Moving from Chieftain to Warlord, what should I learn to micromanage first?

[CJNyfalt]

I'm new to Civ 3, although I played Civ 2 alot when I was younger.
I have played on Chieftain level and manages to beat the AI on that level, so I'm considering to move up to Warlord level. I'm used to automating my workers, and let governors manage production. When I tried to play on the Warlord level, I concluded that I can't leave those skills to the computers anymore.
I clearly needs to learn to manage things by myself. However, starting to micromanage both workers and city production at the same time would be too much for me.
So the question is:
Which micromanagement skill is more important, city production queue or worker tasks?
If I choose to start to manage workers, should I start to convert grasslands from mines to irrigation once I have switched to republic?

Edit: Sigh. I shouldn't post before I have had my morning tea. This should have been posted in the Civ3 strategy section. Sorry.

 

[vmxa]

I would say workers, but only if you have a plan. I would not let the gov manage anything, but if you must only happiness.

Just set the preference to build last item and always ask for new construction. You only have to deal with the city when it finishs something.

No need for what I call micromanagement. IOW you do not have to sweat the waste of some shields and food at this stage and level.

Just keep workers improving tiles that are actually worked. That should be enough to handle Warlord.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

yes, micro your workers.

You do however need to take a little look at your city. You ask if you should irrigate grassland in republic. You need to look at your city's food surplus. If it is low, irrigate something, if it is high, do not. 4 or 5 food surplus is nice for your cities to grow. Below size 6, 2 or 3 surplus is also acceptable.\

When you start looking at the food surplus, you might slowly go look into other things as well and over time improve your micromanagement to a more advanced level.

I'd say, if you micromanage only the city or only the workers, rather than half the results, you will get only like 25% of the results. The power of micromanagement is adjusting your tiles and your city to eachother. Looking at only one of them seperatly will not provide you much of the results.

 

[brennan]

Make sure you have plenty of workers to manage. Make a point of turning out a worker early in every city's buid queue, apart from the first which would slow you down.

I would say you are missing out on a good part of the game if you are not organising the build queues yourself. Relying on the governors essentially means that you are letting the computer play for you and just moving the units around, and the AI is really not very intelligent i'm afraid.

For easy levels you should have an easy ride if you concentrate on getting out settlers in the early game (try looking up how to build a settler factory) and have a city or two with barracks, say the 2nd and 3rd that you found, producing a mix of spears/archers/swords/horses (depending on your resources) for defence.

A good rule of thumb for city development is that more food lets a city grow faster, and bigger cities=more power. Place cities by rivers if possible, they can grow twice as large without an Aqueduct, build granaries in these cities so that they reach max size asap (build the Pyramids for a granary in every city if you have a city spare). Make sure that your citizens are working the best land. Build roads on every tile that is being worked, 'mine green, irrigate brown' as has been said before.

With regard to techs: If you start as religious civ try to get monarchy early and switch for the benefit. If you start as commercial it is usually worthwhile going for the writing tech tree because the AI puts high value on all those techs; Writing, Literature, Map Making, Republic are all valuable. Getting the Great Library and then researching the techs the AI leaves till last (usually Mathematics - Currency & Construction) is a good way to build a tech lead on Warlord. Getting Republic nice and early is always a good idea, so long sas you don't have a massive military.

 

[bingen]

Managing your workes is really imprortant, at the very least do so in the first couple of eras. Having said that I think that managing city production is even more important. You can still use your governor to control happiness and distribute worked tiles even though it does a lousy job at this, learn this when ready for the next step.

Try plaing smaller mapsizes to practice. Games go faster, less workers/cities to manage and you can more easily observe the effects of your choices on each individual city.

 

[Invisible Rhino]

It's been a while since I made the jump from Chief to Warlord, here are some things I think I remember. To be honest though if you were doing good on Chieftan I don't think Warlord will give you any problems. Consider making the jump to Regent, I did about a month ago and now I'm up to the next one

* You'll need to get used to having a bigger standing army than before
* You'll need a lot more workers to keep pace
* You'll want to start actually trading and negotiating with the AI

I think all of those are standard every time you jump up a level, military, domestic and foreign affaris all become more difficult.

 

[gmaharriet]

I've always set my preferences to be asked for the next build in each city, even when I was playing chieftain, and it reminds you to think about what needs to be done.

It was when I moved up to Warlord that I began managing my workers. I decided to play a game concentrating on only worker management, not caring if I even won the game. To my surprise, my play improved soooo much that I did win without trying, and I've done that ever since. It sure takes a LOT longer to play a game though, rather than automating them.

Managing citizens seems harder and I'm still working on improving that...the citizens don't stop each turn and ask you what to do next...you have to remember to look. The best advice I ever got to help with that was to periodically zoom to your capitol city and use the arrows at the top of the screen to scroll through each city in turn to see what your workers are doing, making changes as needed. Once you get into that habit and SEE how poorly the governors are doing, you stop forgetting to check and your production will go way up.

 

[TyranusBonehead]

I micromanage my workers until they literally run out of things to do in their 'neck of the woods'. Then if I don't have enough guys roading for me, then I'll assign him to roading, or automate him (without altering). I will immediately work on irrigating/mining until every possible tile around every city has been touched. Road to your resources and luxuries (obviously) too. Each city gets at least one worker, 2-3 are dedicated roadies.

I welcome suggestions if these are not good ideas....

 

[CJNyfalt]

Thank you to everyone who has replied so far!
I tried out the Fall of Rome scenario and became comfortable managing my workers quite fast. I still need some time before I learn and become comfortable with the wood chopping strategies however.
I also tired to manage construction. I can't say that I failed at it, it is just that there are a lot of things to consider. I'm just not sure that I do a better job than the governor in finding a good mix between expansion, defensive units, offensive units and city improvements.

I have the following new questions about the city build queue:
- The granary, I have a hard time valuing it. When to build it and when not to?
- Settlers vs workers, is 3-4 settlers/city enough before I switch to workers? Or should I use a settler-worker-settler scheme?
- Once the expansion phase is over, how many defensive units should I build before I start producing offensive units? 4/city + 2/offensive stack?
- It seems to me that concerning buildings, I should build economic buildings and corruption reducing buildings if they give a fair return (which can be checked with CivAssist II), build science buildings ASAP (after expansion phase) and build happiness buildings when needed. Correct or not? Anything to add?

 

[Bob1475]

There are no simple answers as it depends upon your strategic postiion and intent. I would strongly urge you read the articles in the War Academy on this site. Great articles written by those who know better than me.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

- The granary, I have a hard time valuing it. When to build it and when not to?
> early game, build them in high food cities and cities that have more production than they can spend on settlers due to growth. After size 6, build them in all of your core if the game is not gonna be over very soon and if you dont see a good option to conquer the pyramids.


- Settlers vs workers, is 3-4 settlers/city enough before I switch to workers? Or should I use a settler-worker-settler scheme?
>Build them both. If i have a 4turn settler factory, i will usually build a worker in every new city that i found. Few random settlers from the non factory cities.
If i have a 2 turn worker factory, i usually build settlers in all other cities and get my workers from that factory. Note, non capital factories are too late to be the sole providers of workers. Before this worker factory is opperational, a few workers usually need to be build in other cities.
You just need a nice mix of these.

- Once the expansion phase is over, how many defensive units should I build before I start producing offensive units? 4/city + 2/offensive stack?
>None generally. A few sometimes to hold choke points. Horses defend your empire better than spears.

- It seems to me that concerning buildings, I should build economic buildings and corruption reducing buildings if they give a fair return (which can be checked with CivAssist II), build science buildings ASAP (after expansion phase) and build happiness buildings when needed. Correct or not? Anything to add?
>if you want to build city improvements because you think that is fun, do so. If you want to win as fast as possible and play as efficient as possible, you will need very very few city improvements.
happiness buildings you should then never build, courthouses have a very small corruption reduction and should only be build later in the game (half way middle ages), only if the game is gonna last long and only in medium corrupt cities.
market places or libraries depend on your choise. To research and trade or to buy and trade. if you dont research, you need no libraries at all of course. If you do research, build some in your core but not too early.
Markets are probably a good thing in most of your games. I normally build them when i have 3-4 luxuries. Sometimes a bit earlier if my republic really needs them. In short and fast games i will not build any markets.


Edit: oh i was forgetting the context of this thread. My post here is more aimed to the somewhat more experienced player who wants to optimize his game for faster victory. As you might not yet have fast and short games and don't play difficulties where you do not research yourself, part of my post is not really valid here.

 

[vmxa]

CJNyfalt
"- The granary, I have a hard time valuing it. When to build it and when not to?"

This is a more complicated question that you mite imagine. To keep it simple, I would say ideally your first three cites could use one. If they have food bonus tiles and are founded on a river. Any low corruption cities with a +3 or better food could be a canidate. If you have no such cities, it gets tricky to decide. Since this is Warlord, you should have a lot more time to expand and better use those granaries.

"- Settlers vs workers, is 3-4 settlers/city enough before I switch to workers? Or should I use a settler-worker-settler scheme?"

I would not count towns as much as I would look at the room I have left to fill. One way to gain workers is to have towns that you just found pop out a worker if they do it in 10 turns and grow in 10 turns. Not if they can do it in 5 and grow in 10 or more. Then later when you are not able to get any open land for new towns, you can look to pop some workers out of those early settler pumps.

You probably will have to pop a worker now and then anyway to stay in line.

"- Once the expansion phase is over, how many defensive units should I build before I start producing offensive units? 4/city + 2/offensive stack?"

Probably none. I would not make a spear at Warlord. Make archers or horses or swords instead. Horses if I can and at least enough to be seen as avg Vs them, strong is nice. I am presuming you are not planning on taking it to them, otherwise just keep making lots of troops.

"- It seems to me that concerning buildings, I should build economic buildings and corruption reducing buildings if they give a fair return (which can be checked with CivAssist II), build science buildings ASAP (after expansion phase) and build happiness buildings when needed. Correct or not? Anything to add?"

That is a reasonable builder ploy. Just be sure that they are viable, not burdensome.

 

[SJ Frank]

I have the following new questions about the city build queue:
- The granary, I have a hard time valuing it. When to build it and when not to?

Build granary in cities where you plan to build settlers and workers.

On a map where some cities start with food bonuses, because those cities can recover their population faster, you should build your settlers and workers from those cities. So those cities get granaries.

On a map where there isn't any food bonuses around, you still need to pick out a few cities to be your settler/worker producer. Since you want to produce settlers ASAP, the granary usually goes into the capital or the best city.

On a map where you start so close to the AI's that there is no room to expand, you're not going to build many settlers in this case, so no cities should have a granary.

- Settlers vs workers, is 3-4 settlers/city enough before I switch to workers? Or should I use a settler-worker-settler scheme?

Settler is still more important than worker. Don't slow down settler production in favor of more workers. However, sometimes workers can help you build settlers faster. Like when a city could irrigate another food bonus tile to grow faster, or when a city has enough food, but lack shields to build the settler, or maybe the city needs more workers to help it build its granary faster. So, build worker first if it helps building the next few settler faster, otherwise stick with settler.

- Once the expansion phase is over, how many defensive units should I build before I start producing offensive units? 4/city + 2/offensive stack?

No more than a few, that's total, not per-city. Offensive units are better than defensive units in both offense and defense. As a simple example, an archer attacking an enemy archer has better odds than a spear defending against the same archer.

Don't think of your units as "defenders per city". Remember that units have legs, you can move them to where the threats are.

- It seems to me that concerning buildings, I should build economic buildings and corruption reducing buildings if they give a fair return (which can be checked with CivAssist II), build science buildings ASAP (after expansion phase) and build happiness buildings when needed. Correct or not? Anything to add?

Correct in many ways . Economic buildings should be built before happiness buildings, because without economic buildings, happiness buildings cost the same as luxury tax, and luxury tax does not use up any shields. Corruption buildings are long-term investments. If you have a urgent short-term need, like a critical war, it's good to delay them. Marketplace is both an economic building and a happiness building, so it is usually the first building built.

 

[Bluemofia]

I would say workers, because I have been micromanaging them since Chieften, and then all your cities.

 

[finalhistorian]

workers will help more than cities

 

[CoolioVonHoolio]

im sorry i cant help you with this... (i started playing civ on warlord)

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

If you really want to move up, you've got to MM both workers and cities. If you're set on using the computer to handle tasks, MM the workers and set the governor on the cities. If you really want more info, PM me and I'll shoot you a link to a thread that has lot's of spam but also describes what happens with automation.

 

[Desertsnow]

I never, ever let the computer manage my workers. I always know what I want them to do, and the order in which I want them to do their tasks.
Do watch your cities, though, and be on the lookout for any that start new projects on their own; you may not necessarily agree with their decisions.

I've never played the scenarios myself, so I have no idea of the appropriate strategy, alas.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

I was writing about an SG. To really move up, you've got to resign yourself to MM workers and cities and leave nothing to the AI (it's just too dam* stoopid; this coming from a self proclaimed idiot). Desertsnow (sounds like a plan) has the right idea. BTW, my fluency in my native tongue is lame, are you in favor of the sweet stuff or snow in the arid lands?

 

[Whomp]

I was writing about an SG.

Spammy? In the SG he's talking about Tom Tom Club (we're playing a automated worker variant) the AI irrigates everything, chops when you have no desire for a chop and now they're currently railing the cities. Problem is they're starting from the most corrupt cities and working their way back to the core. Bad, bad and bad.
Fortunately I have some high level teammates that know how to point a stick.
We are going to win the game at Emperor level.