Captured Workers

[okidutmsvacoal]

Hey all - I just got back into playing Civ 3 after a veeeery long absence. Lots to learn, as I was never good.
Curiosity question for today - I do not have a good grasp of many details, but one I noted is that have taken to sailing the coasts of a nation I'm at war with, and landing a unit to seize their workers, then haul them home. But such workers are I think half as productive as native workers?
Thoughts? Maybe it is better to simply disband them? Or some other idea?
thanks in advance.

 

[okidutmsvacoal]

Perhaps I should mention that this 'commando' style tactic serves a couple purposes, and its not a key part of my game play.
I've done this occasionally, both to distract my enemies to attacks in their rear/flanks and away from 'the front'.
It also takes their resources away (workers).
Occasionally, I find a key resource like iron or horses and land to destroy the mine.
Also on occasion there is a key road that I cut in order to slow their reinforcements.
Finally this move gives me 'recon' of their movement of units (such as toward the front).

 

[Arexander]

More workers is more workers, even if at 50% productivity. You also don't have to pay support for the captured workers, so you could technically get rid of one of your own workers for every two captured ones to keep the relative productivity the same while freeing up unit support for more military units.

Also, welcome to CivFanatics!

 

[Theov]

Hey all - I just got back into playing Civ 3 after a veeeery long absence. Lots to learn, as I was never good.
Curiosity question for today - I do not have a good grasp of many details, but one I noted is that have taken to sailing the coasts of a nation I'm at war with, and landing a unit to seize their workers, then haul them home. But such workers are I think half as productive as native workers?
Thoughts? Maybe it is better to simply disband them? Or some other idea?
thanks in advance.

First of all ...
Welcome back!


You are right!
Captured workers, or 'slaves', are a bunch of non-native lazy asshats that only care to work at half the speed of normal workers.
The good side is that they dont require upkeep, so they are basically a free work force.
Yay!

 

[okidutmsvacoal]

OH! I told you I don't know squat, and didn't realize they were free of upkeep. So that is a plus. I love when I find a settler and get slaves, but thought I was paying upkeep, so woot!

 

[Civinator]

Another plus of "enslaved" workers is, that they can be used for building radar towers and colonies (and in theory outposts, but to build them is a waste). Here it is sufficient to sacrifice an enslaved worker instead of a more precious normal worker.

 

[Theov]

Or you could sacrifice their blood to the gods and get some cuture in return.
This is sometimes useful when you need a border expansion somewhere where borders arent connecting.

But otherwise, I keep them as free labor.
Workers count as units that require upkeep (every gov has a different formula for free units - check your military advisor and the Governement Civilopedia), so having too many can become a costly exercise. Slaves however, dont.

But ehm. You said you land a unit from a ship and steal the workers.
Do you mean, that this action is the declaration of war, or are you already at war and do you use amphibious units (Viking Berserkers/Marines)?

 

[justanick]

and do you use amphibious units (Viking Berserkers/Marines)?

If the workers are unprotected, then amphibious units are not needed. Simple warriors can capture workers, settlers, catapults etc..

 

[Theov]

If the workers are unprotected, then amphibious units are not needed. Simple warriors can capture workers, settlers, catapults etc..

thanks - that somehow slipped my memory

 

[Herbert George]

I usually get them to join my core cities if there isn't any urgent infrastructure work going on, that way you gain extra pop with minimal impact on happiness and they will assimilate eventually (I usually play Regent though, so happiness might be more of a problem at higher difficulty levels).

 

[tjs282]

I play at Emp+ (only 1 citizen born Content), so if I were to do it at all, I would only join Workers(Foreign) to my core towns after their parent Civ was extinct (or at least, exiled to some remote 1-tile Tundra island!), so I don't have to worry about additional unhappiness caused by another/ ongoing war against that Civ.

 

[Buttercup]

Slaves are another aspect of the game that's good for min/maxing but terrible for quality of life.

Because you actively need to click on each and every worker in order to make them complete a task, slaves double the amount of clicks needed to complete mundane tasks. So when you get to the point of something as basic as building a road on a mountain, clicking 9 times on a stack of 9 workers is already tedious, clicking 18 times for a group of slaves is just taking mouse destruction to a whole new level. When you get to pollution cleaning it enters a whole new level of insane.

A min/maxer loves the game enough to halve the life expectancy of their mouse, or pay for new mice twice as often, whereas casual players such as me think their bank account is more important than a more perfect victory.

The game has a button you can press that automates ALL workers, which is a mostly frustrating macro, but, sadly, it doesn't have a useful micromanagement option to click one single button to select-all-build with a single stack.

 

[tjs282]

It does now: the Flintlock patch allows single-click stack-assignment of Worker-jobs...

 

[Buttercup]

That is game changing stuff right there, awesome news!

 

[Buttercup]

You can investigate if a keyboard wears out less quickly and maybe use the keyboard going forward if the cost of your mouse becomes unaffordable.

Yeah, I tried that, it just gave me a backache keep leaning forward over the keyboard performing highly repetitive actions.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I've compromised with some automation (also a Regent level player) in certain cases.

• In the early game, yes, lots of mouse clicks for building roads and irrigation. Often I put them in a group with native workers, or if they're working alone, leave them far away from the front lines where I'm not really counting worker turns.
• In the Industrial Ages, where I'm building railroads. I will stack up about 5 workers (native and slaves), pick a tile about 3 squares distant, and use Ctrl-Shift-R to have them "Railroad to this place." Saves a lot of clicks over several turns
• In the later game, when cleaning up pollution, I keep a stack of 8 slaves on a railroad square, waiting. Shift-D sends them to clean up the pollution; space bar if there is no pollution this turn. Saves clicks. Be aware if you are conquering territory that is *already* polluted. If that's true, then "Shift-D" becomes "send these workers to the Danger Zone"

 

[WeirdoJoker]

What is it that makes an AI Civ want to sell workers? Playing China, I took one from India as part of a trade for something or other (still in the Medieval era), and have no idea why it was available but none have been available from the AI since then (though it hasn't been that long).

 

[Theov]

What is it that makes an AI Civ want to sell workers? Playing China, I took one from India as part of a trade for something or other (still in the Medieval era), and have no idea why it was available but none have been available from the AI since then (though it hasn't been that long).

the worker (and only workers) must be available in the capital of the civ to show up on the sell-list.
So you have to be lucky that they just made one, or that one is passing through the city on its way to work.

Note that bought workers will show up as slaves for you. (working half speed, but no maintenance)

Be that as it may, most of the time it's a good deal to buy them from the AI in the long run - the amount of work they do over a game is worth the gold invested.

 

[Theov]

I've compromised with some automation (also a Regent level player) in certain cases.

• In the early game, yes, lots of mouse clicks for building roads and irrigation. Often I put them in a group with native workers, or if they're working alone, leave them far away from the front lines where I'm not really counting worker turns.
• In the Industrial Ages, where I'm building railroads. I will stack up about 5 workers (native and slaves), pick a tile about 3 squares distant, and use Ctrl-Shift-R to have them "Railroad to this place." Saves a lot of clicks over several turns
• In the later game, when cleaning up pollution, I keep a stack of 8 slaves on a railroad square, waiting. Shift-D sends them to clean up the pollution; space bar if there is no pollution this turn. Saves clicks. Be aware if you are conquering territory that is *already* polluted. If that's true, then "Shift-D" becomes "send these workers to the Danger Zone"

You can save a lot of headache by turning on "advanced worker actions" in the settings.
Then let them "road to" somewhere. If you don't trust the AI to find the path you had in mind, you can just make it 2 tiles long.
I often give some workers the command to road 3 tiles into a forest, or to build a path from city to city.

By the time RailRoads come available, I just give many of them the command to rail from A to B where B is on the other side of the country to quickly establish quick moving routes across the continent I'm on.

 

[timerover51]

I tend to funnel them into cities that I am developing to boost production. I do not put too many into any one city, maybe 2 or 3 when I have more of my own citizens in the city, and some military to keep things under control. I do normally have fairly large garrisons, generally around 6 or so military.