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How many workers?

How many Workers do you use?

  • 1 per city

    Votes: 13 43.3%
  • 2 per city

    Votes: 9 30.0%
  • 1 per every 2 cities

    Votes: 2 6.7%
  • other

    Votes: 6 20.0%

  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .

sackmanjay

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 16, 2002
Messages
12
Location
Orlando
Just how many workers should I have on average? 1 or 2 per city or more? What do you folks average?
 
I usually have two per city. In the Modern Ages (after the all external improvements are built), I only need one worker for four cities, due to anti-pollution improvements.
 
It seems your poll is not too relevant as more workers per city should have been added.

Personally I don't keep the workers near a city but in stacks to make them finish a job in one turn.

Rapid improvement is key in my strategy and I have about 3 to 4 workers per city most of the time. (ussually more than half of them are captured/bought workers so this should mean about two per city). In railroad building season I use dozens of workers (I can't even stimate how many)

I also know for a fact that good players use even more workers.
 
baisically my answer is simple, as many as i can capture!! they have no upkeep and while being not as effective i can usually have 40-60 of the little blighters running around my empire, when i get that many i usually add all the ones i built at the start to my new expansions to help them get up to speed fast
 
Have to agree w/ VenomLord, as many as I can capture. If I'm building them, then its 2 per city on average. If your playing an "industrious" civ then captured workers produce as well as those of other traits. Huge bonus!
 
2 per city on average works fine.
 
Same for me. I captue as many I can, and check with the other civs just about every turn to see if they have any for sale.
 
First of all, are we talking about industrious nation?
If yes, so:

in ancient times I use 1 worker per 2 cities. City growth is not so quick in that time and mines are uneffective . Untill I discover Monarchy. Mine building needs a lot of work to be done so number of workers should be increased. Average: 1 per city seems to be enough.
 
Build some, capture some. In my current game all my outlying cities, 90% of my empire, are building settlers and workers and warriors and nothing else and probably won't ever build anything else.
 
in ancient times I use 1 worker per 2 cities. City growth is not so quick in that time and mines are uneffective . Untill I discover Monarchy. Mine building needs a lot of work to be done so number of workers should be increased. Average: 1 per city seems to be enough.

I mine all the time in despot. Irrigation is pretty worthless in despot (except on plains). Mining the bonus grassland squares and even normal grassland squares gives you a huge production boost to build your temples, settlers, and military units to rush the AI. Roads are also quite important and in the road building aspect industrious doesn't have a huge lead, but they sure do on mine building.

Industrious I like to have at least 1 worker/city. At the very start I have less, as settler production is more crucial, but after I get my first few cities built I start building some workers and try to keep up with the settler production. So at first I may have 1 or 2 workers for 5 cities, later on I'll have 100 workers and 130 cities, then when the milking stage hits I'll have 500 cities and about 900-1000 workers (I start using shift-A after I have over 300 workers :crazyeye: ). When everything is irrigated and railroaded, I join most workers back into cities until I have about 20 workers left to clean up pollution.
 
I don't bother with how many per city. I just care about the total. Usually 30-50 of my own, then whatever captured ones I have, so usually around 70-80. Why so many? Well, since the A.I. doesn't seem to care enough about the global warming he's causing in my territory, I send them around the world to do the job for them, the un-eco-friendly bastards.
 
build build build. i use stacks of 2 or 3, normally 20 stacks for 15-20 cities. i capture as many as i can. i love to have a lot more than that.
 
I usually only build about 5 of my own workers in the early part of the game.
After that the AI civs keep sending settlers and a weak unit into my land to settle those useless (and anoying) holes in my cultural boundaries. I ask them to leave a few times. eventually they crack it and declare war. I attack the settler deep in my teritory and get 2 workers. We then go into agressive negotiations, usually i get a city or two if they are close and a few other goddies. We shake hands and the process begins again in 20 turns. In most games this provides me with all my worker needs untill the latter parts of the game. At this point I get more workers from razing enemy cities that would otherwise be difficult to hold due to Culture flipping- the bigger the better! (reputation is usually already in a bad way so who cares?). Also if i can find them i join my original workers back to my cities to save money. When the rail road season is over i start joining the slaves to my cities to speed up the game and increase score. I have had 200 - 250 worker slaves on a large map building roads and rr on auto like a plague of locusts!
 
Depends on my needs. If I want to mine all the mountains and hills, usually I won't build so many unless there is a LOT of them to mine.

When pollution simotaneously strikes or I'm converting from roads to rails, I build much more. When the urgency stops, I usually add 'em to cities.

Usually I keep at least ten in modern ages unless I really crazily added most of them to cities.
 
It's a judgment call, usually alot of them, my goal is to have all my land irrigatd/mined by steam power then i can have my workers make railroads eveywhere and worry about pollution
 
I always have more than I need They come in very handy when you think " wouldn't a road to ***** be nice". Fighting a war with cannon or catapult? You need workers to get across the terrain but more importantly you have to be next to the enemy city to bombard, take workers and build a fort to attack from. Invading new territory? Build roads or railroads everywher then plant forests all over your captured lands. Deforest to rush your temples etc.. It is expensive to hold stacks of workers doing nowt but they should arrive with your invasion forces and then they pay their wages. I usually top out at about a thousand on a huge map
Never use enemy workers. Sell foreigners (add to city if parent civ has been snuffed) it's not productive to have wokers on different work rates, at least half the time you will notice that the foreigner in a stack actually hasn't done any work unless you have an even no of the sods in each work stack.
Later stages of the game just batter workers into every city available to get the score up.
After sanitation only build 2-3 cities up to 20 with workers for wonder building. Let growth happen itself.
 
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