Extra workers and waiting to war: Some observations from my recent games

[futurehermit]

I won a game with Wang Kon last night. It was a 1920 space race. It was hard to win sooner because 1) I didn't have a neighbour to attack until the medeival era (I was on the southern peninsula of a large continent and early war with Augustus would've been costly and painful. I was able to build around 8 cities peacefully); and 2) The land I had, even the conquered land from Augustus and then Isabella (she only ever had 4 cities!) was mostly coastal tiles and the land tiles I did have weren't amazing. The result was not many strong commerce cities and not many strong production cities.

Anyways...

I made a couple of observations based on three things I don't normally do that seemed to help my game a lot and make me feel like things were in the bag for the most part early on (by that I don't mean they won the game, but they helped me feel like I wasn't going to lose it early).

1) I built more workers than normal. Normally I go for 1 per city. In this game I went for 1.5-2 per city and it made a huge difference. I was able to get my cities developed more quickly, roads built throughout my empire, etc. It just felt like my cities were able to grow into improvements much more quickly and efficiently.

2) I didn't go for an early war. Most games I look like a crazy person for an early war and if I don't get one, I worry that I will lose. In this game I was slow and steady, settling additional cities as I could afford it until the land was gone. I had around 8 cities and the same size or larger empire than the 3 AIs on my continent (including Cyrus).

3) I didn't stretch for expensive techs and trading to backfill for cheaper techs. I started this because the diplo situation was tricky, but I think it was for the best. I just self-researched the cheapest tech each time until I only had pricier ones left. Then I would do a couple trades. Rinse, repeat. The result was less WFYABTA and a healthy tech lead for most of the game. With a couple of GSs (ed, lib) I had lib in 800AD with limited trading and lightbulbing (monarch/standard/normal/continents).

Of course financial didn't hurt either and my hwacha/war elephant/cavalry army made short work of a very powerful Augustus then a very weak Issy (although she JUST upgraded to rifles when I attacked her making it a bit more difficult than I had expected).

Anyways, what I wanted to say was that now in my games I think I will be looking to settle the available land first (assuming it isn't total crap) before leaning toward war (unless I have copper and a neighbour really on my doorstep). Have some extra workers to develop my empire more quickly. And avoid trading for cheap techs instead self-researching the cheaper ones while my empire is developing.

This looks a lot different than how I often play, which is to concentrate on military early, attacking a neighbour, straining my early economy, lightbulbing and teching expensive techs to trade for techs I skipped, etc. I think I inherited that approach from reading higher-level games and I think that is probably the way to go at higher-levels but on monarch and below I think this approach is more efficient in the long haul. And I think if I had better land (the continent was very narrow meaning almost all cities were coastal) I would've won a lot sooner.

With BtS coming out and the changes making warfare harder--and I've heard the AI techs slower, meaning self-research will be more important!--I think this approach could be a better one.

What do you think?

 

[frob2900]

1) I built more workers than normal. Normally I go for 1 per city. In this game I went for 1.5-2 per city and it made a huge difference. I was able to get my cities developed more quickly, roads built throughout my empire, etc. It just felt like my cities were able to grow into improvements much more quickly and efficiently.

^I think the above is good.

Having a bunch of workers to make sure every tile you ever work has the right improvement on it is very important. (On a related note: this is why expansive is better than I think a lot of people give it credit for).

The trading strategy you described is solid, sure it's useless to trade for e.g. meditation if you've gone the poly route (well.. you might need med. for philosophy, but by then its a 1-2 turner).

Still, some tech trading can be good, and remember that expensive techs can be sold for gold rather than bundles of cheap techs, which keeps you away from WFYABTA (I've had a cool 1500-2000 gold sometimes around feudalism just from selling).

 

[futurehermit]

Oh yeah, don't worry, I sell techs for gold still! And I still do some tech trading (I don't self-research everything).

I find the AI techs kinda slow on monarch tbh. So, I'll just self-research cheap techs and expensive ones they don't have, then trade for the expensive ones they do have when they come available. This approach gave me an outright tech-lead for most of the game. The only time I wasn't able to have a tech an opponent had was when it was a monopoly tech and they wouldn't trade it.

 

[lilnev]

Rule of thumb on workers: you should never be working an unimproved tile except for very early on, or after all land tiles are developed, and occasional strange circumstances (plains forest in a production city sometimes comes up, as does coastal tiles vs plains cottages when you want to continue growth). In practice I find N+1 or N+2 to be about right, when I have N cities. But it can vary quite a bit, fewer needed if your happy caps are severe, a lot more if they're increasing rapidly or you're spamming lots of new cities, especially if you've got jungle to contend with.

Tech-trading: I generally won't accept anything that would take me 3 turns or less (normal speed), and I look sceptically at 4-turn techs. Those figures are for how long it'll take me once I actually want the tech -- Sailing might be a 6-turn tech early on, but I often don't care until I need it for Calendar, when it might be a 2-turn tech. The AIs are kind of slow on monarch, and if you're really gunning for an early space race you might have to help them out by passing out freebies.

Early war? If you can grab a capital it's generally worth it, as the land will be crazy good. But if it's a choice between fighting for their border cities and settling my own on equivalent land, I'll expand peacefully. Might as well let them develop the cities and the land; I'll take it later. Actually I find myself not fighting pre-catapults very often anymore, unless circumstances really demand it (on immortal, though, where you'll hit a lot more archers early).

First you become a CE fan, now you're putting down the axe for more ploughs, eh?

peace,
lilnev

 

[frob2900]

In practice I find N+1 or N+2 to be about right, when I have N cities. But it can vary quite a bit, fewer needed if your happy caps are severe, a lot more if they're increasing rapidly or you're spamming lots of new cities, especially if you've got jungle to contend with.

Yeah, N+2 is probably around what I have hanging around in the mid/late game (actually for a hundred years or so they don't do much except wait for railroads to come along or repair war damage in new conquests), but early on I find it useful to have a few more than that.

For 4 or 5 cities in the early game up to 10 workers can come in handy (have them bunched in groups of 2-3 to do tile improvements quickly on demand). This is actually something I have kind of discovered by accident a few months ago when capturing the big worker stacks that the AI sometimes has in its cities. Back then I followed the 1 worker/city rule, but I noticed that those games where I captured lots of workers just tended to go better.

Unfortunately, building 2-3 workers per city early on (when you have ca 3 cities) is too heavy an investment unless you are expansive (pre BtS nerf ), so capturing worker stacks is something I love to do in my early classical axerush.

Invasion/reinforcement roads are also a huge bonus, and having two or three workers dedicated to this is also great.

Is it just me or does the Expansive nerf (+25% bonus instead of +50% for worker production) feel kind of heavy? Wasn't that really the Expansive traits appeal? health: and cheap granaries are ok, but workers are often better)

 

[Gnarfflinger]

I've noticed that more workers has helped me out too. The problem I find is that I don't have enough Cities by the time the AI boxes me in, and by the second war, I'm so far behind, it's not funny...

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I've noticed that more workers has helped me out too. The problem I find is that I don't have enough Cities by the time the AI boxes me in, and by the second war, I'm so far behind, it's not funny...

Getting enough cities is key. Three used to be enough for me to launch a catapult based war on Monarch, but with BTS I think I need more production at that point in the game. Probably five cities would be a good strong core that could springboard up to ten or so in the first war.

If you are getting too boxed in you might want to forgo some early wonders in favour of expansion. In my last game I built the temple of artemis after the oracle (I had marble). With hindsight those hammers would easily have given me an extra city and worker which would have been more use.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

I find that I either get boxed in or over expand and am too under equipped...

 

[OKScientist]

1) Agreed. I almost always go the worker/worker/settler route (unless I need a work boat, which I build first). But then again, I play big maps, so I am usually in a situation without another capital nearby.

2) What's Wang Kon's traits and UU? I don't remember, but I think these should play a role, right?

3) Agreed.

In BTS, I get the feeling that settlers are more expensive than in vanilla (never played the previous exp. pack), but workers are the same? I used to have two forrests chopped for a settler, now it takes three...

 

[Perugia]

1) I built more workers than normal. Normally I go for 1 per city. In this game I went for 1.5-2 per city and it made a huge difference. I was able to get my cities developed more quickly, roads built throughout my empire, etc. It just felt like my cities were able to grow into improvements much more quickly and efficiently.

I think over 1.5 per city is excessive and wonder if you using the workers to their maximum efficiency? I find that if there are unimproved tiles being worked it really pays to team up your workers in each cluster of cities and improve the 1 or 2 tiles that are essential in the fewest turns possible then move on and repeat.

This is especially important if you are playing epic or marathon eg a grassland cottage takes 15 turns on marathon so just teaming 2 workers gets you one cottage in 8 turns and the second in 16 turns (assuming it takes 1 turn moving between the cities). If each worker stayed in its own city you would get 2 cottages in 15 turns. By teaming one cottage is up 7 turns early and the other 1 turn late which increases commerce.

However, when teaming workers I seldom stack them all into a single stack because it risks wasting turns on completion...

In a stack of workers building an improvement, on the turn the improvement completes part of the stack will have 'moved' (unless the number of workers is exactly the right number to complete the work) and part will not but the stack will not get the focus and some worker turns will be lost - unless you manually select the stack and split it to give the unused workers their next task.

Because of this I usually give individual orders to workers and I assign my first 10 workers to the number keys to make them easy to select.

 

[obsolete]

Perugia, that worker macro may not be such a bad idea for making things easier...

 

[Snaaty]

I tend to agree in this matter with Future...


If I can avoid it, I don´t go for early war

If I selfexpand I build in the beginning about 6-8 workers for my first 3-4 cities, because what usually makes you run broke early is working non-improved tiles. 3-4 early game cottages can work wonders here

Later I tune worker production down and end up usually with about 0,7 per city once my empire has grown...

 

[cabert]

Hey FH, you're enjoying the different ways to win at monarch it seems .

About workers, I'm in the "should build more of those" club.
Fortunately, the AI builds enough for me to capture.
I compensate this by whipping away citizens working unimproved tiles.
It certainly isn't optimal but :
- i build less workers = less "wasted" hammers
- I gain more hammers through slavery
so all is not bad.
Where I find myself short on workers is when I settle or capture a new city.
I tend to stack my workers to finish improvements in 1 turn (and I MM them in the way perugia mentionned), but since I have too few of them, I end up with an overimproved city and others lacking improvements. That's mostly because I want my workers to work, and not to travel!
There is certainly room for improvements in my game here .

About the tech trade strat, I guess I do exactly what you mention, but be aware that it goes totally against agressive lightbulbing strats. I had to change drastically my way of trading in a mehmed gunpowder beeline (trial I did a few months ago already, time flies!).

And about early war or not, this should really be situationnal.
Like lilnev said, a second capital site is worth a lot of hammers, but razing a few border cities is worth almost nothing (I compare the cost in hammers for axes with the value of building research instead, to have some rule of thumb).
I have a few situation in mind that lead to different answers :
- boxed in = war. It's not about what you capture, it's because later you won't be able to go to war efficiently. The trigger is if feel I'm not able to settle 4 good cities on "my land". I then forget about settlers and go to war.
- very near neighbour = war. second capital + free workers is enough to be greedy.
- very good land to settle = no war. I want my cities in the right places, not in AI fashion.
- specific wonder strat = no war. You just can't build axemen and great wall + pyramids in the same time.

 

[futurehermit]

Thanks everyone, nice to know what I am experiencing isn't unique to myself.

First you become a CE fan, now you're putting down the axe for more ploughs, eh?

Yeah, who knew, who knew? Next I'll only go for cultural and diplomatic victories

 

[budweiser]

I cant get the hang of culture.

My latest success was with Freddie. The game defining moment was when my single axeman met a Lizzie archer/settler on the hill site that I wanted. I had to attack and hope for the best because I had one of those starts where you get one good city location and the rest is tundra.

I've rolled so many starts I can tell the relative distance between civs just based on what my starting location looks like.

That was a domination victory, but I waited until maces to kill Liz, cavs for Sal, and Panzers for the rest of the world! Mwuhahah!

 

[Maestro_Innit]

What does WFYABTA mean? That's one hellovan acronym

 

[cabert]

What does WFYABTA mean? That's one hellovan acronym

we fear you are becoming too advanced (which is really just a game mechanic preventing abusive tech whoring)

 

[Maestro_Innit]

Ah-haaaa!

Thanks

 

[obsolete]

It just means you have been collecting too many JUNKER-TECHs.

You could probably trim a whole branch off from the monoethism route....

 

[lilnev]

I quite commonly go to the stars without knowing Monotheism. Archery, HBR, Music ... these are dead ends. I don't think it's happened yet, but one of these days I expect I'll win without ever learning Hunting.

peace,
lilnev