Micromanaging citizens- worth it?

[TheMeInTeam]

Not automating workers is not micromanaging. Attention to workers is quite important.

Automating workers is like holding up a megaphone and yelling "I feel like I have already won this game, so I don't even need to try any longer".

Sometimes that's true.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Automating workers is like holding up a megaphone and yelling "I feel like I have already won this game, so I don't even need to try any longer".

Sometimes that's true.

I put them to sleep myself

I mean, I click on the ZZZ icon

(and then I realize I have Aluminium in my 3rd ring and nobody bothered to mine it, d'oh)

 

[FrostK]

Automating workers is like holding up a megaphone and yelling "I feel like I have already won this game, so I don't even need to try any longer".

Sometimes that's true.

Sometimes its like - I improved manually 90% of tiles, so guys go and improve whatever you want - mines ok, trading posts - perfect, 30 tile rail road - no, no.

And then see that your opponent is building Hubble in 2 turns - np I can buy GE? - no, cause there is that damn worker in city.

 

[Redaxe]

I am not sure about this. Yes, being at -1 unhappy really stunts growth. But stopping growth to avoid growth penalties -- when the main penalty is slower growth? How does that make sense? I would like to see more of the math, but I have done some lightweight experimenting with this and it clearly seems to me that that slow growth (from small negative unhappy) still outpaces avoiding growth.

Well you might be right but maybe I should think about this more. If you are a 4 city Tradition civ and you have 0 happiness with 2 expo's close to growing you're probably better off stopping those expo's growing and letting the capital continue growing. The expo's will continue to trudge up to the growth point so once you get into positive happiness they'll be immediately ready to grow but more importantly you focus on capital growth. This has your national college, calculates part of city connection gold and also benefites soley from the Monarchy policy.

So you should prioritise your capitals growth over expo's if you are low on happiness.

Oh and another way to micromanage citizens a bit is when you discover archaeology you can start getting your workers to chop forests and jungles before your archaeologists get there so once you have them they get a bit of a head start in building landmarks.

 

[Acken]

You should never go below 0. Stop growth if necessary to avoid it and if you plan happiness problems ahead, capital growth should be priority with tradition

 

[vale]

Micromanagement is definitely worth it. Small early game advantages can accrue into huge late game advantages and every tile-turn or worker-turn adds up. One corollary to the production focus trick if you are not trying to avoid growth is that you should be locking down the tiles you want to work until the turn that switching your lowest food priority tile to your highest food unused tile would result in growth. The production focus trick lets you grow potentially early without losing any turns on your priority tiles. After growth, you lock back to your new set of priority tiles. The lower your food surplus while working your priority tiles is the more tile-turns you gain by maximizing the use of this trick.

A simple example can be found here:

Further Micromanagement in Civ

The worker micromanagement trick is a carryover from Civ IV at the minimum although I'm fairly certain it existed before but I just wasn't aware of it until I had read "Micromanagement is alive and well in Civ IV"

 

[BlackWizard]

How about micromanaging when playing multiplayer and turn clock? I love idea of time limit for turns. I wonder why there isnt option to have time limit on single player too. Yes I know its turn based but well it would be more interesting to have time limit. When there is time limit you can really find out who really is good player.

Edit. Hoping there isnt misspellings

 

[beetle]

But maybe just trying your hand at it is part of the learning experience.

This is very insightful. Best advice in this thread so far!

That's 220 hammers but my estimates could be modest. It's not huge, perhaps in the region of a 0.5%-2% overall production boost.

I think your analysis is very much on the mark. For me, that 2% gain would make my games take twice as long to play, so not worth the bother.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Locking down 4 food farms or working Gems/Silver/Gold mines rather than regular is a really really good thing to do and keep an eye out constantly.

Fine tuning though, save a turn here and a turn there, not generally that much important

 

[consentient]

Beetle, I've put some info on the Korea thread for you.

 

[terminus467]

Yes. I have never not micromanaged workers. You know that AI that's super easy to beat and a lot of people can beat on Deity? Ask yourself if that's who you want running your workers. Pretty straightforward answer imo. But, yaknow. I also kind of enjoy doing it. So even if I was not much better at knowing what is good for my Civ than the AI, I'd still do it. There's also synergies, i.e. chopping down forests, that the AI can't possibly comprehend as it is ONLY dealing with your tiles while you're running the entire civ, building buildings, constructing wonders, and potentially waging war. I can vastly improve my chances of getting an early wonder by chopping down a couple of forests, for example.

If you have a time crunch on multiplayer, then yes, sacrifice workers and have the AI run it. Because it is certainly the least important thing for you to devote attention to given that you CAN have the AI do a REASONABLE job of it in your stead.

 

[beetle]

But, yaknow. I also kind of enjoy doing it. So even if I was not much better at knowing what is good for my Civ than the AI, I'd still do it.

This is a large part of it for me. Also, I cannot bear the look of the 4-way intersections, so I am always looping my roads to only use 3-way crossing. The extra gpt on a few tiles (since the roads usually have to be longer) is worth it to me!

 

[terminus467]

This is a large part of it for me. Also, I cannot bear the look of the 4-way intersections, so I am always looping my roads to only use 3-way crossing. The extra gpt on a few tiles (since the roads usually have to be longer) is worth it to me!

I won't be lumped in with you. Your excessive waste repulses me.

(joking)

 

[lindsay40k]

Well, at a laid-back difficulty setting, there's little pressing need to count trees for every city. But if you're going to go to the effort of building a city with a Garden & National Epic and sending it a food supply, you really ought to check in and make sure your Guilds and University are actually recruiting. And if you really want to host the World's Fair when you're lagging behind Pocatello, might be an idea to get everyone down t'pits.

 

[klaskeren]

microing workes/citizens is like 60% of the game.

 

[beetle]

microing workes/citizens is like 60% of the game.

Yes. Micro workers is 55% and citizen tiles 5%.

 

[consentient]

The longer you keep telling yourself that citizen tiles is not important without really getting to grips with it, the more you're holding yourself back in a game you clearly love. I'd advise you to watch an Acken LP to see how much the early game citizen assignment contributes to snowballing and getting the T75 NCs and the T99 Edus, but then you won't watch LPs either

 

[beetle]

I'd advise you to watch an Acken LP to see how much the early game citizen assignment contributes to snowballing and getting the T75 NCs and the T99 Edus, but then you won't watch LPs either

What happened to showing me the difference with your next peaceful game? I gave you the demo showing lack of micro was not responsible for low pop cities in the Korean DCL.

 

[consentient]

Yeah, I think I decided it wasn't really worth the effort. I shouldn't have made an offer and retracted it. All I know is that if I left the governor do the work for the Shoshone map, I would have had a really hard time of things.

I don't want to argue. You play how you like.

 

[murd]

yes because ai prioritizes gold over hammers a lot. for example, it is much better to work a stone (2 food 1 hammer) early on than on a sugar (2 food 2 gold) b/c you get 5 turn scout instead of 7 and same growth at 8 turns. (standard)