How many workers per town?
- Thread starter Grogg
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vinstafresh
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
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I usually have 3 or 4 workers in play, since the terrain-development is very balanced now. Start with road and mining first, put farms, camps and cottages next. You can't do everything at once, so no more workers needed. And they work a whole lot faster than in civ3. If you produce more workers, you end up with a pile of useless units. You can't let them join cities like you could in Civ3...
cythochrome
Chieftain
I usually put one per town, that seems enough for me on noble. I also create another one when I have a construction break and set it on trade network. More than one/town seems too much (for me at least).
Grogg said:Hi!!
How many workers per town is it recomended to have?
/Grogg
It really all depends on political conditions (are you about to get attacked?) and how expansive you are, etc...
For instance, if I'm playing a small map and I have 3 people around me, I'll probably build only 1 or 2 workers and mostly build offense.
If I'm playing Terra and I'm the first one to find the new world, I'll start pumping workers like crazy. Generally, 4-5 workers is just enough to maintain an empire of 5+ cities.
For instance, if I'm playing a small map and I have 3 people around me, I'll probably build only 1 or 2 workers and mostly build offense.
If I'm playing Terra and I'm the first one to find the new world, I'll start pumping workers like crazy. Generally, 4-5 workers is just enough to maintain an empire of 5+ cities.
Gargoyle
Warlord
One worker per 1.5 towns seems to be a good fit for me. Less and you can't keep up with what needs to get done. I try to balance improvements in a just in time fashion. Too many workers and you get done too fast and your workers will run out of things to do, which is a waste.
Tip: If you know you'll eventually be fighting a neighbor build fewer than you normally would, because you're certain to bag at least one or more per city you take... Especially if you arrive on their doorstep early enough that you scare all the workers inside the target town. Even better, nail a city with a settler trapped in it - which turns into 3 workers when you capture that unit.
I actually built 6 for 4 towns in my current game. 2 of my cities were placed in the middle of the jungle (something like 3 non-jungle spaces in their cross). These cities will be at 100+ commerce by the time the game ends and I got 3 happiness resources, 2 health resources, and copper plus a couple of other resources outside the crosses that the borders will expand over. Very good spots, just not productive immediately. At first, I wanted to clear the jungle as quickily as possible, so 2 workers for each seemed reasonable. I'll disband the extras at some point to save the maintenance costs.
Sayounara
King
At least 1 per town, so if there's a really important resource, one can walk over to the other town and help out.
jeannie
Warlord
If you create a lot of workers and automate them, it will definitely slow down your game. That was true in Civ3 also.
Is it really a waste to have too many workers?
I was actually really surprised that people have so few workers. I guess I'm still in civ3 mode, in this respect.
The more workers, the faster the tiles are upgraded...which means the faster the cities can get productive and growing. It also means that towns will get placed sooner, rather than later. When I expand or take over cities, the horde of workers get the city networked and improved really quickly.
It's true that eventually, I'll have a stack of workers doing nothing. This seems like a waste at that point, but they were hugely busy until that point.
In my next game, I'll try having fewer workers and see how it works out.
I was actually really surprised that people have so few workers. I guess I'm still in civ3 mode, in this respect.
The more workers, the faster the tiles are upgraded...which means the faster the cities can get productive and growing. It also means that towns will get placed sooner, rather than later. When I expand or take over cities, the horde of workers get the city networked and improved really quickly.
It's true that eventually, I'll have a stack of workers doing nothing. This seems like a waste at that point, but they were hugely busy until that point.
In my next game, I'll try having fewer workers and see how it works out.
alysenne said:
1) If you have too many workers you wasted the food/hammers of the city that built it. Unless you captured the worker in war.
2) Workers contribute to unit support cost. If you have a small military then this is not an issue.
3) If you have too many workers then what I mean by that is that they never have a tile to improve that a city needs to work, so having more will not contribute to the growth or productivity of your cities. The exact right number of workers is where your workers just barely keep up with city growth such that your cities are always working improved tiles. Forests count as improved tiles by the way since they are a strong tile without an improvement. But if you like to chop all your forests down then you will need more workers, at the price of not only lowering the productivity of your land but also paying the prices listed in #1 and #2 of my post. Also, if you have a lot of jungles around then you will need more workers, especially on the higher difficulty levels where health is actually a concern.
3 per city at the beginning, 1.5 after. You will need a little bit more once you got railroads, but after that they are pretty much useless. (Except if eveybody start nuking and even then).
More if you Build/raze your mines.(Note the idea behind building and raizing you own mines is that each time you build a mine, there is a small chance to discover ressources. If you absolutly want GOLD in eahc of you mines, this is the way to go.
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More if you Build/raze your mines.(Note the idea behind building and raizing you own mines is that each time you build a mine, there is a small chance to discover ressources. If you absolutly want GOLD in eahc of you mines, this is the way to go.
)I started a new game, planning to keep the number of workers low. I tried to have 1 worker per city, but that really didn't work at all. I've been increasing the numbers, so I now have 12 workers for 8 cities. I still have quite a large number of unimproved tiles. Many of my cities have citizens working on unimproved tiles. I fail to see the benefit of having so few workers.
It's true that workers aren't cheap, but I'm looking at my computer screen and I can count over a dozen tiles that I wish I could have built cottages on long, long time ago. That would have easily made up for the time spent making more workers.
It's true that workers aren't cheap, but I'm looking at my computer screen and I can count over a dozen tiles that I wish I could have built cottages on long, long time ago. That would have easily made up for the time spent making more workers.
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