Don't Waste Worker Turns

[(Pro)Peanut_P]

I thought everyone done this,but after watching a few vids on Youtube,apparently they don't.

If a resource is 2 tiles away fror your worker, instead of moving onto the resource move just the one tile and build a road>cancel the road on the same turn>next turn improve the resource.This will save you one turn when you want to complete the road.

Most probably know this but some will not.
Even one turn saved with a worker is great in the early game.

Peanut.

 

[krikav]

Well done pointing this out.

I would really like to see more worker-micromanagement tricks that people have found out. There might be many things that one can improve.
As you say, worker managment is crucial in the early game.

It's nice to make a road in a forest, and chop it untill there is just one more turn to chop.
Then you have a huge supply of emergency hammers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's only in very recent videos where I bothered doing this .

 

[Grashopa]

Some people finish a game in 2 hours, some people like me get to 2000 BC in 2 hours

 

[Um the Muse]

Yeah, I'm in the ridiculously slow play camp because of my worker mcro, lol. Here's a few more: if you don't need the road for traveling, but you do need it, you should use your trick to get the road built towards the next target improvement. For example, if you've built an improvement out in the boondocks, start roads from the improvement to your empire unless you've got more improvements to make in the boondocks.

Stacking workers can have them waste worker turns. Unstack them after they've completed their task.

An offshoot of that last one: only stack workers if the nearest city is going to use the tile before a single worker finishes. Remember that they don't have to stay stacked. If you're careful about it, you can have the second worker provide just enough turns so that the improvement finishes as soon as the city is ready. This is obviously very micro intensive and I don't always remember to do this, but it's probably saved me more worker turns than the road trick even so.

At some point later in the game, I become less focused on my own territory. At this point, I sometimes miss when borders pop or I take a new city or whatever. At this point, I find it useful to (dare I say it?) automate a few workers. They tend to be quick at picking up new special resources. You can change their behavior towards existing improvements if you've built farms on calendar resources, mined the pigs, etcetera and forgot about them or not.

I don't know if this one really counts or even if it's worth doing, but apparently when your building workers and settlers, your overflow stays in production. So, if you build a worker in a city with lots of food but few hammers, you can micro the build to maximize OF so that you can actually build stuff.

 

[Dirk1302]

I can easily see skipping this micro on youtube as planning workers correctly in this way takes some time. Building/cancelling a road while underway is probably doable but sometimes you need to plan a bit further to maximize worker potential which is hard on youtube.

As for worker tricks, if you have 2 workers and 2 hills, don't move both workers to the same hill and then to the next if you don't need the mine output immediately. Both workers lose a turn by doing this. Obvious but some years ago i often saw lots of workers on one hill. Same idea with roading through forests, don't use 2 workers unless you need the road very badly.

For roading 2 forest tiles comparison

2 workers
move-road-move-road

1 worker
move-road-road-move-road-road

2 workers is only 1.5 times as fast not a very good deal. This is probably well known but it's not that different from roading then cancelling. And to get this right on youtube in more complex situations is a pain.

 

[krikav]

As for worker tricks, if you have 2 workers and 2 hills, don't move both workers to the same hill and then to the next if you don't need the mine output immediately. Both workers lose a turn by doing this. Obvious but some years ago i often saw lots of workers on one hill. Same idea with roading through forests, don't use 2 workers unless you need the road very badly.

Very true, it pays of to be patient...

It seems as if civ4 workers aren't that good at cooperating!

 

[Dirk1302]

No they're not . Rusten warned against stacking workers years ago already for this reason. Stacking 2 workers is not a problem btw if you can move and improve same turn. A flatland road is done twice as fast with 2 workers compared to 1. 3 workers is very often costly, if you're going to build the flatland road like this 2 workers do the roading, the third is free to go but only if you unstack it and this is of course often forgotten.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I do this sort of optimizing early in the game. As the game goes on, i generally don't - part of it is that I tend to get sloppy about workers and move them from city to city a lot, which is almost certainly poor play on my part. I also almost never have enough workers... even when I have a lot of workers!!

 

[kossin]

Early worker micro is one of the great challenges of Civ4 and it really pays off. In the SGOTMs the first ~100 turns of worker micro are a hot topic of debate... you gain and lose whole turns with them.

 

[PeteJ]

I think someone should do a youtube video showcasing good worker micro. I would do one myself but I don't have a mic and I could never get any sound to work on camstudio.

 

[krikav]

I think someone should do a youtube video showcasing good worker micro. I would do one myself but I don't have a mic and I could never get any sound to work on camstudio.

I would treasure such a video.

 

[K.Murx]

At this point, I find it useful to (dare I say it?) automate a few workers. They tend to be quick at picking up new special resources.

Actually, if you are only after the special resources, "build trade network" works better as the workers do not build over improvements on standard tiles, but do pick up recently revealed special resources (e.g., uranium, coal, etc.).

I still have some automated workers running around, anyway. Just can't bring myself to keep up the worker micro throughout the mid-late game. Who cares at that point?

 

[NoSuchName]

It's also possible to automate workers with conditions like "don't overwrite improvements", "don't cut forests" etcetera. This makes it a lot less likely that they accidentally do something very stupid.

 

[sossos]

There are a lot of worker micro management in the game. I can only recall some general tips.

The foundation is to analyze the return of investment. How many turns to finish one improvement with how much gain per turn? Is it a pure gain or just a swap from another tile? You can get priority between different options.

Then you can align the movement with your whipping plan. What city to whip and what city to improve? Can some tiles be shared so both cities can whip alternately?

Furthermore, you may check which city is the healthiest where will be a chopping heaven or which forest needs to be chopped first because it occupies a river tile or because you don't want enemy stand on it beside your city. Which roads is important to make your soldiers move fast between cities? With the above consideration, you may decide your worker quantity and density in each area.

The last but not least, try to reduce movement as many as possible. This requires a clear working plan for the next 10 turns. If you see a city's pop will be increased in 4 turns, 1 worker is enough to build a cottage there. Concentrated cities in the first 100 turns can also help increase the efficiency.

 

[sossos]

I would treasure such a video.

I saw some videos before. The irony is: if you know the trick, you can understand and enjoy it; if you don't know, the video is useless to you. Elaboration is still required no matter whether there is a video.

 

[DanielTorrence]

Some people finish a game in 2 hours, some people like me get to 2000 BC in 2 hours

That kind of explains your extraordinary rifling times I should really put more energy into early micro...

 

[Mylene]

Most important i find..do not spend early worker turns on small improvements, if important stuffs waits
For example..building a mine = 1h over plains forests. Your city plans are: 2 pop whip library, using good growth + 1 20h chop. Here improving a hill is not needed (now), if after growing a few hammers are missing use those plains forests

 

[sossos]

Most important i find..do not spend early worker turns on small improvements, if important stuffs waits
For example..building a mine = 1h over plains forests. Your city plans are: 2 pop whip library, using good growth + 1 20h chop. Here improving a hill is not needed (now), if after growing a few hammers are missing use those plains forests

yes, in most cases of the first 125 turns, hill and plain might be the last choice while hill is only important for early wars. Resource and river tile is worthy of improvement, the hamlet on the grass land the next, while all other tiles are better to be whipped.

My trend is to reduce the quantity of workers as many as possible, just to achieve the maxim maginal profit. Supposing you only improve the resource and river, chop the profitable investment, you can save a lot of hammer from workers and boom more quickly to reach the rush point. Even for the expansive leaders, earlier workers may win my weight over more workers.

The reason behind might be the relative value of food after the granary is built, 1 food =1.8~2.2 hammer. This makes wind mill value more than mine for the hills.

 

[JustBen]

Build your road network out of X's and not +'s. Moving in the secondary directions (1379) is faster than moving in the cardinal directions (2468), so build a road network that exploits this. Don't build a road that goes 8888 when you can build one that goes 7979. It gives better coverage of adjacent tiles, and it will be faster to build new roads to other destinations. This isn't as rigorous as 100 turn worker plans a la SGOTM, but leads to fewer facepalm moments in the early game when you don't know what's around you.

It's probably obvious, but probably worth saying out loud.