Automating workers?
- Thread starter rbis4rbb
- Start date
Depends on your goal. If your goal is improved play, NOT automate. Controlling your workers intelligently is worth almost a full difficulty level. Now, controlling them intelligently isn't always trivial, but doing better than the AI is typically very easy.
If your goal is a quick, fun game, you can get by with automation. Watching *my* troops go off and do stupid things is bad for my blood pressure, though, so I can't stand worker automation.
Arathorn
If your goal is a quick, fun game, you can get by with automation. Watching *my* troops go off and do stupid things is bad for my blood pressure, though, so I can't stand worker automation.
Arathorn
RegentMan
Deity
Early in the game, you really shouldn't automate your workers. In the modern age, when every tile is upgraded, that's when I start to automate them.
Generally, what I do is get the terrain how I want it, and then automate them if I remmeber. Often times I take workers from one city and send them to a new city, so my improvement of the city squares does sometimes lack.
I do generally automate them when I've gotten Steam Power and need to RR my terrain. Ctrl-Shift-A will keep them in that city, RR terrain, until they're done.
Two things to keep in mind about automating workers: 1) They're not always efficient. The govenor has some weird prioritizing scheme it uses, and I"ve seen automated workers go from one side of the city tiles to the other without improving inbetween. Fa' Cripes sake, at least road to there!
2) Only two automated workers will improve tiles in the city square at a time. This means that if you have four automated workers in one city boundry, they will split up into two groups, until there's nothing more for the second group to do but help the first group. The same holds true for clearing pollution.
I do generally automate them when I've gotten Steam Power and need to RR my terrain. Ctrl-Shift-A will keep them in that city, RR terrain, until they're done.
Two things to keep in mind about automating workers: 1) They're not always efficient. The govenor has some weird prioritizing scheme it uses, and I"ve seen automated workers go from one side of the city tiles to the other without improving inbetween. Fa' Cripes sake, at least road to there!
2) Only two automated workers will improve tiles in the city square at a time. This means that if you have four automated workers in one city boundry, they will split up into two groups, until there's nothing more for the second group to do but help the first group. The same holds true for clearing pollution.
I saw someone post a great quote on automating workers a little while back, something like, "A half competent person will do a much better job than automation, and if your not half competent you need the practice".
I find I normally have enough workers to send out and get their jobs done with out being to tedious, I personally find MMing cities worse (I still do but) than RRing a country that takes 40% land in a huge map.
I find I normally have enough workers to send out and get their jobs done with out being to tedious, I personally find MMing cities worse (I still do but) than RRing a country that takes 40% land in a huge map.
Automating workers before you have road or RR on every tile is a bad idea because if a pollution appears on an undeveloped tile, every and i mean every worker which is on automate (and not working) form the whole empire will move there so all of you workers will be in one tile with no road so they do nothing and this can result in them hopping on and of one tile with no improvements meaning no work actualy gets done.
thetrooper
Misanthrope
- Joined
- May 24, 2004
- Messages
- 9,088
I never automate my workers, I prefer to mine my bonus grassland and irrigate
pure grassland - not vice versa. Early and mid-game enhance production and late game food (if necessary). When pollution strikes and my terrain is well
developed, I automate for "clean damage" (ctrl-D). That is the one exception.
Fortified infantry on a mountain spotted 6 AI workers running all over my "enemys" city tiles without doing anything (except for running). I was not at war with them. Maybe they were preparing for the Athens Olympics? I expect that AI automation equals human automation - so it seems stupid to
automate.
pure grassland - not vice versa. Early and mid-game enhance production and late game food (if necessary). When pollution strikes and my terrain is well
developed, I automate for "clean damage" (ctrl-D). That is the one exception.
Turner_727 said:They're not always efficient. The govenor has some weird prioritizing scheme it uses, and I"ve seen automated workers go from one side of the city tiles to the other without improving inbetween. Fa' Cripes sake, at least road to there!
Fortified infantry on a mountain spotted 6 AI workers running all over my "enemys" city tiles without doing anything (except for running). I was not at war with them. Maybe they were preparing for the Athens Olympics? I expect that AI automation equals human automation - so it seems stupid to
automate.
