Newbie Worker questions

[Distorted Humor]

Ok, I have recently purchased Civ IV (Played I and II and SMAC) and played two games in the standard Civ IV, (One was a time win, playing the germans and when I got to gunpowder first, I stormed the aggressive China civ, eliminated them, and did some burning of the romans late in the game when they attacked me, and won on time, the second time I played the greeks and had a odd game, 6000 years of peace (except for capturing two barb cities) and won with a late game space race win. ) before I relized that I had to launch the BTS version to get the upgraded game and all that.

Since I am a poor player right now (Two games, two wins, but on the defult (easy) level) I looked for hints, and one thing is to NOT automate the workers. So how should I priortize workers so I gain a edge.

 

[coanda]

Improve food resources first. Improve all cities at once so cities aren't working undeveloped tiles. Don't build unnecessary roads until your workers have nothing better to do.

For more detailed tips, I think the war academy (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy) has some good articles.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/sisiutil.php generally is good reading for new players hoping to learn the basics.

Oh - and welcome to the forums!

 

[babybluepants]

Build a worker first. Research whatever technology lets you improve the resources available in your capital, starting with food (i.e. Agriculture for grains, Animal Husbandry for pig/cow, etc.) Once the worker is complete, improve the food, followed by other special resources ( gold/silver/gems > copper/horse/iron > anything else ). Then you can road, chop some forests, mine some hills or cottage. Don't cottage excessively - only if you are Financial, only on riverside and ideally on flood plains. Don't road excessively - only to connect cities (important for opening up trade routes) and hook up resources (strategic and happy first). Also, don't over-improve your cities. If your capital is going to be at size 5 for a while and you have plenty for your citizens to do, it's better to go improve other cities than to mine an extra hill you won't be using.

The same rules apply for other cities. Try to settle all early cities so you have at least one reasonable (5 food per turn) food resource with some river grass, or two food resources. Have a worker over there immediately to improve the food. Ideally, you should have about 1 worker per city early on. You'll hear people say 1.5 workers per city around here, but you need to strike a balance between claiming land (settlers) and keeping your citizens working good tiles, and this is largely map-dependent and level-dependent.

Basically, it's not good to have any citizens working sub-par tiles. The investment in growth is only worth it if you get a significant return on it via citizen production. If you're having trouble keeping up your workers with city growth, you probably need more workers. Keep in mind that you can whip your cities between sizes 2 and 4 to gain extra production and keep from working weak tiles. You can also hire scientists in some size 4-6 cities early, once you have a library built, but you should focus these in 1 or 2 cities only (usually your capital and another one with lots of food).

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I don't know that automated workers is BAD, per se - the way the game is set up, it's really hard to go wrong (I mean, it's obvious you farm corn, cause nothing else makes all that much sense)

the main problem the AI runs into that i see is poor specialization of cities - every city is a hybrid - they all have towns - as opposed to any being really heavily specialized.

Also, it's not clear the AI picks tiles to improve for the same reason you would.

 

[coanda]

Not to pick nits, but I have on several occasions not farmed corn (or, to be more accurate, replaced farmed corn with workshops or cottages once the city was done growing). It's situational, but often that is the better play. Automated workers in general are terrible about judging when it's best to build an improvement that is not the standard one for a resource.

It's hard for making an improvement to actually make the situation worse - just about the only possible example would be slapping workshops onto good grass tiles early in the game before caste system, guilds, chemistry, state property - but there are improvements and then there are good improvements. Automating the workers will just give you improvements.

 

[Kid R]

Try automating the workers and watching what they do - it's shocking, they have absolutely no sense at all! I used to play a lot with Ramesses (starts with agriculture and the wheel), and I remember automating my first worker and expecting him to move to farm the adjacent corn tile. Nope, he goes completely the other direction and builds a road towards nothing in particular. That experiment lasted exactly 1 turn

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Then how did you know where he was going?

I usually micromanage my workers, but it can get rather boring. I found it interesting that workers will respect whatever specialization you set up in your city governor. I haven't tried it, but I'm tempted.

Oh! If you do automate your workers it's a good idea to protect yourself by ticking the option box for 'automated workers keep existing improvements.'

 

[Paperbag_Hobo]

Try automating the workers and watching what they do - it's shocking, they have absolutely no sense at all! I used to play a lot with Ramesses (starts with agriculture and the wheel), and I remember automating my first worker and expecting him to move to farm the adjacent corn tile. Nope, he goes completely the other direction and builds a road towards nothing in particular. That experiment lasted exactly 1 turn

Who needs to eat when you can travel in style?

 

[Aoxomoxoa]

Don't ... Automate ...

 

[Alki]

Don't ... Automate ...

Exterminate!

 

[RD-BH]

Last night I was bored at midgame.

I put workers to auto ...
... they tore down 4 river towns and put up workshops!
... ... (I stopped 'em before they continued any further).

Those workshops would have been much better overtop the 3 rice no one
was trading for ... Never trust an Auto Worker!!!

Don't automate ... I regret it just about every time.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Unless I'm mistaken this would not have happened had you checked the appropriate option.

If I might quote myself:

Oh! If you do automate your workers it's a good idea to protect yourself by ticking the option box for 'automated workers keep existing improvements.'

 

[Paw]

It's also a good idea to check the box that makes workers not chop forests. I don't automate workers often, but until I realized there was an option for this, it used to frustrate me to no end if I did automate workers and they attempted to chop a forest I was planning on building a LM on.