Optimum number of workers

[lech]

Is there any way to tell if a person has the optimum number of workers? I know you need quite a few, I found that out the hard way my first few games, but it seems like too many would be a waste. On my present game on a huge map, I have 45 workers and pretty much all my land was developed and covered with railroads by about the thirteen hundreds. That seems adequate to me, but I'm just wondering if there are any clearcut rules as to how many workers a person should have on each different map size at any given time.

I was also wondering if I should disband my workers after everything is developed? It's nice to have the polution taken care of quickly, but that doesn't take a huge amount of workers.

 

[thetrooper]

I was also wondering if I should disband my workers after everything is developed? It's nice to have the polution taken care of quickly, but that doesn't take a huge amount of workers.

Keep them around for pollution or join them to cities, don't disband (2 shields).

 

[Quilty]

If I gain a significant number of captured workers over time, I add to cities the workers that I've created during the game. Although slave workers perform tasks half as quickly, they don't cost any gold and if you have a lot of them you can still clean up pollution within a turn or two. I'd wait until after I've built a few mass transit systems and recycling plants just to be sure of how many I will need.

 

[Zakharov]

You should keep pumping out workers until you run out of tiles to develop. When that happens you have 2 choices:

1) Join most of them to your cities. Keep some for pollution clean up.
2) Get some more land. I can guarantee that the AI land is not fully developed.

 

[EquinoxOmega]

The optimum number of workers depends strongly on your territory size and also a little on your state of devellopment.

I usually build some workers in the beginning of the game and only later I only build workers on demand. I try to capture as many enemy-workers as possible(I know that they are only 50% efficent, but lots of them will also do the work).

 

[CrackedCrystal]

Usually I run about 2 per city. I use CivAssisti and always buy workers from other civs. 110 gold each and every time one is available. no better way to spend your gold. Better yet, a 6gpt deal to keep them happy.

 

[Oddible]

You should keep pumping out workers until you run out of tiles to develop.

That's my rule. If I find that my workers are keeping up with the rate of growth of my cities, I stop building workers - otherwise I keep on building them until I've got a road and a mine/irrigation for every citizen in every city.

 

[klopolov]

I build at least 1 worker per city and usually have about the same number of slaves. If a city reaches it's growth limit, I make another worker there.

 

[sorky]

I used to build 2 workers/town minimum. There is two tech interesting:
-Ingeniery, corrupted city become productive. 3 workers of an industrial civ could plant forrest in 2 turns and cut it in 1 iirc. 4shield per turn for a full corrupted city is good ^^ (don't work anymore)
-Steam power... railroad your empire, the fastest the better.

It's good to have some with your armies too. 6 workers with industrial civ to railroad in one turn? I don't remember.

 

[MikeH]

6 workers with industrial civ to railroad in one turn? I don't remember.

Three, prior to Replaceable Parts, four for a non-industrious civ. Two for both afterwards, as you can't have 0.5 workers .

 

[sorky]

So it's 5 for indus? I talked about road and railroad and 3 after Replaceable Parts.

 

[budweiser]

Throw in a few extra workers to your SOD for 1 turn forts while you are at it. It can save lives. You can even go crazy and add more workers to build barracades and forests for even more protection.

 

[morchuflex]

How many workers do you need?

I'd say, enough to make sure that none of your cities ever works unimproved tiles! This means at the very least one per city.
Beginners always build too few. They'll often rely solely on the first, "free", one until they already have many cities. This is a mistake. You should build additional ones as soon as your capital has a granary.

In the beginning, my capital typically produces:

1. 3 warriors (two for exploration, one for defence).
2. A granary (I always research pottery ASAP).
3. A settler (if I'm industrious), or a worker (not industrious).
4. Then, I'll alternately build one worker, one settler. If the city needs to replenish its pop inbetween, I'll build military units to garrison in newly founded cities.
In newly founded cities, I'll often build a worker before anything else to start improving the land.
Fully corrupt, distant, cities can be turned to worker-factories (they can pop one every 10 turns).

The AI produces way too few. In the early game, since they start with extra military units, they'll build almost nothing but settlers. That's why they'll often have 4 or 5 cities before you complete your very first settler. This can be distressing; but don't let it impress you: you'll catch up once your settler-factories are ready to produce one settler every 5 turns... And having more workers, you'll quickly have more productive cities.

In fact, "you can never have too many workers" is a good rule for beginners.

 

[budweiser]

I basically agree with everything Murchuflex said except the point about building a worker first in new cities. I used to do this all the time myself. Now I think you are better off building something else besides a worker like a warrior or a temple or library first. I'm not sure its a good idea to take away the food, shields and commerce from the city in the form of a worker. Instead, I think it is better form to designate one or more relatively high food producing cities and make them pump out most of the workers for your empire.

BTW, I dont like using captured workers(slaves). They are so slow and I dont like pressing all those buttons every turn, even if they are free.