Late game pollution and specialist tedium

[andrewlt]

I'm playing a game as the Mayans and I'm in the modern era. I have around 40 good to really good cities. Many of these cities have specialists. I want to minimize corruption so I make the specialists into policemen. However, whenever a city gains a new citizen or loses one due to starvation, the game messes up all the specialists in the city by changing them to something else, usually scientists and tax collectors in my case. I have to check each and every city, each and every turn and change them all back to my previous settings. It gets really, really tedious having to do it. Is there a way to lock specialists so that I instruct the AI to make all my specialists into policemen or lock my settings? It's really annoying.

Also, pollution is also really tedious. After I clean up a polluted tile, I have to manually put the citizen working the polluted tile back to working the tile. A few of my cities dropped population due to starvation before I realized what was happening and sometimes I just forget to put the citizen back to work the tile. Also, when I tell my workers to auto clean up damage, the order gets cancelled when there is no pollution left to clean anymore. The next time pollution strikes, I have to tell some workers to auto clean up damage again.

 

[Siv]

I have the same problems. I will checking this thread frequently for advice from the illuminated.

For the pollution problem - At this point in the game I have just a few foreign workers on "Shift A". This way they will respond to pollution. At the end of my turn I will note where the workers are and reset the city that the workers were near. Probably not what you were looking for, but it is the best I can offer.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Be aware that the autocleaning doesn't work when you have a city on a crater tile.
And yes, there is no way around micromanaging...but that is needed for the higher levels anyway.

 

[andrewlt]

I just check the status of my specialists on the first adviser. It's much easier but it's still a little on the tedious side.

As for pollution, it might make things a lot easier if there was some way of viewing a message history and centering on the city with the message. That way, I don't have to memorize the cities with pollution as they're flashing at the beginning of the turn.

 

[kb2tvl]

I hate micromanagement as well. I have played C3C much less than the previous expansion and that is one of a few reasons why. If you micromanage, you need to check every city every turn. One way to do this is to view a city and hit the arrow key to toggle between each city... Start at your capitol city and arrow key till you get back to that city. Yes, it is tedious...

Shift A will clean up pollution and damage but workers do annoying things like take excessive risks....

Shift D will clean until all is cleaned and then the worker becomes free. You can fortify these "spare" workers near your capitol and hit shift D at the end of each turn...

 

[ManOfMiracles]

I'm with you andrewlt. How hard would it be to add a symbol (the burning sun, most likely) to the city advisor screen if there was any pollution in the city radius?

 

[andrewlt]

The problem I have with shift-D is that the worker becomes free after all is cleaned. There should be an option where the worker is permanently cleaning up pollution. After all, automate anything and the worker goes back to a city after there is nothing to do and starts doing something once there is something that is needed to be done.

The messing up the way I set up my specialists is the more annoying one, though.

 

[majk-iii]

...i mostly play huge maps and makes sure to have around 100 workers when i hit steam power. I then instantly rail pretty much every one of my tiles.
I then put them all on a nice inland tile. (a hill/ a fort/ etc.)
So at the beginning of every turn i check out my lands, wake the needed number of workers... (depending on govt./rep. parts/ etc.) ...move the small stack and shift+c, lets say four times... quick.

Never use the autobuttons anymore... they kinda suck that late anyway.
Better to just fortify all the things that u dont really need to move around anyway.

As for micro-managing, i usually more like mini-manage most of the time from the F1-screen. Then i only need to go into the cities now and then.
I also just started to use the "ask after unit construction" option to know what i'm building.

 

[Pirate]

...As for micro-managing, i usually more like mini-manage most of the time from the F1-screen. Then i only need to go into the cities now and then.

I just recently figured out that you can assign specialists from that F1 screen. Boy does that save a lot of time. It's the best screen ever for specialists, hunger management, production management, etc... The only reason to go into the individual city screen is to micromanage worked tiles or set up a production queue.

 

[Ben E Gas]

Be aware that the autocleaning doesn't work when you have a city on a crater tile.
And yes, there is no way around micromanaging...but that is needed for the higher levels anyway.

What is a Crater Tile?

 

[bingen]

Use the governor in the late game.You will get tax men/scientists instead of policemen but it will save you the hassle. If the difference in effectivity is in danger of losing you the game, then you probably do not have many cities, micromanaging is easy in this case.

Even Deity level games are usually in the mop up stage of the game. So I just use the governor and shift-A to speed up my mopping.

 

[Calder]

In my current game, having conquered a vast amount of territory and finding quite a few highly corrupt cities, I use civil engineers to quickly build courthouses & police stations & marketplaces. I never micromanage late in the game, especially when you have 60+ cities; I generally find the mood govenor sufficient and quite efficient. By doing this I never have to readjust any of the specialists until something is built.

 

[indros]

I always use the governor to manage citizen moods. That was the biggest annoyance in the entire game until I learned about it. Now I never have to deal with civil disorder (although I once had war weariness cause anarchy even without a civil disorder).

You can set production preferences for cities and, although I've never checked, they might impact how specialists are selected by the governor.

For workers, I only use them manually to connect cities by road. After that I automate for the entire game. By the time I have steam power, my gazillion workers pretty quickly link up the entire empire by rail.

Are some of you avoiding automated workers because it bogs down the game to track all of them later on?

-John

 

[ManOfMiracles]

Are some of you avoiding automated workers because it bogs down the game to track all of them later on?

No, automated workers do some rather useless things such as irrigating grasslands in despotism. I only automate workers when I reach the point where the only job remaining is pollution cleanup.

 

[Prince David]

I'm curious about the effectiveness of policmen. If I remember correctly a policeman offsets 1 gpt in corruption and none in waste, a taxman generates 2 gpt and a scientist 3 science per turn, both without corruption. What I'm not sure about is if this is cost efficient.

By my admittedly shakey calculation city with a library would increase science output at 50%, a university at an additional 50% (I've never studied this, but I've always assumed of "base") for a total of two science from the 1 gpt offset by the policeman. It's only until you have a research center that the policaman pays off. This calc works out a little better for taxmen if you have a stock exchange, but again, is it cost effective?

Personally I don't develope cities with so much corruption that much. I usually just work up through marketplace or so (although I will do a hospital, of course). At that point they're borderline economic producers, arty unit factories and military bases.

 

[Paradigne]

The policeman will also offset one sheild if you are not building a unit...