Milking your score

[solenoozerec]

I find it very odd that you have to play worse than you can in GOTMs to get a higher score and a better rating. To talk of skill in this context looks weird from my point of view, where is the skill if you have to delay your victory ? I think everybody can do this - huh.

I am afraid you do not understand. Try to delay your victory and watch your final score while delaying victory. Then you'll understand.
The more you delay your victory, the smaller the bonus for earlier victory is. To increase your final score, you will need to grow your population rapidly (without growing your territory), so that it will compensate for decreased score due to late victory. This requires skills, experience and certain tricks. There is no way you can increase your score by “playing worse”.

 

[whb]

I contend that the majority of people enjoy controlling their workers, at least until the advent of railroads and there being nothing left to improve.

I'd be surprised, especially as the number of workers increases. Might I suggest a poll?

Although I would assume that you just highlight all your units and use the stack attack option, since controlling each unit is too much effort and not fun.

I would be tempted to sometimes, but three things have deterred me from that one. There's a random element to combat, the lack of a "stop attacking, we're losing this one", and the fact that without "stack attack" turned on if you have a group selected and move to attack it often seems to make bovinely stupid choices about which unit to attack with first (maybe that's improved with stack attack - I don't know).

I'd actually be quite keen to see a few more automation bits in the interface too - eg, a way of saying "raise me an army with 10 Redcoats and 5 catapults" and it picking your cities that have "military" governors to do the builds. By the time I'm up to 30 cities, I'm much less interested in picking their individual build options if I thought the governors set-up was more useable and useful. (And one might wonder why a free market democracy still has the president order the construction of every grocer's shop)

 

[civ_steve]

You can post a poll if you wish; that's an option open to anybody. I would be surprised if anyone in the first 50 places automates their workers prior to Railroad (or so). Developing spaces in a timely fashion is such an important element of strategy that leaving worker moves to the AI is akin to having no strategy at all! (You are free to do whatever you find most 'fun', of course.)

 

[solenoozerec]

I'd be surprised, especially as the number of workers increases. Might I suggest a poll?

I do not think that a poll is necessary. This poll may indeed show that most of the community automates their workers. If so, it will be very sad. :sigh: IMHO I can see only one way of playing this game which will be worse than that: Hit return non stop until game is over. But then, why did you start playing it in the first place?
Stack attack is less dangerous than worker automation. If you have a huge advantage you can do stack attack, you will win. However, you have to control how you alter your terrain and no matter how smart computer is, it cannot read your mind.

P.S.: I did automated my workers in the last game in the few last turn (should just disband them instead). But I did it because it didn’t matter at that point. Hitting return and doing nothing would also bring me a similar result at that point.

 

[Smirk]

A poll probably wouldn't be very useful on the basis of do you automate or not. As that boils down to a much more basic question of are you concerned about maximizing your performance or not. I don't automate my workers, but I do not do this because I enjoy controlling them, as a matter of fact this is one thing that kills the game for me, at least late game. I don't automate because their automation is designed for the generalist AI and I play a specialized game.

Now if I could flag each city as a particular "type" and then the workers would automate differently based on that then I would gladly automate. I would propose that this "type" setting would be a more appropriate high order strategy descision and better suited for the game, but apparently no one of the dev team thought of this or (far more likely) had the time to implement anything like it.


Anyway a proper poll to answer this question will have to remove the inherent inefficiency of automation in order to say anything about enjoyment. I play Civ4 because I enjoy it, but this doesn't mean every single aspect of the game is enjoyable. I avoid automating workers because I enjoy efficiency and winning more than I dislike controlling 10-50 workers manually (of course as I said this no longer applies in the late game where worker movement overcomes overall enjoyment and I stop playing).

 

[JerichoHill]

I *never* automate my workers. When railroads are enabled, I build them using the route command. Once I all my rail routes built, I leave the rest as roads and let my workers sleep in key cities in my empire, so that they can get somewhere if needed.

 

[Shillen]

Like Smirk said, the question wasn't whether people automate them or not. I think it would be closer to 90% of the people do not automate their workers, but I still think the majority enjoy controlling their workers. I do not understand whatsoever the logic of wanting more automation in the game. All automation does is take control away from the player, reducing his options and his impact on the game. This is a strategy game. You're supposed to constantly be making strategic decisions that alter the game. If the computer is controlling all your workers, all your combat, all your city builds, all your tech advancement. Then where is the game? Why don't you go watch a movie instead?

 

[solenoozerec]

All automation does is take control away from the player, reducing his options and his impact on the game. This is a strategy game. You're supposed to constantly be making strategic decisions that alter the game. If the computer is controlling all your workers, all your combat, all your city builds, all your tech advancement. Then where is the game? Why don't you go watch a movie instead?

No-no-no. Automation does not necessarily leave you out of control. Due to civ3 mechanics, it was very important to keep an eye on citizens and place them manually (at least in the beginning). This was due to the lost of overflow production.

In civ4, such a micromanagement is not as efficient as it used to be in civ3. I never used governors in civ3, but I do use them in civ4. Only on rare occasions, I take control of citizen placement myself. Automation should provide you with an opportunity to be free of routine tasks which are easier. E.g. I want this city to grow, but I am too lazy to place citizens myself.

On another hand, I agree that excessive automation leaves players out of the control. Sometimes we are not even given a choice. Let’s consider combat. Human player is defending, AI is attacking. Human player have units with power 10 and 1. AI have units with power 15 and 5. What is happening? AI attacks you with unit 15. Computer decides for you who should defend and wakes your unit 10, which dies. Unit 5 kills unit 1 and you loose your city.

Now consider if we had a control of this. AI attacks us with unit 15. We defend with unit 1, which dies. Then our unit 10 has a good chance against unit 5. Next turn, we have a bunch of new troops arriving from another city.

 

[Shillen]

I don't consider civ3's micromanagement of citizens and the tech slider and all that to be even remotely similar to controlling workers. Civ3's micromanagement was just manipulating numbers that really had nothing to do with the game or your civ, except that manipulating those numbers improved your game. Like it doesn't make sense to turn your slider down to 10% one turn to prevent overflow, then turn it back up to 80% the next turn. That makes no sense except from a mechanic standpoint. Now telling a worker whether to mine or build a farm makes sense from the game standpoint. If there's more food then more citizens can live there, if there's more raw materials then more production can be done, etc. Controlling your workers isn't micromanagement at all. It's just a part of the game. Now if you're partially chopping trees so that they have 1 turn to chop and then waiting until later to finish the chop, I'd consider that micromanagement. That's manipulating game mechanics. But regular worker actions are not the same.

 

[ThERat]

No-no-no. Automation does not necessarily leave you out of control. Due to civ3 mechanics, it was very important to keep an eye on citizens and place them manually (at least in the beginning). This was due to the lost of overflow production.

In civ4, such a micromanagement is not as efficient as it used to be in civ3. I never used governors in civ3, but I do use them in civ4. Only on rare occasions, I take control of citizen placement myself

Are you sure? I bet on a higher difficulty level, there is no way you can win that way. MM cities is essential and I find that interesting. Governors might be better than in C3C, but only that much. Let's take the emphasize hammers for example. The Governor would then prefer a citizen specialst (give 1 hammer and nth else) over a let's say 2food 3 commerce tile. is that really good? In my mind, you need to consistently check.
Even the tech slider needs adjustments when for example a tech a turn earlier would give you huge trading value.

btw to make some contribution to the actual OP. I hate milking strategies as this is merely to artifically inflate the score. that's the reason I wouldn't compete in GOTM most of the time.

 

[solenoozerec]

that's the reason I wouldn't compete in GOTM most of the time.

Why not to compete for awards?

As for citizens mm, I did not say that I always let governors control citizens. But the situation is much better compared to civ3, in most cases I can trust AI.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Not if those turns each involve a hideous amount of micromanagement - of which manually controlling each worker is the most common example in Civ4. It's something I, and a bunch of others here it seems, flat out refuse to do because the game no longer becomes fun - it is slow, dull, and is the laborious application of a known low-level tactic for an incremental advantage.

I fully endorse the right of everyone to play however they want. A wide variety of different approaches to the game, is a good thing.

But, honestly, I think if you aren't controlling your workers, you aren't really playing the game. You're just watching it. Deciding what to do with your workers is, as much as anything, what the game is about.

 

[Smirk]

I do not understand whatsoever the logic of wanting more automation in the game. All automation does is take control away from the player, reducing his options and his impact on the game. This is a strategy game.

Good point, and this is true to some extent. I guess the basis of my logic was really looking at a problem that seem more a design problem than a micromanagement problem.
The worker is inherent micromanagement, not sure why this hadn't occured to me before, the relationship between the player (as the leader of all) and the worker literally is micromanagement, textbook definition.
What I was suggesting is "a Foreman", this foreman gets my high order stratgy for development of some city. The foreman then directs the workers.

Why don't you go watch a movie instead?

There are vast chasms of space contained inbetween watching a movie and intense micromanagement. All potentially enjoyable to one degree or another to different people.

 

[Civgeek]

What I was suggesting is "a Foreman", this foreman gets my high order stratgy for development of some city. The foreman then directs the workers.

I always wanted to have an option when automating a worker using the "improve the nearest city" to select what to improve it for; food, hammers, or commerce. Similar to city governors. Or perhaps the workers could somehow check what the city governor is set to and act accordingly? Would still want to control the improvements directly in the early game, but after that ... I find no fun in micromanageing an industrial age workforce.

 

[jar2574]

I always wanted to have an option when automating a worker using the "improve the nearest city" to select what to improve it for; food, hammers, or commerce. Similar to city governors. Or perhaps the workers could somehow check what the city governor is set to and act accordingly?

That's a really good idea. I probably still wouldn't use it because I'm so anal, but I think that most players would find it to be an improvement, and many would probably use it.

 

[solenoozerec]

oh, it isn’t simple. Even if I want this city to be more productive, I still would farm wheat.

 

[Civgeek]

oh, it isn’t simple. Even if I want this city to be more productive, I still would farm wheat.

That should be easy to code though; improve resources as appropriate or make sure to have the "don't change exisiting improvements" option and the player just farms it first. Perhaps there could be a "maximize individual tile output anyway you can regardless" option?

I wonder how hard it would be to have the game keep track of player-inititiated improvements vs. automated worker improvements and be able to tell automated workers to "leave my improvements alone, but do what you like with your own"?

 

[Qitai]

Actually, for worker autmation in the mid to late game, I would want to have an automation function of just setting task up on the tile (I.e., click on a tile and note that I want to improve/modify it to another improvement. Do this for several tiles. Then the automation will figure which autmated worker to use and what is the most efficient method to accomplish these task list)

That would be the kind of automation I am looking for. Take away the micromanagement, but let me make the decisions. I don't want the automation to take over the decision making from me.

 

[Qitai]

And to add to the above, maybe there could even be an option to highlight an area and assign improvement task to that area of land. When this type of automation function becomes available, that will be the day I use the automation button actively.

 

[Mmmm Butter]

That should be easy to code though; improve resources as appropriate or make sure to have the "don't change exisiting improvements" option and the player just farms it first. Perhaps there could be a "maximize individual tile output anyway you can regardless" option?

I always manually control my workers for most of the game. But when it gets to a point when there isn't much to do, I use the automate trade network option. I noticed that when that's turned on, workers improve resources above everything (i.e. they'll go mine uranium when you discover it). But I'm not sure that qualifies as what you mean. For instance, you could have 4 sources of uranium, but the workers will destroy a town in a city built for commerce to improve the fourth, when it's really not necessary. They'll also go out of their way to hook up every resource in your borders, whether or not you really need it. And for some reason, they only send out one worker per improvement, and let the rest sleep. I guess that option isn't what you're looking for at all, in fact.

Anyways, group me with the people who enjoy controlling their workers. For most turns in the game, it's the only thing I'm doing. Plus I just don't like their choices of improvements. I'm a cottage spammer, so I'd rather build those as early as possible as opposed to farms.