How do you do workers?

[TheMeInTeam]

Note that in the 'options' you can ask the workers to leave old improvements alone. When you do need them changed I usually grab a few workers and do it myself.

As for automated I manually do workers until about 500BC and then automate them - I usually have wars to manage at that time

I don't have a set time for automating workers, and it's usually somewhere in the AD's, but I do this too. Definitely have to make them leave old improvements, or they ruin specialized cities and sit in one place changing the same plot of land forever. Once the core cities are specialized though, I can almost never be bothered to rework AI cities into specialized setups (the exception being early rushes). I just let their improvements sit, and if the workers want to spam more cottages around them later fine.

Of course, you still have to pull off some automated workers to make use of oil and so on, but really if you're warring alot automated workers aren't going to kill you as long as you don't use them too soon.

I really, really wish you could tweak worker AI as an in-game feature. Like setting workers to have an improvement priority. Then you could just set them to "improve nearest city" and have them spam workshops without really making orders everywhere, or windmills on hills etc. I don't think the interface or coding for that sort of thing would be all THAT hard.

 

[CivCorpse]

I pick 12 squares that I can use for ancient resources/farms/mines/cottages.

After the industrial revolution I decide what to put on the other 8 squares.

I only replace improvements in highly specialized cities with national wonders.

He usually decides to put cottages there

 

[TheMeInTeam]

He usually decides to put cottages there

And here I didn't think he used cottages at ALL . I definitely saw him posting about the greatness of the SE. I saw it. I swear.

 

[BARBEERIAN]

Cottages on riverside grassland calendar stuff is pretty nice too. The tile still gets +1 commerce from the resource, +1 from the river, then +X for the cottage. Once I get calender and can spare the worker turns I plantation over them since the +1C probably isn't worth as much as I can get by making a plantation and selling the resource off.

 

[peterfrosty]

I very often re-do tile upgrades, especially in the mid-late game.

As biology and Sid's Sushi become available, those farms become less useful to me, and usually find themselves as workshops or watermills.

As my specialized research/money commerce cities come online, my early/mid game generic commerce cities can contribute more as a production city or secondary GP pharm.

New/Captured cities almost always get an extra batch of farms as they're growing in size, only to be covered later by workshops/watermills and sometime a cottage or two.

Also, worker-turns at mid-game are cheap imho, and the tiles surrounding my cities get further specialized as the game progresses, reflecting the city's changing needs.