is it 'good' to automate?

[Xong]

ive been doing it since i started playing civ 3. Ive automated workers, automate explore, set governor on etc. and it seems to be doing well for me. But i know for some of the more experienced players out there, they enjoy to do them manually. Which do you prefer? what are the ups in doing so?

 

[ChaosArbiter]

In most cases, no. The only times I'll Automate are if I have a stack of Workers on Pollution Cleanup or I'm building a Railroad through pacified territory. Basically, the AI is terrible at managing things, so if you Automate Workers, you're almost certainly going to have to fix something later on; your cities are important enough that you should be checking them to make sure they're building what you want. Regarding tiles worked, I *usually* let the auto-selection handle things, but I also look at the tiles worked when selecting what to build, and if I want to change it I do (being a Regent-Monarch player, it doesn't affect much).

 

[Nergal]

Workers are produced by genetic manipulation of lemmings. At the first sign of war they paint targets on themselves and rush to the front lines. The AI love to eat them. Enemy troops swarm to workers and vice versa. That aside automated workers waste turns, they spend ages clearing volcano eruptions from mountains or mining mountains. Its massively more efficient to manage your workers manually. Build flatland improvements first then hills and then mountains. Plus if a resource pops up you can hook it up as soon as possible.

 

[Xong]

I actually took a crack at it but when i reach MA or IA, i just get too many workers that i just lose track and be lazy then its automate time! i guess it all has to do with patience and endurance.

@negral, I agree workers waste too much turns on improvements that are not as necessary yet. Regarding worker performance during war. I don't think they ever put themselves in the open during times of war, at least, not by my experience... They usually cower in the nearest city they're working on when an enemy unit passes by. but i dont know though how workers work in PTW C3C. i only have vanilla

 

[Nergal]

The problem is that frontier cities are normally the last to get cultural expansion so you can end up with a gang of workers working the edge of your empire. I know the AI sees every unit on the map and I'm pretty sure they see workers as 0 hit point units. If they are annoyed enough to go to war where better than removing a pile of low hit point units. Same with the galley wandering around your coast, it usually pops a warrior off next to any workers.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

early in the game is when it's most important to handle workers manually. The AI rarely irrigates correctly - they often mine cows and wheat, which restricts your growth.

In the IA, you can start automating if you want.

 

[CommandoBob]

If you do take the plunge and manage your workers, try to get them into stacks that can road a grass or plains tile in 1 turn, which means three workers early in the game. This becomes very helpful to me when I have 6 or more workers. Move the workers as a stack and have all of them do the same thing (road, mine, drain swamp, etc.) This will involve a lot less clicking and it will get things done faster so that you can then use the improvements your workers created.

Some tasks will need 2 or 4 workers (forest chops and irrigation), so, if you have enough workers, you may need a roading stack and a watering stack.

And, when they have nothing to do, either park them around the capital for pollution cleanup or add them into you science farms.

It helps to have a bunch of slaves, too. They work slower but need no upkeep. Get lots of them.

 

[Skullsplitter]

About all I find useful is an automated pollution team and once I get steam and get the main lines put in, maybe automating a few with build rail network. Problem is, as Nergal says, the governor seems to think that the most important rail to build is the one off to the side of your front lines, right on the border, his butt in the breeze, one turn from being captured. I think if there were a way to unautomate without having to track down each and every automated worker, I might use it more. As it is, pollution teams are about all I use on any regular basis.

Re:ChaosArbitor -- The gov usually places citizens on the right tiles, but he's too entertainment-happy for my tastes. When the food box is full and another citizen created, if you are right at the edge, the governor will make him an entertainer. He'll even do so if all it does for you is WLTK. The advantage to not using the gov at this point is that he will be put on the best tile and actually generate one turns worth of production, even if he would take the city over into rioting. Downside of that is that you have to manually deal with the unhappy. One time forgetting and you've blown any advantage you would have rec'd from that town the entire game.

 

[darski]

I control my workers to start so that they don't waste time on mountains I won't be using for ages but at some point, it saves endless order giving to use short span auto moves.

I tend to use a lot of [road to] and [railroad] to. I can generally amass all of my workers around my capitol before steam comes so I just send out the whole team to various points around the empire (small maps). After the major spokes are in place to every city I can individually appoint workers to tiles I want done on priority. I prefer to be able to get my Cavs anywhere they need to be in a hurry.

When I play as exp. I put my scouts on [e]xplore. They know where the huts are so have at it. I also often send out my first warrior on [e]xplore.

Once/if I get the Lighthouse, I often will set galleys/caravels on [e]xplore after I have done what I can with careful movement. I keep an eye on what is happening for each move and I can intervene if needed.

So I guess I do a lot of automation but in a non-automatic way.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I control my workers to start so that they don't waste time on mountains I won't be using for ages but at some point, it saves endless order giving to use short span auto moves.

I tend to use a lot of [road to] and [railroad] to. I can generally amass all of my workers around my capitol before steam comes so I just send out the whole team to various points around the empire (small maps). After the major spokes are in place to every city I can individually appoint workers to tiles I want done on priority. I prefer to be able to get my Cavs anywhere they need to be in a hurry.

When I play as exp. I put my scouts on [e]xplore. They know where the huts are so have at it. I also often send out my first warrior on [e]xplore.

Once/if I get the Lighthouse, I often will set galleys/caravels on [e]xplore after I have done what I can with careful movement. I keep an eye on what is happening for each move and I can intervene if needed.

So I guess I do a lot of automation but in a non-automatic way.

I like most of these suggestions for the OP, Darski. And it brings to mind another reason not to automate. Improvements are built fastest on flat land, slower on hills and take forever on mountains. I manually control my workers and generally follow the order of only improving flat land first and doing mountains last. This also applies once you start building rails. Rails are built fastest on flat land. The automated idiots don't always do this.

It's important to remember road to and, especially, rail to. It saves time.

 

[darski]

I like most of these suggestions for the OP, Darski. And it brings to mind another reason not to automate. Improvements are built fastest on flat land, slower on hills and take forever on mountains. I manually control my workers and generally follow the order of only improving flat land first and doing mountains last. This also applies once you start building rails. Rails are built fastest on flat land. The automated idiots don't always do this.

It's important to remember road to and, especially, rail to. It saves time.

I agree. But... sometimes the fastest route is over a mountain or a hill and I just let them go and git 'er done. I also save all forest tiles for "shovel ready" jobs when the best tiles are seen to.

it seems to me that the computer can discover the quickest route to get a road up and running to a new city. I might not go for the hill but it can be faster than going over 4 or 5 tiles to 'go around'.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

One of the other problems with automating is that the AI doesn't stack very well. Sure, if you're doing a "Road/Rail to this location" command they'll work together, but if you automate with "Improve City" or "Trade Network" you're likely to get 6 Workers all working different tiles.

 

[RFHolloway]

Automate works well, but only for your second hundred workers, the first hundred you will want to control manually.

 

[darski]

Automate works well, but only for your second hundred workers, the first hundred you will want to control manually.

more than 10 chars.

 

[Desertsnow]

I'll automate for pollution cleanup in the later stages of the game, but otherwise, no. Any player with half a clue is better than the AI at assigning tasks.

 

[Skullsplitter]

Thinking about what someone said earlier about the AI knowing where resources will appear, I tried a little experiment. I automated a worker in a town that was mostly jungle and the tile he chose to develop first turned out to have rubber. Another decided the most important task was to put a road onto an otherwise useless tundra tile that later had oil.

My working hypothesis is that when the AI chooses the tiles, it bases the calculation on its future value, not its present revealed value, and certainly not whether the town will in any reasonable time have the population to actually use that tile.

Which begs the question -- if this is true, might there be a way to use this to figure out where the iron will show up? My inclination is that workers are too darned valuable to use in such a hit or miss fashion, but anyone have any ideas?

 

[CKS]

That is an interesting idea. In a game where you expect to learn iron working or the wheel relatively late, it might be worth automating one worker, so that if you had iron or horses in your borders, you'd have a good chance of having it already connected. Leaving it automated might then mean the later resources would be connected once discovered. I think I'll put investigating this on my list of things to do, which is unfortunately rather long at the moment.

I hate getting all my workers ready to rail my 20K city, only to discover that I only have unconnected coal, all the way at the other end of my empire.

 

[Bartleby]

Another automation trick is for "chop forests" -- they'll go for forests on BG before forests on grass.

 

[Desertsnow]

Maybe I should try these tricks with one or two workers, but still probably not before I have enough of them to control the rest of them myself.

 

[bigFRANK]

Can I ask how you assign workers to auto clear polution only? Mine seem to preffer mining open grassland if I stick them on auto.