Not Automating Workers

[Mknn]

So, I read the articles in the war Academy, I thought I knew what I was doing, I played a game without automating workers and feel completely lost. Can someone point me to, or provide, a really basic guide to what I should be doing? I can make roads real well, and mining makes sense.

But, choosing what tiles to farm or cottage, and how to prioritize that, just completely eludes me. There seem to be many fewer multi- tiles than multi or multi , so I would assume that you should cottage anything that has two ? What other guidelines should I be looking at?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

If you read any of the discussions of "city specialization", you'll likely come away with a better understanding of the benefits of controlling workers.

 

[Bleys]

I will help with what I can, still having some issues myself, mostly mid-game with Windmills and Watermills and such, but heres my input.

First of all, you should have some relative idea of what type of economy you wish to run, a specialist based one where food is the king, or a cottage economy which . . . well runs cottages.

If specialists are your cup of tea, then you want to increase food to your city. The more food the better, so farms go on grasslands and floodplains. A floodplain with a farm on it supports 1 specialist by itself, 4 food means 2 citizens, 1 gets to be a farmer, the other gets to be a specialist. Every 2 grasslands are good for another specialist.

Cottages on those same grasslands and floodplains will produce more cash-flow.

As for priority, I usually go for the resource tiles first, a mine, and a cottage or farm (depending which economy) on a river tile, and move the worker to other duty, like chopping forests for production. The first tiles I chop are rivered grasslands, since those are the next to be upgraded, again with whatever style I am playing. This lets me micro-manage my citizens to whatever I need them doing, producing food (farms) or hammers (mines).

Remember, early on, your cities are likely going to be smaller, only working 4 or 5 tiles. There is no need to rush rush and develop all 20 available tiles. I try to leave non-rivered forests if possible, for future lumbermills, but rivered plains are destined for watermills so I chop them.

The tricks really arent in the workers, dont over-analyze it or you'll go mad with micro-management. The trick is the check your cities to be sure your population is working the tiles you want them to work. Avoid working un-upgraded tiles if possible, if your pop is too big for the available tiles, run a specialist or whip one or 2 away, until you can bring a worker in to upgrade the next few. As the game progresses, and you get your roads up and such, you can start "advance upgrading" in anticipation of upping your populations when its safer to do so regarding health and happiness (higher levels require more attention to this, obviously).

Hope that helps. Remember, river tiles are the best to upgrade first no matter what, so if you only want to build 1 or 2 mines and 1 or 2 cottage/farms, pick those rivered tiles if they are available.

 

[dragomaster]

wow, this is a werry deep question. could you please post some pictures on the city's you'r confused about. it will be extreamly hard to explain without them but i will give it a try. it's all about city specializing.

First make up your mind what eatch city shold be. Production, comerce or GP farm.

the first thing your worker shold do is to connect the resourses. if i'm not in a hurry for a strategic resorce like horses, iron and copper i ushally improve food first. after that it depends on the city and what it shold do.

If you have a city with a river, flodplains and grassland squares. I ushally planing to make this in to a comerce city. After the resorces are conected i start to build cottage on the flodplains then on the riveside grasland squares. I make a mine or two for production so i can build something before AD.

producion citys is about the same. food first then comes the mines for production.

GP farm. food first then build more farms so you can have more specialists

 

[troytheface]

go back to automating your workers and build axemen.

 

[Elkad]

you need some un-automated workers to build the invasion trail for those axemen

 

[tycoonist]

cottage everything that you have the food to work. mine hills. farm when you run out of food. roads to resources.

 

[Mknn]

Some specific questions, then:

* What would you do with massive tracts of jungle? Most of it is single , nothing else. If you're running a CE, do you still cottage that kind of tile?

* How often do you destroy prior improvements? I seem to often have a tile that is, say, sheep, 2 and 2 . Is it usual to build a pasture, then realize the city is running very low on funds and cottage it, losing the pasture?

 

[Zanttu]

Some specific questions, then:

* What would you do with massive tracts of jungle? Most of it is single , nothing else. If you're running a CE, do you still cottage that kind of tile?

* How often do you destroy prior improvements? I seem to often have a tile that is, say, sheep, 2 and 2 . Is it usual to build a pasture, then realize the city is running very low on funds and cottage it, losing the pasture?

* After you chop down the jungle, it becomes grassland tile providing 2 food, so it's quite good for cottaging

*Improvements can be destroyed when needed, but usually there's no point in building a cottage on top of a resource.

 

[JBossch]

go back to automating your workers and build axemen.

Blasphemy. Building axemen is a great idea but you should never automate workers, especially in the beginning when timing chops and other things is crucial for producing those axes.

 

[JBossch]

Some specific questions, then:


* How often do you destroy prior improvements? I seem to often have a tile that is, say, sheep, 2 and 2 . Is it usual to build a pasture, then realize the city is running very low on funds and cottage it, losing the pasture?

Pretty much never destroy the improvements that give you the resource they are on (for example, your pasture on the sheep). If you are having trouble with expenses, keep working the food and use it to run a merchant.

 

[druidravi]

Read some of the SG games and also post a save of one of your games .

 

[vicawoo]

production cities (lots of hills, early on) = farms + mines.
commerce (lots of grasslanad) = cottages. sometimes you need food to work plains, so after biology, make just enough farms.

 

[Melon Head]

Some specific questions, then:

* What would you do with massive tracts of jungle? Most of it is single , nothing else. If you're running a CE, do you still cottage that kind of tile?

* How often do you destroy prior improvements? I seem to often have a tile that is, say, sheep, 2 and 2 . Is it usual to build a pasture, then realize the city is running very low on funds and cottage it, losing the pasture?

Another thing to note. It doesn't matter if a specific city is running low on funds or even losing you money. What matters is that civilization-wide you're making progress. What this means is that particularly in the mid-game I might over-expand, so that new cities I'm laying down are very much losing me money, but I have enough commerce cities from earlier on that they are able to produce a surplus of gold and keep me in the black. The most obvious way to do this is with a GP-farm focusing on merchants, but that's not 100% effective because GMs are a little less desired than GS's. Regardless, remember that the specific city values are less important than the civ-wide values. Look at the total science you're producing (in parentheses next to the slider percentage) as an indicator of progress, not the percentage value. The higher you can make that value without losing money, the better you're doing, and oftentimes founding cities farther afield will let you grow those cities and catch up.

 

[cabert]

melon head is right, it's senseless to look at things on a city per city basis.
Some cities will never earn you money.
OTOH those cities may build the units that will earn you cities that will earn you money .

What to do with workers?
basic rules :
- you have a limited number of citizens in your cities. These citizens need to give the best possible output and the city needs to grow. so what? food comes first, to allow for the fastest possible growth. Then it's time for the highest output tiles, which usually are the resources. After that, you continue in descending output order (except specific need, such as chopping for a wonder).
- you need roads to go from one point to another and to connect your resources, but you don't need roads everywhere.
- you don't want to work unimproved tiles, and it's senseless to improve a city faster than it is growing

I don't get further into specializing cities, since there are articles and threads about this issue "en masse".

 

[Rooseville]

IMO it really depends on your strategy. If you don't have a strategy yet then let the city be your guide--build farms on tiles with lots of food if you want to grow, build cottages on 1-commerce tiles if your leader is Financial, etc..

Some advice regarding forests/jungles and chopping: if you have forests or jungles on your border with another civ then leave them alone. If you're looking at a long-term win then don't chop everything in sight because lumbermills and forest preserves can come in handy late-game (depending upon your tech level and choice of civics), plus the woodlands help your defense.

Bottom line: look at the land, and look at what your cities are doing. Build accordingly.

 

[CivMcNut]

More often than not, I tend to cottage grassland and farm plains. Workshops are nice to throw in there for cities without hills or production resources. Once you have machinery, windmills are nice for cities that short on food.

 

[cabert]

More often than not, I tend to cottage grassland and farm plains. Workshops are nice to throw in there for cities without hills or production resources. Once you have machinery, windmills are nice for cities that short on food.

It's not always optimal.
If you have no food resource, it's clearly suboptimal.
What you want to be able to do is grow fast when there is room (happiness cap just climbed one step? great, let's grow)
and stop growing without losing anything (that is without clicking on the no growth button ).
For this you need a few large food surplus tiles, and as many tiles with food deficit.

For instance, you cottage the plain tile and farm the grassland tile.
Working both, you're food neutral. When you need to grow, you work only farms, when you want to stop growth, you work the cottages.
(this is just to illustrate, not a guide!)