Late-game use of workers

[Donny Brook]

The situation is such that victory is assured, there are plenty of unimproved tiles and many cities with excess food and many more that are lacking key improvements. My own tendancy is to keep almost all my workers in action until all the chops and improvements are complete. I'm wondering if it might be better to add some of them to cities with extra food at this stage. Obviously I add workers in the very late game when there is nothing for them to do, but what about earlier on?

It's a trade-off between rapid pop growth (adding) and rapid infrastructure development (chopping/improving). I tend to favour the latter, but maybe that's a bad habit that's carried over from PTW. C3C offers engineers, so maybe adding is better since you get the additional citizen who can also serve as a shield-producer, if needed (eg. he'll just be unhappy if you add him, but add him anyway and make him an engineer to speed the marketplace build...). Just wondering what you folks are doing.

 

[vmxa]

If the game is nearly over, i just up to your sensibilities. I tend to prefer to get all tiles improved, rather than get some farm to have an extra pop or two. Again, that is only when the game is winding down.

 

[Optional]

You're probably talking about the stage where all your decent towns are already at size 12, right? So the workers could only join towns where they wouldn't make much difference. And because you're saying victory is assured, I'm assuming there's also no pressing upkeep problem that would make you let workers join towns. And you're saying your workers still have stuff to do.
My short answer would then be a 'No'. I do regularly let workers join back towns, but there has to be an upkeep problem. I sometimes do it already very early in the game, like right after a switch to Republic. Letting a few workers then join towns to get them to size 7 can do a miracle for your economy, especially if you're Commercial. But that would only happen if I had been lucky enough to be able to build lots of workers up to that stage, like 40 workers for 10 towns or so.
And in general, you have to be careful with workers that are only improving completely corrupt areas: are they really earning their keep by doing that, or is their unit support just clogging up your economy?

 

[Bartleby]

I think I tend to keep my workers too long. Even when I have hundreds of slaves I'll still have stacks of native workers idle (I do forestry for a while but eventually I can't be bothered).
In more recent games I've been adding native workers earlier, to get my farms to size seven--fewer workers and more support means more cavalry.

 

[Spoonwood]

It sounds like you're talking about a histographic game post-wars. If you keep one worker instead of adding it in you have
10 shields for a forest chop traded off for possible upkeep and 1 less content citizen
If you add in the worker you have
2 shields per turn via a civil engineer less upkeep, a content citizen, traded off for less chopping.

When I think about it, the civil engineer gives you 2 shields per turn, which equals out to one forest chop over a period of 5 turns. Assuming you have rails up already, can you plant, chop, and then re-irrigate the square in 5 or less turns? If it takes one worker 5 turns to do such, I'd think you'd want to add it in, and probably also if the whole process took 4 turns also, since adding in has more benefits (e. g. increased score earlier and possibly less upkeep) than just the civil engineer at work. So, from the analysis here, I think adding in workers makes more sense than not.

 

[Donny Brook]

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing, Spoonwood. Like Bartleby, I tend to keep my workers too long I think. I also thought about the chop analysis. Seven workers can plant and chop a forest in one turn for 10 shields (post RP, non-industrious, roaded tile). Conversely, seven workers serving as civil engineers can produce 14 shields per turn plus you get the population points and less upkeep.

You're right that I was thinking about a histo game, but even for some other victory conditions, aren't there periods where you're simply waiting (for techs, culture, etc.) and you wonder what to do with all those workers? Even though it's the fast-finish which primarily drives your score, isn't your base score from territory and population also included for those VC's?

As I contended in my opening post, I think the specialists in C3C are so much more powerful than PTW/vanilla that we haven't given enough thought to this tactic of adding workers much sooner than habit dictates.

 

[Spoonwood]

You're right that I was thinking about a histo game, but even for some other victory conditions, aren't there periods where you're simply waiting (for techs, culture, etc.) and you wonder what to do with all those workers?

In a diplomatic, space, or 20k game, I wouldn't use specialists as civil engineers, but rather as scientists. And I do want improvements up as fast as possible/units trained without buying them also. So, I think chopping makes more sense in such a game. Maybe using them as civil engineers might make more sense, but I kind of doubt it.