Chain gangs?

I was playing a game recently where I ended up with many, many slave workers later in the game. I'm sure this is extremely common. Anyway, I found it tedious to move every one of them individually and since it took several workers per square to build a road or mine, etc. I had an idea. What if there was a way to create a unit similar to an army called a "chain gang?"

This unit would hold 6 or 8 slaves in it and they'd all move together as an army does and work as one group. Therefore, if it took 6 individual slave workers to build a road on one square per turn, the chain gang could build the same road in the same amount of time, but would only require you to move one unit and give it one command instead of moving 6 individual slaves. Does this make sense?

I thought it might be interesting to try this. Does anyone like this idea, or am I crazy?

 

No offense, but can't ppl just basically do the same manually by moving stacks of units (if they have PTW or conquests)? I know i do - for instance, in your example, i'd just group 6 slaves together and move them all at once using X or J for stack movement. I'd imagine a lot of ppl do this around industrialization and railroading. I dunno, I suppose your method would simplify it some, but I'm not entirely sure how necessary it would be, no offense.

 

Maybe the chain gangs could have a special ability of some sort... like building fortresses and barricades quicker than normal workers. You're correct on stack movement which is fine, but you still have to manually tell each worker to build road or mine, etc. You may be correct, though, that chain gangs aren't necessary. I just thought it might be fun. I mean, coastal fortresses aren't necessary and all, but they are in the game...

 

I thought something like this was talked about for the next patch- being able to form work gangs. IMO, having work gangs would make the late game much less tedious and more enjoyable for me. Tasks like railroading and cleaning pollution would be so much simpler.

 

That's a good point you make about having to only hit 'm' or the like once - that would certainly be nice. Especially if the 'chain gangs' were flexible (as opposed to how armies are) so that you could swap fractions if you went to fascism or got replaceable parts or something. not a bad idea really, even if they didn't get any bonus at all - now that I think about your point about singular buttons, it would be far preferrable to dealing with all those stacks in the lategame. i'm with RD17 - all the railroading and pollution cleanup late in the industrial revolution gets to be pretty tedious sometimes.

Good luck with developing them if you attempt to! Have a good one!

 

I agree. I do exactly that, usually with stacks of six.

 

There should definitely be some small wonder in Conquests like the Emancipation Proclamation or the 15th amendment that makes slaves normal workers. It makes no sense that in the modern times, huge powerful civilizations are still using slave labor. Also, When you get a worker from another civ, it's a slave worker. That always makes mad, but I guess I can see the reasoning behind it- that the civ is selling slave labor. I still don't like it, though.

 

You don't like slave laborers. Though they work slower, they cost no support. Maybe certain governments don't get slave labor, like Democracy or Repubic.

 

I normally don't use slave workers in the late stages of a game - because at this point I have way too many own workers, which are much more efficient. I always have 2 stacks of workers in 2 fortresses, one with slave workers (almost never used), and one with normal workers, normally 50-100 units - which is more than I'll need in the late stages.

It's just too frustrating to see how slow they work imo..

In the early/middle game, before the discovery of RailRoad, I find them useful though, as I don't always have enough workers at this stage of the game.

More on topic; I really like your idea! It would be interesting if they had some sort of special ability, but I can't think of what that should be - guess it's too early in the morning for creativity

 

The idea of grouping workers is actually in developement for Civ3!

"Worker Gangs" would be groups of workers that could perform certain tasks as a group, reducing micro-management.

The idea is not new at all, many users wanted some sort of "Army" for the dozens of workers running around in modern times.

 

It certainly was a pain moving all those workers until PTW.
But there are so many other things to do with workers, especially captured ones which do not require maintenance.
Like:
* Bait for enticing the enemy into position for an attack.
* Forming a type of human wall between myself and my enemy (when at peace) to keep them from crossing my turf.
* Joining cities as entertainers, etc.
* Blocking coastline to keep others from landing (except marines)
* Plant & Cut & Plant & Cut your way to extra shields.
* Waiting by the scores in ships as part of any invasion so they can be ready to rebuild quickly whatever I've anihillated.
Gangs are good, but singles are more flexible.

 

Not very historical. Throughout most of history slaves were used even by Republics and Democracies.

 

I never use workers manually, I just automate.

 

That's true, but old Demorcracies and Repulics, like Rome and Athens used slaves. Modern ones like the U.S. and Europian nations don't (as far as I know).

Uh, for the worker gangs, I'm split. One side the add a fun new unit, on the other hand their aren't really that exciting. Oh fun, A group of slaves!! Just what I always wanted!

 

In the US, slavery has only been illegal for the last 140 years or so. This equates to a few turns at the end of a Civ game (around 10% of the game). The US was a 'modern' republic at the time when slavery was still legal.

Look at the news sometime. There is still slavery in the world today.

(Note that I think slavery is a horrible abuse of human rights, I'm just pointing out that it took place in the governments that it is suggested it be banned for).

 

I'm not sure the captures units can really be designated as slaves. Technically, they're workers with all the same freedoms of the standard labors. They can even join the population of a city as citizens. These things are not the hallmark of slavery.

 

If you don't want to deal with slaves, just put them on an automatic task, such as cleaning pollution, roading or railroading to remote locations, or building trade routes.
If they are working on few resources, or roading/railroading to the same point, they will inevitably end up grouping together.
As for the equivalent of slaves in modern times, many prisons have their occupants making various products; they used to build roads, clean up pollution, make license plates, harvest crops, etc. I don't know what they have them doing now, but there is still a lot of production being done in many modern prisons. I believe it's called rehabilitation.

 

Would they be built like armies, loading workers into gang. Would the gangs be bonused for speed of work or movement, or would it just reduce the number of units to manage keeping the same total work output.

 

Emancipation seems to be the key - whilst older Democracies/Republics did have slave labour, and some still do in todays world, countries that have been through a process of emancipation technically do not (although having no choice but to flip burgers for a living may seem like it, it technically isn't ). Emancipation would be a nice new tech - has been suggested a few times on the Civ4 sticky I believe).

As for what this thread originally proposed - I'm slightly in the 'J and X does the job for me' camp. It would be very fiddly to have your workers all grouped up, then because of acquisition of new land or tech development have to un-group/re-group them for new tasks - current system seems flexible enough. Although if the added suggestion that they would work faster was in place (makes a whole load of sense to me) I would be very happy to do so I must admit.

 

Also, you can use slaves to build outposts, airfields, & radar towers. Those consume the worker used to produce them. Would you rather lose a full strength worker or a half-strength worker?