How to control 'WANDERING WORKERS'???

[Emmet Samms]

Is there a shift-key (or whatever) that keeps workers from crossing over other civ's borders without limiting them to working within just one city radius? I have literally hundreds of workers (I truly believe that they are the KEY to success in civIII) but the little rat bastards keep leaving one area of my empire for another, which requires them to cross international borders. This is very time consuming and a real pain in the butt! ES

 

[d3dash]

none that I have found, if there is an undeveloped area somewhere, they will develope it. It seems to me though that they really rush for those squares that are being worked by a city, maybe a hirer priority?

 

[Bamspeedy]

This is why I try to keep all my cities together at all times. So the worker never has to go through AI's territory. About the only time this has happened to me, was when their was a very small bay, and my city's culture extended across the bay onto land on the other side. In that case, try and get a ROP, so your workers will hurry up and get that terrain improved, so it no longer needs to go there.

 

[Lesychan]

Is there a way to wake all your workers? Or to wake them all after they finished their work?

 

[Rneilan]

are you guys talking about automated workers? because i never automate, and i never have those problems...

 

[Lesychan]

Yup..its about automated ones...

 

[Bamspeedy]

are you guys talking about automated workers? because i never automate, and i never have those problems...

Yeah, but on huge maps, when you have 100+ workers, it is way too tedious to be manually moving them all around, like you could on smaller maps, when you have fewer workers. Without automation, I'd probably be spending 30 minutes every turn just moving my workers!

 

[Bamspeedy]

Is there a way to wake all your workers? Or to wake them all after they finished their work?

This is another thing, I don't like. When I have a bunch of workers on automate, to just clean up pollution, and there is no pollution to clean up, and all tiles have been improved they go back to a city and the worker ends it's turn, instead of fortifying. So if I wake a worker, it says "this unit has already moved" so I must wait until the next turn to select the new special task that I want, rather than have the unit available immediately on that turn, had it been fortified.

As for waking workers from automate, I just look around at any that are standing still (this means they have just completed something), and select them. Or if they all have gone to cities to sleep, I'll use the military advisor and look at city garrisons. If I see a city with several workers in them, I'll wake all of them in that particular city.

 

[Zouave]

Another Civ's Settler Diarrhea and Wandering Workers:
The only things I might hate more than Culture Flipping.

I had a game a few days ago as Rome with China nearby. They deposited settlers on every scrap of open, crummy land and the map looked like Chicken Pox. As a result, I had to face the tedium of Wandering Chinese Workers marching through my terrirtory. Of course, it eventually caused a war.



Complain all we want - Firaxis couldn't care less as long as we buy their stuff.

 

[Emmet Samms]

Gee, it often takes me 30-45min just to complete a turn as it is. If I manually moved each and every one of my workers (over 200 currently) it would be more like 60-90min. I typically automate about 30% of my workers until they start showing up in cities (nothing left tp do) at which point I stack them for pollution detail.
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I find it hard to fathom just how anyone could keep all their cities together on a huge map, unless they never invade or explore all that much.
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Also, just to mention, during times of emergency (like you're outnumbered in the field and know damn well you're going to be attacked in mass on the next turn) if you scatter individual workers into the field the AI will almost always choose to capture those workers first (thereby using up their unit attack capabilities for that turn) and very possibly saving your butt (or most of it anyway) for one more turn.
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What this game REALLY needs is an AI with a learning capability. Then your tricks and strategy would have to change as the AI actually began to outsmart you.
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Ya know, I have another question concerning workers. Do you guys ever have them literally disappear from a continent that has nothing left for them to do??? I typically keep stacks of them (6 to 12) standing around (using the skip turn mode) just to deal with pollution. I dunno . . . maybe I'm more senile than I think I am.
ES

 

[Bamspeedy]

I find it hard to fathom just how anyone could keep all their cities together on a huge map, unless they never invade or explore all that much.

Simple. Play on a pangea map. When you want more land, take out a neighbor (the new cities are still connected to your original cities). If I get a settler from a goody hut that is in the middle of nowhere, halfway around the world from the capital, I'll send him back towards my other cities. I guess keeping them together would be difficult or impossible on an island map.

Gee, it often takes me 30-45min just to complete a turn as it is. If I manually moved each and every one of my workers (over 200 currently) it would be more like 60-90min. I typically automate about 30% of my workers until they start showing up in cities (nothing left tp do) at which point I stack them for pollution detail.

After you get all your 'core cities' (cities no more than 15-20 squares away from your capital on a huge map) fully developed, there really isn't a reason, in my opinion, to manually move any of them. Those far away cities won't produce nothing anyways because of corruption, so I'll just automate all of them. You can hit shift-P to send workers on auto-pollution clean up, instead of moving around those stacks.

I use shift-A, this automates them without altering previous terrain improvements (irrigating a mine, for example). Then when pollution hits, I'll send some of them on auto-pollution patrol. Shift-A will also clean up pollution, but they might not put as big of a priority on doing it than shift-P. If I see alot of pollution that isn't being cleaned up right away, I'll add more workers to the shift-P.

 

[Emmet Samms]

Question:
if I shift-P these workers, and there is no pollution at the moment, what will they do? Where will they go? Will they just hang round the city bothering my wife's sister? I'm so confused. (Must be nap time.) ES

 

[Beam]

Those shift-P workers that have nothing to do will indeed be scratching their noses, doing their hair, bother other people, curse offensively etc.

As Bamspeedy says, put all of them on shift-A, unless you get a lot of pollution.

The best way to check if workers are hanging around is to go through the Diplo screen (F4) and open negotiations with one of your friends. You can see if you can offer workers, and if so you know a worker is hanging around in that city.

If you do this at the start of your turn new instructions can be given and the annoying "unit has already moved" thing is circumvented!

 

[Bamspeedy]

The best way to check if workers are hanging around is to go through the Diplo screen (F4) and open negotiations with one of your friends. You can see if you can offer workers, and if so you know a worker is hanging around in that city.

Just one problem with that, you can only trade workers if the worker is in the capital. Frequently, they will rest in other cities .

That's why I use the military advisor, and view it by city garrisons.