Don't Waste Worker Turns

[stimpyhoek]

worker worker has to be the best start if u can forsee they will be busy. If u civ starts with wheel u should worker worker anyway. This cannot always be done if another player is warrior rush of course. Worker worker start always catches up to parity then surpasses others as u pre-improve....As for worker turns, the part road is essential and the double worker for make long distance road r excellent tips. I disagree with optimal number of workers tho. I have had 13 city empire function well on 7 worker. Thats always been a case of horses for courses.

 

[dalamb]

Hmm. I usually play at Noble, and for most starts I do worker, other stuff, chop 2nd worker after Bronze Working, instead of building 2 workers.

 

[krazybastid]

For some reason I try not to chop until I get Math because of the 50% increase in chopping from 60 hammers to 90. But in some cases I chop earlier.

 

[dalamb]

I try to save lots of chops for post-Math, too, but some are so important they need to be done early; I think a 2nd worker is one of those.

Bear in mind that lots of people seem to chop madly pre-math on the theory that any early-term advantage snowballs, and chopping gets you lots of useful units and/or infrastructure earlier than you could without chops.

 

[King Pluto]

@stimpyhoek:

It seems like a Worker-Worker opening isn't often going to be optimal. There are rarely cases where I can't get my first few tiles improved while I'm growing on Warriors/Barracks, and by the time my Settler comes out, my Worker is ready to go with it to the next city site.

Instead of having two Workers to do the work that one could do, I'd rather have a few Warriors out scouting and fog-busting with a more populous capital.

 

[Um the Muse]

On the topic of chopping, my feeling is that if you're going to use the snowball argument, you've got to show that it's actually going to snowball. At the very least, it's got to give you extra food for chopping. That means that it must fall under one of these categories:

1. Be a granary. Those things are OP
2. Give you a city much sooner because you chopped instead of slow-built. Rush units fall under here, as does building a settler that will block AI's from settling closer to you. This one must be done with extreme caution, imho. Neither decision should be done lightly
3. EXP and/or IMP leaders can leverage chopping and whipping to grow and expand at the same time. Even here, I would recommend building improvements first. Otherwise, your extra pop doesn't really help you Whipping can help make up the difference, but only after granaries are in

 

[dalamb]

By "rush units" do you mean chopping an army to take over a near neighbour?

 

[Um the Muse]

Exactly. It's not really a matter of what kind of units but a matter of timing. The idea is that if you chop units out, you will likely face fewer units and therefore lose fewer units. If this is true for you, the hammers that you save are more than the hammers you get for the math bonus.

 

[Seraiel]

Chopping is OP, even without Math. I personally chop every forrest there is as fast as possible and only leave some in one spot for TJM. The production got by chopping is so tremendously high compared to what a city can produce by working mines or even whipping, there is no relation. Best use of chops imho, chop more workers, which again chop more workers / settlers :>

 

[krikav]

Chopping is OP, even without Math. I personally chop every forrest there is as fast as possible and only leave some in one spot for TJM. The production got by chopping is so tremendously high compared to what a city can produce by working mines or even whipping, there is no relation. Best use of chops imho, chop more workers, which again chop more workers / settlers :>

And then you are left with a army of workers that cost maintenence, with nothing to do.
Complete with a clearcut city. >_<

Chopping is good, I also chop alot before maths (not wise to postpone such a powerfull tactic as chopping, just to get the math bonus).
But one should not go to extremes just for the hell of it.

Sometimes, chopping settlers and getting cities "too fast" can stifle your economy and tech rate entierly.
There need to be a balance in everything.

Btw, whats "TJM"?

 

[raxid]

And then you are left with a army of workers that cost maintenence, with nothing to do.
Complete with a clearcut city. >_<

Chopping is good, I also chop alot before maths (not wise to postpone such a powerfull tactic as chopping, just to get the math bonus).
But one should not go to extremes just for the hell of it.

Sometimes, chopping settlers and getting cities "too fast" can stifle your economy and tech rate entierly.
There need to be a balance in everything.

Btw, whats "TJM"?

i agree, delaying chops for math has nearly no logical backup (unless really close to researching/trading for it).

I also agree with the notion that if well managed, in the right situation, you can get away with "7 workers for 13 cities".

Last TJM, has to be an acronym for national park in some other language? he couldn't be saving forests specifically in one city for a mass lumbermill city could he?

If so, I'd like to point out "saving" forests for national park can be extremely detrimental and should only be done if you weren't going to work those tiles anyway.

oh, maybe he means taj mahal maybe? weirdest acronym ever if so... disregard last two paragraphs if so... notice i uses maybe twice... haha

 

[JustBen]

i agree, delaying chops for math has nearly no logical backup (unless really close to researching/trading for it).

If you're chopping economy, I'm inclined to agree. Early boosts pay off exponentially when you're riding a growth curve. Obviously your cities need something useful to build for this to apply, but that's a problem for tech pathing not forest chopping.

The idea of "saving forests for Math" is usually for war by timing attack. It doesn't literally mean "I'm not chopping until Math appears," but rather "I fit Math into my tech path so I'd have it when I need to start chopping." Sometimes that means after your war tech of course. Rushing math to chop is another way to turn commerce into hammers, which is fundamental to planning a good war. It lets you squeeze in more army in between you researching it and your opponent researching a counter. If your bigger army lets you conquer more cities or even end the war a few turns earlier, it was a sound economic investment.

 

[Seraiel]

oh, maybe he means taj mahal maybe? weirdest acronym ever if so... disregard last two paragraphs if so... notice i uses maybe twice... haha

Yer, I used TJM for Taj Mahal, could have also used TM for it, would perhaps have been easier. If you only used TM twice, I think you're not paying enough attention to its benefits. Take a look at this:



Tactic: Use a GP to start a golden Age (and have MoM if possible). Create 3-4 GPs during that GA and bulb heavily your way to the future, then chop-rush TM, use the golden Age to create 3 further GPs, use 2 to chain the next GA again creating 3 GPs, use all 3 to chain another GA, get the last 2 GPs to be used for anything you want.

By this tactic, you will have an explosion in Tech and after having reached techs 500-1000y away from AI, you will get a production explosion that lasts for so long, that you can build so many Cuirrs / Cavs or whatever you want, that you can roflstomp any map, no matter how large it is. I used this for my Liberalism Medicine Slingshot on by 330 BC and after that started the 3 GA-Chain when Execs became available.

 

[krazybastid]

I usee my chops wisely a hill forrest is always a good chop spreading farms and cottages should be done at a steady space. I'm not gonna do all my chops before the end of the reinessance. I only do about 2 or 3 chops at the most pre math only if I'm rushing the oracle and Stonehenge if I think I can get it soon enough.

 

[jmknpk]

I have started micromanaging road building as follows. I have my workers delay completion of roads between cities until most of the entire path is complete. I have the worker build the road until it is one turn from completion. Then I have the worker move on to the next tile along the road path. When the entire path of tiles is one turn from road completion, I have the worker go back and complete the road. When the worker goes back, he can move+build every turn and complete the entire path in the same number of turns (excepting hills, forests, marshes, and the like. The savings is in the gold maintenance per road per turn. I don't start paying the road maintenance until the entire road path is near completion, saving a bit of gold while the road path is still in work.

Still playing civ5 because I don't have the disposable money for Civ6. Crossing my fingers for the lottery. Lol

 

[Pangaea]

This is the Civ 4 forum, and this game thankfully doesn't have that idiotic "roads cost money" mechanic

Speaking of which, Civ 4 is cheaper and better than both the later incarnations, and shouldn't require winning the lottery

 

[Lennier]

And he came here to do a necro of a thread that was last posted to 5-1/2 years ago.

 

[lymond]

Plus, roads in 5 costs money. Why waste turns on roads that are never needed and hurt your economy. Put those worker turns into partial improvements.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Not to veer into Civ5 on a resurrected zombie Civ4 thread, but connecting cities via roads mid game after growing cities provides a good boost to income even after figuring the maintenance for roads. Also if you go liberty, the happiness is nothing to sneeze at. Troop movement is a bonus, too

 

[Archon_Wing]

You also need them for uhh... war too.

Though that was a game where GPs cost maintenance. Nickle and Diming.