Deadbeat workers?

[weshuang]

I'm a newbie playing my first game of any length (and never played CIV 1 or 2 either), so forgive a naive question.

I've been playing with all workers on Shift-automate. After a while, in cities that I've both captured or built myself, I seem to have them spontaneously produce workers, or perhaps they are workers that suddenly can't figure out what to do next. When I try to automate them, I can't. Sometimes I can neither shift-automate nor automate, sometimes I can only automate. Is this because they have actually run out of things to do? At this point, virtually my entire territory is covered with roads.

Another question related to these deadbeats, sometimes I can't even get them to join a city. And when I do, they don't appear to create another citizen in the zoom-city screen. Is this just a product of late night weariness on my part?

 

[ButSam80]

Try using A instead of Shift-A. I believe Shift-A tells the worker to be automated but only work on that city...or maybe it was automated but not build over other improvements--I have trouble keeping them straight. Another handy command is Shift-N, which tells the worker to connect everything in your empire by road (cities/resources/luxuries). Consult the manual for other commands--I know there were others, but those are the ones I use. I always use A and Shift-N, but the others could come in handy at times. I'm sure

For adding workers, it should work--but don't add them to a city of size 6 without aqueducts or a city of size 12 without a hospital. That would make them do nothing. Cities cannot grow beyond size 6 without aqueducts (unless they are next to a river) and cannot grow beyond size 12 without a hospital, no matter what.