (where they can) even on land that Polders can't be built. So they won't build ANY farms ever nor will they build Pastures on sheep or cows (they do on horses) and won't build Plantations on Bananas (again they will on Luxuries), I'm assuming there a bug in the prioritisation of food based improvements due to Polder being a +3 :c5food: improvement that causes this)

Overall this is what I suggest if you want to use Automated workers

Use Manual Workers near the beginning so you can hookup the resources and use better judgement then the Worker AI when dealing with Barbs.

Use manual workers to hook up Marble before another available luxury. So you can build those wonders fast. While automated workers will improve marble very fast it will not alway hook it up over another luxury and even if it does it will wait till its finished its task to do so. At the start of the game you want to get that marble ASAP and if you need to interrupt a worker building a farm then you can if they are on manual.

Automate during peacetime/during war with AIs that are well away from where your workers would want to work, you don't have to worry too much during War in general unless its a really close border dispute or a CS allied with the AI is right on your doorstep.


Make workers manual during war time with very close enemy Civs or CS.

Make a Worker manual anytime you want to make sure you get a resource such as stone hooked up so you can build stoneworks or they are seemingly neglecting something like Uranium or Coal when it appears.


Rest of the time just let them do what they want its pretty good in general.

Also I leave replacing improvements turned on as then when you unlock a late game strategic resources they will hook them up and if you puppet a city they will put Trading post over the top of farms and mines. They will also change the land based on any new changes of circumstance such as techs with improvement upgrades, placing trading posts down later in the game on top of farms or if you change the specialisation of a city.
 
Automating anything in the game means letting the AI play for you... which would be questionable if the AI was competent... but we all know it's not. So I don't see the point.

There's nothing wrong with using the AI recommendations as an advisor... as long as you realize that it's usually totally wrong.
 
Ignore people that talk trash about automated workers, they are simply not smart enough to figure out how it works.

Workers react to the gold/productivity/food setting of a town, but if you leave a town on default the formula gets pretty complicated, like you want a town to grow, but the AI make trade posts on default, because it has some overall empire calculations for whatever to go food or trade post.

Problem with using gold/productivity/food is that you have to micro manage specialists and the game isn't really coded to make that fun to do, so I tend to accept defaults behavior and adjust my play style to it.

Things to look out for:

The Dutch can't automate workers as polders break the AI.

You need a critical mass of workers or you will end up with them going from one end of the map to the other to improve stuff. Waisting to much time on travel. So it's usually best to wait until you have a large army of workers before you automate.

Keep an eye on workers, sometimes you need to manually control one either because of stoneworks or removing out of city forest (takes longer to grab a forest tile than one without).

Automation during war is never a good idea.
 
I've never automated Workers. Just telling them to go from A to B can be problematic enough. It's one area of the game that really needs improvement.

As for autoexplore, I've only ever used it with Caravels. In vanilla, automating Scouts seemed like suicide when it was so easy for them to run into barb encampments and get themselves killed, although I guess that's less of a problem in G&K. That said, I've never played a map larger than Standard, so I guess there comes a point where some automation of land units is necessary.
 
I really liked the 'build trade network' where it would only build up roads back in cIV. Now, in CiV that wouldn't necessarily be something you want your workers doing because roads/rails cost so damned much. I would love a 'improve nearest city' for late game.

Didn't know that the worker AI would follow what you have your city set to.

I used to think it was stupid that the AI built so many trading post around puppets, but after reading here the last couple days I think that as a general rule, it's a good thing. I would, however, put a caveat in that I think that some puppet cities should get special treatment. If you have a puppet city that, even with all trading posts, is going to get an 18 population due to location, than you might as well put some production improvements around there so that it will be able to produce some buildings to take advantage of the larger population.
 
Hi. One more for the don't automate. Build the improvements you want and need, when and were you want them. Managing your workers can be a factor in faster games and increasing the level you can play at.

On trading posts I would like to add that you should build them on jungles so that when you pick up a university you get science and gold for working these tiles. Aside from the gold boost at Economics(?) trading posts also get buffed from social policies. Commerce gets you a buff to gold and dipping in to rationalism will give them a base science output of 2:c5science: I think ;)

All in all trade post cities in jungles with plenty of plantations (but don't improve your bananas as it removes the jungle) and maybe a river can become really good in the later part of the game. Get the right religion as well....
 
On trading posts I would like to add that you should build them on jungles so that when you pick up a university you get science and gold for working these tiles. Aside from the gold boost at Economics(?) trading posts also get buffed from social policies. Commerce gets you a buff to gold and dipping in to rationalism will give them a base science output of 2:c5science: I think ;)

All in all trade post cities in jungles with plenty of plantations (but don't improve your bananas as it removes the jungle) and maybe a river can become really good in the later part of the game. Get the right religion as well....

Agree with this wholeheartedly. Trading Posts in jungle are great once universities come out and I never get rid of jungle around my cities anymore (hard to get used to since in previous Civ's jungle=bad)
 
With puppets and the enforced pick tiles with gold first thing you simply view the city and set it up so trade post is build on hills and make sure to make farms on farms, that way the AI will use it's workers on productivity tiles first.

You still need to leave some farms with gold so the city doesn't starve itself to death.

If gold is on the wrong tiles on a town you just took the city AI will kill the town, because it picks the gold over farms. Really fun, first your military takes the town dropping pop and then it suicide due to the enforced gold tiles bias.
 
I typically automate my workers once my empire is up and running, most or all of the tiles around my main cities are worked, and I just want to concentrate on other things. If I notice them doing anything stupid I'll unautomate them, but generally by that time it doesn't even really matter what they build, since I'm already on my way to winning the game.

I always make sure to turn on "don't build roads" and "don't replace improvements" though.
 
would love a feature that tells auto work not to leave current borders. Hate it when you create or capture a city far away then auto workers decide to go there and get captured on the way :(
 
would love a feature that tells auto work not to leave current borders. Hate it when you create or capture a city far away then auto workers decide to go there and get captured on the way :(

LOL. Happened to me when I built a city on an island, I manually used the worker to build what tile improvements were important, then got busy with a war and hit automate. I looked two turns later and see the worker going back across the ocean to my mainland. :rolleyes:
 
I wish there was a "Create two Farms and two Mines at every city before doing ANYTHING else."-option. Then, and only then, would i ever think about automating a worker again.

Have anyone won a game on Deity with automated workers btw? I havent...
 
Top Bottom