Captured Workers

[vorlon_mi]

That's the interesting question -- what does my empire need right now? Does it need to grow some cities up to size 12 quickly? Does it need to build roads and irrigate tiles so that those cities will be productive?

Joining them, a few at a time as @timerover51 suggests, will help cities grow to work more tiles without increasing their flip risk.
Using them, in gangs of 3 or 4, makes sure that the tiles being worked are productive.

My bias / preference is to grow my cities more slowly, while keeping my lux slider at 10% in Republic and improve more tiles. I worry (perhaps too much) about unhappy citizens when I only have access to 1 or 2 luxuries. Perhaps growing my cities faster would improve my game play.

 

[justanick]

My bias / preference is to grow my cities more slowly, while keeping my lux slider at 10% in Republic and improve more tiles. I worry (perhaps too much) about unhappy citizens when I only have access to 1 or 2 luxuries. Perhaps growing my cities faster would improve my game play.

Yes, you should change your preference here. As a republic it makes perfect sense to use high lux slider settings when you lack luxuries. The main bottlenecks are food, aqueducts and unit support. Having 2 workers per town and growing at a speed matching those 2 workers per town tends to work out well. If you go for more than 2 workers per town you have to pay more unit support and need to grow faster to match the higher speed in tile improvement.

After reaching size 7 unit support becomes less of an issue and the pace of growth is cut in half as twice the food is needed per growth. That should be taken into account when planning the amount of workers and the speed of growth. If for a limited amount of turns you lack properly improved tiles for your entire population, then scientists can bridge that limited amount of turns. Also only roading tiles may be an approach when your workers are too few to match the needs of your population. A roaded grassland produces 2 food and 2 commerce. If we subtract 1 commerce for the luxury slider and 2 food for sustenance, then this tiles nets a yield of 1. The same is true if for a scientist producing 3 beakers we substract 2 food for sustenance.

 

[Lanzelot]

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.

This, however, is possible only in the "Mesoamerica" and "Age of Discovery" scenarios, not in the standard game...

 

[Theov]

This, however, is possible only in the "Mesoamerica" and "Age of Discovery" scenarios, not in the standard game...

Oh really? I turned it on in my mod, I never play the standard game anymore.

 

[Theov]

Also - if you're industrious (150% speed workers), your slave workers still work at half that speed, rounded down to 50%).


A worker built from a city with only foreigners, the worker will actually be a slave of the foreign nationality (with normal worker uniform) - after reloading the game, the slave unit will get a slave uniform.

If there's a mix of nationalities (I'm not sure if this is true from testing, but from reading the forums) the last added population (probably yours) will determine the nationality of the worker made. (or settler).

Nationality is quite a complex thing in Civ3.

 

[CKS]

I think when you are industrious that slave workers go at half regular speed until replaceable parts, and then at half your doubled speed after that. Before replaceable parts you need 3 slaves to match the output of a native industrious worker, and after you need only two.

 

[justanick]

I think when you are industrious that slave workers go at half regular speed until replaceable parts, and then at half your doubled speed after that. Before replaceable parts you need 3 slaves to match the output of a native industrious worker, and after you need only two.

Yes, that is what you can observe in most governments.

What happens is that there is a base output defined by the government. That is 4 for fascism, 3 for democracy, 1 for anarchy und 2 for everything else. A road costs 6 points.

If your civilization is industrious the output is multiplied by 1.5. If you have replaceable parts the output is multiplied by 2. If the worker is foreign, then the output is divided by 2. The result for each worker is rounded down to an integer, but not below 1. Hency in anarchy everything is usually the same.

 

[templar_x]

Yes, you should change your preference here. As a republic it makes perfect sense to use high lux slider settings when you lack luxuries. The main bottlenecks are food, aqueducts and unit support. Having 2 workers per town and growing at a speed matching those 2 workers per town tends to work out well. If you go for more than 2 workers per town you have to pay more unit support and need to grow faster to match the higher speed in tile improvement.

After reaching size 7 unit support becomes less of an issue and the pace of growth is cut in half as twice the food is needed per growth. That should be taken into account when planning the amount of workers and the speed of growth. If for a limited amount of turns you lack properly improved tiles for your entire population, then scientists can bridge that limited amount of turns. Also only roading tiles may be an approach when your workers are too few to match the needs of your population. A roaded grassland produces 2 food and 2 commerce. If we subtract 1 commerce for the luxury slider and 2 food for sustenance, then this tiles nets a yield of 1. The same is true if for a scientist producing 3 beakers we substract 2 food for sustenance.

Growth is NOT cut in half. Sorry, just no.
At least not if you plan that properly.
Growth >7 should, in your core, mainly happen via joint workers. If you planned really well, going from 7 to 12 right in one joining step.
Therefore you may need WAY more workers at some stage; and will lose most of them in the BIG JOINING FEAST when you upgrade your whole core.
t_x

 

[justanick]

5 workers per town seem a bit extreme. You donnot want improved tiles to not be used, hence joining 5 workers in one step seems illadvised in most instances. In cities without granary growth will cost 20 more food than in towns, with granary the difference decreases to 10 food. A worker will cost at least 10 shields, 10 food and in most cases 2 gtp. Given that, regular growth is the substancially cheaper choice.

 

[Lanzelot]

Like templar, I also aim at having 5 workers ready when a town reaches size 7. However, in many situations I fail to do that. E.g. because the workers are still needed for important jobs, building a war road to the enemy, improving the last few tiles for the city, connecting a resource, etc. In that case I prioritize the slow-growing cities and only join, let's say, 3 workers to the fast growing cities and let them obtain the remaining 2 citizens via normal growth. A city with granary and +7fpt can grow every 3 turns, that is not so much worse than the 2 turns per citizen in a worker pump.

 

[templar_x]

just as Lanzelot says...

i know justanick´s game is more epic, he loves metropoles, to play out the game. my time is little, my pace is fast: and to get the core up to 12 right away is the way to go if you intend to finish in bc times on Deity (and most often fail of course ).

not to say: "Extreme? No! THIS - IS - SPARTAAAAAA!"

t_x

 

[justanick]

Well, if you intend to win super quickly, then maybe you should stay in despotism, skip growing beyond size 6 and spam settlers instead. Turn 100 is 550 bc. 10 bc is turn 127. About 10 turns before that would be the time by when the cost of anarchy would need to be recovered. That might be close.

 

[templar_x]

i think we´re confusing some topics here.

one is joining workers to cities. and one is whether or not to change governments.

however, even if you stay in Despo - which i did on various occasions - you want your core towns to be (at least kinda) maxed out asap.
a size-12 capital will produce more of everything, let it be Despo or a Republic.
and unit support can be a real killer if your core would stay size 6 or below - i would really not see why one would want to do that??

you sure won´t start building ´ducts in most of your towns, so far i agree.

you might also be happy with a size-9 capital for such a fast game. then you´d have to join only 2 workers. and everything should be prepared so that optimal and optimized squares can be worked instantly. and off you go...

in the HoF you can find quite a few games of that kind, by myself and by others. some managed to finish Conquest and Domination games in bc times, even on Deity and Sid. WAY in bc times below that difficulty level.
you won´t grow your towns out to size 12 naturally until that... "the cost of anarchy" is btw quite a difficult definition in such a game, easier said than written into a post. if in doubt, for me, the finish date is what counts!

t_x

 

[justanick]

and unit support can be a real killer if your core would stay size 6 or below - i would really not see why one would want to do that??

When staying in despotism it does not matter. Free unit support is 4 anyway. So simply spamming settlers will work fine. I am not saying that this approach would be a good decision, but it is unclear, if a different approach is better.

 

[templar_x]

finish dates do tell the truth, in the long run... and in a 20+ year old game, even the long run has already run quite long.
t_x

 

[Lanzelot]

I never played a HoF game, but I do know that there are indeed a number of games in the HoF tables, which stayed in Despotism. (And I'm not talking about those 3000BC Conquest victories on a mini-map with 2 opponents...)
But obviously it can't be the best approach for every situation (I would be surprised to find a fastest-finish space or diplo game which remained in Despotism... ). So where is the break-even point? Interesting question.

 

[justanick]

(I would be surprised to find a fastest-finish space or diplo game which remained in Despotism... ).

I might not be surprised if the difficulty setting is low enough. With enough territory it is possible to have enough scientists for 4 turns per tech in despotism. It is not something i would want to try, though. It just is not outlandish enough to surprise me.

 

[RobS]

I protect my free "slave" workers more than my own workers, since I can always replace my own fairly easily if they're lost. The slaves are always quickly sent to the rear, to improve infrastructure (roads, mines, irrigation), usually ahead of when I actually need it. I always at least double them up to do the work, or triple them if I have enough.
Since I typically raze most captured cities, I usually end up with armies of slaves. 30-40 of them from just one conquered opponent is not unusual. Yeah, the mod that prohibits razing is something I really should consider, if only for realism.

In regard to trading workers from other civs, this also works the other way around, with you trading them away, if you have them in your capital, although I'm not sure how valuable the AI considers workers or whether there would be a difference in value for "native" workers as opposed to "slave" workers. That said, it would seem out of the ordinary to trade away workers because they are such a high value unit.

 

[justanick]

free "slave" workers

Slavery is Freedom.

Since I typically raze most captured cities

Such series of genocides may upset some AIs.

AI attitude

I spent a few weeks with an unpatched version of PTW and no internet access (to dowload the patch), so I decided to spend some of that time testing AI attitudes. This test was with the 1.01 version of PTW, so there might be a possibility that some of this was changed in a patch, but most likely...

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