Optimum number of workers

[RJM]

It becomes apparent pretty quickly. As it stands you might have enough workers that you're not working unimproved tiles, but your empire would almost certainly benefit from having more even if individual cities don't. Laying out roads to city sites in advance will help you settle faster. Laying out roads to enemy civs will help your armies get there faster (especially important if you'll be sending reinforcements after the first stack). Pre-chopping forests will help you get your important infrastructure/units out faster. Chopping forests/jungles and laying down forts around your border cities will make your cities safer from enemy SoDs.

The most important time to have lots of workers in my mind is when you start settling jungle in a serious way. Adding 6 turns onto any improvement (plus the 7th to move onto it in the first place) slows down improving land a lot, so having 2.5-3 workers on your jungle cities is huge. Of course, you want to have them built before you settle the jungle so those cities can take off right away, rather than building them as you settle jungle.

I have tried replaying the first 100 turns of the current Emperor Cookbook game - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=314555. In these games I established my third city just before the 100th turn. Replays with 1 worker appear (to me) to be better than replays with 2 workers. I have not yet tried 3 or 4 workers, but I suspect I would need a dramatic change in my approach to see any benefit from either of these. These results are not directly comparable with the posted saves in the cookbook game since I made no attempt to explore.

There are a number of factors that may affect this result.

1) I have not chopped very much - this may be the main reason I'm not seeing a dramatic benefit from more workers.

2) There is no jungle to deal with, but in any case, I have not yet discovered iron working.

3) My research path misses AH and thus there was no possibility of building pastures.

4) I have not been involved in any wars.

5) I would have benefited from connecting my third city earlier, but only by a couple of turns.

6) I would have benefited from building hamlets on the floodplains near my capital, but this probably only cost a few commerce.

It is clear that after building the third city, there would be a significant benefit from additional workers, but by this I mean a total of 2 or 3 workers rather than 4.

I suspect my play style fails to exploit extra workers effectively, perhaps not just chopping but other things as well.

RJM

 

[Helghallen]

the correct answer is eleventy billion

 

[budweiser]

One worker can easily cover the capitol and have it finished in time to go work on city 2. After that I am not too sure.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

For wartime strategy, I build three to five on average, then capture the rest. I tend to have way too many workers by the end of the second (catapult led) expansion phase. (The AI kindly moves all my future workers into the city for me to liberate, anywhere from one to five per city!)

Of course, now I say that, I'm currently isolated on the smaller continent of a continents game. I killed the French pretty early and scored only three workers in the process (got four cities though). I don't seem to have enough workers right now. I'm getting used to having a plentiful supply pre-built for me, courtesy of the AI.

 

[Cashew]

One worker can easily cover the capitol and have it finished in time to go work on city 2. After that I am not too sure.

That's generally a terrible idea if you have a good amount of trees which you usually will. This is the reason why a lot of new players have a hard time understanding how they get outpaced at higher levels. An unimproved tile is a worthless tile for the most part, having workers that can improve your resources and chop your trees is essential. I would only go with fewer than 2 workers if my start was both devoid of trees and resources (fish start).

 

[popejubal]

Big landmass maps where you have room to expand, 2 per city til you have 10, then 1 more every 2 cities.

Island maps, 1.5 per city til you have 7 or 8. Then its actually more important to transport the ones you have around rather than having too many sitting around doing busy work sucking up maintenance cash. There arent as many tiles for a worker to improve, and half your worker hammers should be going into workboats.

On more packed maps like Pangaea, you can usually get away with a few less, especially if you plan to rush. Get those first few out ASAP though, you wont regret it. Chop distant forests if you need stuff to do, or pre-road paths to future cities, but its better to have too many workers than too few.

The way I look at island maps is that I want a workboat for super-early exploration (I've circumnavigated with a pair of workboats fairly often) and then I'll want 2 workers per city just like I always do. It's just that some of the workers will be boat-shaped and spend the rest of the game fishing or catching crabs.