Citizen discussion: Allocation of workers

[donsig]

Given the recent controversy over provincial tile improvements I thought it might be productive to discuss different ways of splitting our workforce. Currently the DP has some discretion over which projects our workers should be doing. Our current president has taken this to new heights in an admittedly worthwhile cause, our rail network. The intent of this thread is not to decide whether we need to stop all other projects for 20 or 30 turns and just build the rail network. (It is apparently too late to make that decision.) Rather the intent is to look at the Fanatikan workforce in the aftermath of the completion of the Great Chieftess Railway (GCR), when our workers (both domestic and foreign) will lay down their pick-axes and shovels and ask, "Ok, what do we do now?"

The GCR will allow us to move workers from one province to another in a single turn. Perhaps we should use this advantage to redistribute our workers among the various provinces in a more or less permanent fashion. What I am proposing is that we count up the number of workers we have and divide them up (using some criteria to be determined in this thread) and send one group to each province where they will stay on a permanent basis. Once given its initial allocation if a province finds it needs new workers it will have to build them. If we form new provinces we can always poll to send a certain percentage of workers from each established province to the new provinces. The established provinces could then build replacement workers as it saw fit. If a province had too many workers doing nothing then the governor could assign some to settle in his or her cities. A governor could also vountarily release workers to a different province.

Such a plan would hopefully reduce tensions between the president and governors over the allocation of workers. If there are not enough workers in a province to get the governor's work orders completed then the President could in no way be faulted as it would be the responsibility of the governors to supply more workers.

 

[Stuck_as_a_Mac]

Oh my, a donsig idea i actually agree with. As stated, the GCR will allow us to move quicker then ever before. Mabey once the GCR is completed, we can take all the workers and evenly divvy them up between the provinces. From there on, governors will use them (note- this is just a reiteration of whats above this). Perhaps we can assign each city a worker to mod it? This way, if pollution strikes a city, a worker will be right on it. And, this allows there to be sub-divisons of the RR for individual cities.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

This is an excellent idea.

 

[roadcage]

Once again, all posters have missed the real essence of the National Railway grid. Once it is in place, Almost any worker will be able to work on any project in any provience. The National Railway Grid makes workers fungible.

As long as the task is no more than 2 road tiles away from the grid, any worker that is on the grid can be applied to the task. Naturally, workers will be expected to rail the tile being improved before leaving, thus extending the grid, and it is also expected that the first task any worker will do to a tile is road it so other workers can join in the task without expending movement points.

While the original objective of the grid is rapid movement, a second benefit is the railroad bonus of an additional food for irrigated tiles and an additional shield for mined tiles. This railroad bonus effectively means that the National Railway Grid will continue to expand until rails are everywhere.

Simply put, the regions will cease to have meaning except within the RP context. It would have been far better to discard the regional Governer's worker allocation long ago, but now is as good a time as any. Worker management needs to be nationalized.

 

[Veera Anlai]

*Cough* I don't know who this RoadCage guy is, but I like him

 

[Zarn]

I agree. I said before that rails are needed, and someone else does. Veera verifies as well, I think.

- Zarn, former Domestic Leader and current Domestic Deputy

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

I agree with roadcage as well, but I am unaware of anyone who is arguing against the national railway network.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by roadcage
Once again, all posters have missed the real essence of the National Railway grid. Once it is in place, Almost any worker will be able to work on any project in any provience. The National Railway Grid makes workers fungible.

I must confess that I do not know what *fungible* means. I do understand the abilities and benefits that railroads give in Civ3. I do not agree that workers and tile improvements need to be nationalized. I would also point out that even such grand national projects as the GCR could be constructed if our workers were split among the various provinces. Each and every link in the rail network will be in one province or another and an equitable distribution of our workers in each province could build the network in the same amount of time. Be that as it may, the idea is not to split the workers until our cities are all connected via rails.

I would point out this the proposal is not meant to give us any kind of edge in the Civ 3 game nor is it expected to put us at a disadvantage in the Civ3 game. It is a proposal to smooth things out in the demo game and take some of the workload off of our beloved and somewhat beleagured president. The idea is that once governors know how many workers they have available for projects in their province they will be more apt to undertake their constitutional duties in the area of provincial tile management thereby freeing the President to concentrate on other things. It is also hoped that a division of workers in this way will spur the recruitment of more workers where needed. Currently I think governors are reluctant to add workers to their build queues for fear the workers they produce will be shipped off to some far province. Please look at this idea in light of the demogame and not the Civ3 game we are playing.

*donsig hands Veera a cough drop*

 

[Cyc]

Although roadcage has a good point about the immediacy of worker placement with the completion of the rail system, I disagree with his thoughts on a Nationalized worker program. Governor's instructions are very much needed for the care and welfare of the provinces. The president/DP can not possibly keep up with all of the needs of each Province. The same goes for Departments. We have split up the main areas of the Government into Departments, each having its own Leader, who sees to the needs of that area/department and leaves instructions for the President/DP. Governors need to be the contact person for the President/DP for the Provinces. And as the Governors are required by the Constitution to see to the care, management and use of the cities and lands of a Province, the are required to leave instructions for the Prez/DP to see that these things are done.

I would vote for donsig's idea before I would vote for roadcage's.

 

[roadcage]

I agree with roadcage as well, but I am unaware of anyone who is arguing against the national railway network.

Actually, you called what preceeded my post

This is an excellent idea.

And everything preceeding my original post in this thread seemed to want to give even more power to the RG's which is directly opposite to the thrust of my original post.

The National Railway issue is just the vehicle for highlighting the problem. And there is a really big problem with allocation of worker actions.

 

[roadcage]

Note to donsig. Fungible means interchangeable or widely accepted or something like that.

 

[chiefpaco]

Not bad. I hope though that if any workers jump borders (the borders are hard for the DP to see while assigning workers) then no one gets too upset about missing any.

I hope I get to work in a nice, cool province. Getting stuck down south, working long hours outside on the railroad doesn't appeal to me. Maybe we can add a worker exchange program. j/k

 

[Shaitan]

How would the workers be divvied up? Straight division using total number of workers/number of provinces? Prorated by population in each province? By number of cities? By number of tiles or number of undeveloped tiles? By productive capacity?

I'm attached to both Rhineland and North provinces but I would argue that North deserves more workers than Rhineland. It's more productive and there is better return for work done there.

 

[Cyc]

But there's less work to do in The North province.

 

[Shaitan]

Exactly. The needs of the provinces flow and shift. Stick a hospital or two up in the North and their worker need increases again. No matter how many workers are put in Rhineland it will never be an effective production center. I don't see a way to reliably or fairly assign workers to different provinces.

 

[Veera Anlai]

To be honest, I think the whole issue is ridiculous. I hold no illusions that New Japan is the center of the Fanatikan empire, nor do I know precisely and exactly which province needs workers where. I just build the workers, and I plan to let the DP take care of the actual use of them as he or she sees fit. Since she's the actual person playing the game, she'll know what needs to be done on a nationwide scale far better than I will.

 

[Cyc]

I believe you Veera. But you think a lot of the issues discussed in these forums are ridiculous, so...

I must stress again the point I made earliere that Shaitan keeps switching out with donsig suggestion. With the 3 tile Priority List that Governors put up for the DP to follow, it will be quite easy for the Governors to get the work done that their Province needs and it will also lessen the work load on the DP. And Veera, you're not required to know what each Province needs. Just yours. And who is under the impression that their Province is the center of the Fanatikan empire? I have never implied anything like that. You must be drinking Shaitan's coffee now.

 

[Shaitan]

Thank you for the continuous assault and abuse, Cyc. I thoroughly enjoy trying to help solve a problem and being villified and degraded as my reward.

I wish you all the best in discussing this. I am having absolutely no enjoyment here so will not be returning.

 

[Veera Anlai]

Cyc, why do you have to end almost every single post with a degrading comment? Your opinions and viewpoints may be far more easily accepted if you didn't try to make people look like morons for taking the opposite view.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Veera Anlai
Cyc, why do you have to end almost every single post with a degrading comment? Your opinions and viewpoints may be far more easily accepted if you didn't try to make people look like morons for taking the opposite view.

Read the thread Veera and you'll see that the first degrading comment is when you call the idea ridiculous. The the only reason you seem to offer to back that up is that you don't want to be bothered with the planning of tile improvements in your province!

Shaitan raised a very good question, one that I hoped we would get to if the idea was accepted in principle. I realize that the needs of the provinces change and are not equal right now. There are several different ways that the workforce could be divided now. We could divide the workers evenly. We could divide them proportionately according to the number of cities in a province, the province's population, the amount of work the province needs now or is estimated to need in the future. Again, I was hoping this discussion would lead to a poll wherein we chose which system to use to divy up the workers.

I also realize that the future needs of the provinces will change. If a province needs more workers they will basically have to build them. Our current system inhibits the recruitment of workers because some governors do not include them in their queues since they realize the workers they build have a good chance of being shipped to another province. The proposal also allows for governors to voluntarily release workers to another province.

I really hope you read this Shaitan and will stop boycotting threads. Cyc's remarks were not all that bad compared to some of the other things said in these forums. I realize most everone's frustration is mounting and I do hope we will be able to address this issue some day. Goonie started a discussion about name calling and such but it was squelched by eyrei. I tried reviving it only to have the red mod voice tell me to pm Thunderfall. I did that but he has not replied yet (many days later). That discussion is one Fanatika sorely needs because we are surely risking losing players due to hard feelings.