micromanagement: better results with automation or manually?

[Rivaldo]

I thought that when the city management along with the workers, put in automatic (default) this can provide better results instead of manually directions.

is this affecting the features like pop and happiness???? what is the best way???

 

[smallfish]

Manual all the way. Automation is good only when you're ready for cruise control (the final stages of the game) towards that last civ standing.

 

[spider1]

Always manual for the workers, never automatic. The game and myself will never agree on which tiles to work and to improve. Besides, I like the micromanagement aspect of Civ, if I didn't, I'm sure I wouldn't even be playing the game.

 

[General Tso]

I also manually control my workers at all times - I just don't trust the little buggers to do the right thing.

As far as cities go. I always manually control them early in the game when it's more important to be extra efficient. Later in the game I try to use city automation as much as possible but I continually have problems with the automation starving the cities. To me it's one of the biggest problems of the game. At times I have to manually control over 100 cities because the automation is trying to kill my citizens. There should be a "no starvation" click box that tells the automation to not allow starvation if at all possible.

 

[Kaosprophet]

I also manually control my workers at all times - I just don't trust the little buggers to do the right thing.

As far as cities go. I always manually control them early in the game when it's more important to be extra efficient. Later in the game I try to use city automation as much as possible but I continually have problems with the automation starving the cities. To me it's one of the biggest problems of the game. At times I have to manually control over 100 cities because the automation is trying to kill my citizens. There should be a "no starvation" click box that tells the automation to not allow starvation if at all possible.

I find that usually happens when there isn't a setup that will allow it to max it's focus on stagnation food levels, and it has to choose between either +1 food or -1 food. What it *should* be doing in those cases, is alternating between the two: starve while there's still food in storage, then flip back to 'growth' for a turn once the stored food runs out.

If it does that, it'll constantly warn that the city is starving on alternate turns but you won't actually lose a citizen. If it's not doing that, it's borked.

 

[headcase]

Workers should be manual. Yeah, I used auto in Civ 4 but in Civ 5 it's not as good. It's partially because improvement building is a little more strategic, and partially because AI workers suck in 5.

For city management, I find that the governor is ok for the first couple of eras (some will disagree), after that you should at least take a look at what specialists they're using and change what you don't like.

When you Annex a city, it's usually a good idea to take them off gold focus. Sometimes a production focus is better overall than normal focus, I find. When in doubt, check out the 5 numbers at the upper right (food, production, gold, science, culture), mess around a bit until you see a mix you like.

Not sure if it's a glitch, but every so often there will be a city with an governor who refuses to have specialists. It's more obvious in NiGHTS which has tons of specialist slots and generally more growth; sometimes a city will refuse to hire specialists and have unemployed citizens instead if all the tiles are taken.

If you do put cities on manual specialist control, make sure to check those cities every few turns to make sure it's still a good mix. you can use the arrows in at the top of the city screen to switch cities without leaving the screen.

 

[CYZ]

I usually tend to manually control the cities in the early game. But when you have alot of cities it get annoying to keep track of new citizens. And usually the AI is not too bad at assigning citizens.

However, it does tend to overgrow cities. When going wide, bigger cities is not often better. Thus I tend to keep a check on which tiles I want to work and control the population after that.

 

[nitevision]

it does tend to overgrow cities.

Ah yes. I leave my city on automatic and I end up with +10 food when I don't need it.

 

[CYZ]

Ah yes. I leave my city on automatic and I end up with +10 food when I don't need it.

That's not the worst. It's having too much population and citizens working empty ocean tiles or pure grassland tiles with only 2 food. Then when you want to build a new city you go into negative happiness

Anyway, stopping growth in time is important.

 

[spider1]

That's not the worst. It's having too much population and citizens working empty ocean tiles or pure grassland tiles with only 2 food. Then when you want to build a new city you go into negative happiness

Anyway, stopping growth in time is important.

Agreed. You leave a city all to its own, you can be building an important building or wonder and it'll have a huge over production of food while leaving hammer tiles unused. That's why I, as a general rule, am always running the cities and workers manually.

Since I play a defensive game, and normally never have over six or seven cities, manually running all the cities and workers isn't all that time consuming and makes for better, more efficient cities that meet your particular goals for the game.

 

[zyx]

Workers only manually, as sometimes they start building roads across the whole continent, when a CS wants a a road connection and they tend to travel through your whole empire instead of improving the tiles nearby.

I let my cities grow to 5 pop and change to production focus, and late game most often to GP focus as science focus often causes starvation, as the "feature" tries to maximize science output without caring for the food.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I always automate my workers
and I let my little people reproduce
Cuz on Chieftain you just don't care ...

Hey.. I like it that way.. it's still fun

 

[Thander]

I always manually control works. I manually control cities in the beginning but later switch them to automate. I find the AI does an okay job as long as I set a focus. For example, if I set a city to focus production, they generally find the best production while still maintaining growth. I go manual for a few turns but usually go back to automated later.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Whenever I begin building wonders, I always set my focus to Production..
It's funny, sometimes my cities actually make less hammers in Production Focus than in Default Focus o.O

 

[joncnunn]

Manual guaranteed to be at least as good as automatic in all cases.
That includes manually adjusting the focus one turn before city growth to something to a non-default / non-food and if a city just grew and your worried about enemy units on your tiles or blocking the naval ones switching focus away from those even with all workers locked.

 

[tetley]

I wish you could micromanage the automation. Like checkboxes for "don't clear jungle", "don't clear forest", "lumber mill for forest", "trading post for jungle", "farms next to rivers", "don't build roads", etc etc etc.... That way if I micromanage it's once, instead of every worker, every turn.