Mass Workers

[valamas]

A question for those who have 50 workers or more.
Do you automate them or still order them about indiviually? What difficulty level are you doing this on?

I am playing monarch, and besides the first 25 turns where i link up my cities and different times where i need to run a road to the war front and when i get railroad (where i build a couple of railroads straight east-west north-south); I have my workers on automatic. I don't have enough time in my life to order them around individually. i see many posts where people manually order their workers. Man, it takes me three weeks to finish a standard game.

 

[tomart109]

Originally posted by valamas
A question for those who have 50 workers or more.
Do you automate them or still order them about indiviually? What difficulty level are you doing this on?

I love large and huge games, and lots of workers, but you've hit upon the downside: monitoring them all. I can't trust them to read my mind, so i'm stuck ordering every single one. This is why i don't finish games... when a turn is an hour long project, tedium sets in. (Well, it doesn't help that i'm fighting on about three fronts, and have too many cities; so i'm moving hundreds of units and checking every city's production, too...) I'm usually at Monarch, but now i'm doing a Kal-El real world at Warlord - the whole world will be mine,...! ...in about July.

 

[majk-iii]

no automation... i move them manually in huge stacks, railing, clearing pollution and so on... fortyfying them inland inbetween tasks. ...so that they are always redily avalible when new pollution appears.

 

[zurichuk]

yep loads, never less than 1 per city, sometimes 2, depends on nation and situation

then when railroad arrives join every city and the frontlines manually and then set all but 10 of them on autopilot, using the 10 manual ones to 're-improve' the captured cities, military roading etc

 

[TerraHero]

i build tons of workers, coz when i expand my empire i want to maximize the city asap..get irrigations and mines ready.

also i like to a large strain on polution..so i build factories in all cites producing 4 shields or more and a coal plant (later replaced for less poluting plants) but polution can bring an empire down..trust me, nothing worst then suffering starvation or lack of producion in my core cities.

 

[ironmikie]

Tons of workers can really help a lot when it comes to clearing pollution in 1 turn.

 

[Commander Bello]

I've organized my workers in stacks of 4 up to 24 (slave workers), so that any task can be completed in one turn.
This way, my 150 workers are organized in just 10 - 20 stacks and therefor can be managed manually.

 

[bonscott]

Exactly as the Commander has said for me. I never automate workers (except to clean up pollution). I also organize them in stacks to complete a task in one turn.

So lets say it take 4 workers to complete a rail in one turn, 6 for hills, 8 for mountains. So I'll have at least one stack of 8 on mountain duty and 1-2 stacks of 6 for hill duty and then all stacks of 4 after that. Any that are "left over" I'll have doing any missing mines or irrigation as needed. I'll also have at least 1 stack of 4 with a defender up on the front lines, usually 2-3 stacks, to help rail to newly taken cities (assuming I'm at war). This is a great secret to moving troops faster to the front lines. Take a city, rail up to it and beyond to the new front before any more units come up, then when railed your reinforcements are immediately at the new front line and can sometimes be able to attack and take the next city even on the same turn.

I'll also work them in groups around cities. So once I've railed from one end to the other of my empire and done the minimum to connect all cities to the rail network, I'll move all stacks to the "wonder/industial" city (or cities if I have 2) and rail every square in about 2 turns. This will greatly increase wonder production. Then I'll move them all to one end of the empire and literly rail every square for the city in 1-3 turns then move on to the next city. By doing this, almost all my workers are together in one spot which means less jumping around between units and less confusion of what they are doing.

Have 50+ workers may seem like it a pain but it's really not if you manager them properly.

 

[Sic_Berserker]

Im usually maya, so i have slave workers very early and for free and forever...
but still I have 2 own workers per city. never automated

also a way of reducing city pop, for continuous growth

 

[zurichuk]

interestingly (maybe), i was playing against the Maya the other day and they sneak attacked me early on and caught me on the hop during my expansion phase for 10 or so moves, when the tides turned i gained something like 10 - 20 of my own workers back from them, that they had previously enslaved, i wonder if i paid upkeep for them

 

[DragonRunner]

Thanks a lot. I haven't been doing nearly as many workers as some people, but about 1 per city works for me. It REALLY pays off for science and building.

 

[bru]

I produce a lot of workers - one or two per city. Once I have all my cities linked to rail, I automate about 80% with instructions not to change existing improvements. With the other 20% I manage them - working on the higher yield squares!

 

[Fanatica]

Aaahhh the common worker ... without him the empire stands still.
He produces both in peace and war. Unlike the military units that sit there draining resources.

 

[Leo Tang]

I usually create a worker first when I build a city or capture one.
Extra worker can ensure you that your pollution problem can be cleared in one turn. (in a game before, I set all my workers to automatic clear pollution in morden age and all pollution is cleared before the turn is finish)

 

[Vizurok]

Originally posted by nalves


4 or 5 is a good number of workers if you are playing a OCC

Ive just won a Monarch OCC without building a single worker, i used my starting worker, and i bought two other.

In a normal game I think 1.5 i real but when I play with an ind civ, i use 1.
When I found a city, I always build worker first, and you?

 

[kb2tvl]

Post railroad turns I may have 2 ~ 6 workers per city. If I am in the midists of a war, 2 workers per city would be about all I can keep and if I need to buy coal or iron, 6 workers per city can get rail roading done in quick order.

I will maintain 2 workers per city if I am using coal plants and my railroads are done.

 

[DJMGator13]

How quickly after establishing a city do you build the workers? During expansion phase what is your ratio of workers to cities 1:1?

 

[jguy100]

how early in the game should you start massing workers: right away, along with the settlers, after the expansion phase, or some kind of combination?