Other uses for workers

You may find occasionally a city that can produce one worker per turn that is always one turn away from gaining another point of population. This city can produce one worker per turn with no decrease in population. You do nothing.

It's less about how many people are in the city but about the balance of production between food and shields in that city.

This can happen in any city that can produce a worker in one turn when you are experiencing the We Love the King Day in that city.

Particularly at the easy levels of play, the game makes workers so bountiful that we can use them for all of the purposes cited in this thread, and then some.

When my civ is overflowing with workers, I keep a huge stack at the capital for trades and gifts. Someone here mentioned that each worker is like a point of population, and that was on my mind when I tried to give a whole bunch of workers to far away doomed civs on a huge map. I figured I was helping them and that the worst that might happen, other than me losing workers, was that my workers could end up as population points in the cities of other civs.

I wonder if it is possible to affect, perhaps indirectly, the makeup of another nation through gifts of workers. The zulus are probably nice neighbors if you are culturally strong and some significant percentage of their population is of your nation.
 
Originally posted by Thoth


This works slightly better for a size 7 city. It must have a granary before it grows past 6. With a production of 10 or more, you can build a worker a turn indefinitely. This is caused by the change in size of the food box (20 at size 6 or less, and 40 for size 7-12).
With a granary only half the food box empties which leaves 20 food in the granary when the city grows to a 7.
Click to expand...

This works frighteningly well! I've almost bankrupted myself supporting my massive worker army. The homeland is almost completely developed WAY faster than I ever managed before. In a few more turns I will absorb workers to max pop ALL of my cities (and bring my struggling budget under control) and will have an economic and industrial powerhouse.

I have no doubt that I'll be winning my second deity level game. It's 500 BC right now and I'm in good shape. After populating my cities I will easily be the number 1 power. This strategy rocks!
 
Thank you, Sodak, for mentioning that I am the author.

I have been using 'size6' a lot since I discovered it and, believe me, it works like a charm!
I suppose that most people playing this game will probably be using it within a few weeks from now.
Therefore it is fair that at least some of those people remember that la fayette found it and decided to share that finding with the community.

:goodjob: Sodak
 
This thread is fantastik. I've been able to use a number things posted here to great effect. I've used the Size Six and workers- as-decoys so far and when the situation calls for real nastiness I'll definitely use the Right of Passage agreement with my workers altering the AI's landscape to my own strategic ends. (Though I think that's a bug. If your workers change the AI's improvements, it should be considered an act of war or trigger some kind of warning from the AI forcing you to move them or go to war...)

Until now I'd never even considered using workers for anything but work....very innovative.
 
I tried this strat and it works very well. The only problem that I encountered was when I had so many workers that I got tired of micromanaging them, I decided to automate them. Only I 'A' automated them instead of 'Shift-A' automated them, and they proceeded to trash my major production centers by replacing mines with irrigation to cause population increase. Even though cities that were at size 15 or 16 grew to 24 or 25, the production actually <b>decreased</b> because the mines had disappeared and the majority of citizens were working on squares that were all gold/food.
 
Although indirectly said you could try and give many worker gifts and if the computer puts them in his cities you may be able to declare war and the cities would revolt (I have not tested this someone could prove it wrong or right)
 
First post on these boards, be gentle.

I've read that you can select which citizen(s) will become the worker (or settlers) but I dont know how, so I don't know a lot about this.

Just to let these paragraphs make sense, pretend you're German.

If you have, say, an American city with some of your people mixed with the Americans, and you choose an American citizen to become a worker, does he come out as an American worker, or a German worker? If he comes out as a German worker, couldn't you then put him back in that city completely naturalized and no threat to your city's well being?

Would be nice, but if that's not how it works, you could conceivably take those American workers, send em to your captiol, and sell em back to America. On the same token, you could conceivably capture workers and do the same.

Tell me if this has been mentioned before or if I'm wrong about stuff, I'm still relatively new and sucky at Civ3.
 
Users are the most important unit in the game. In addition to the above mentioned uses, you can use huge stacks of them to rush production in cities far away from the center: Have them consecutively plant and chop down trees, and each time 10 shields will be added to the production of the nearest city. You can harvest trees unlimited amount of time on any tile, so keep a stack of lumberjacks near all peripheral city to get things done, as the lazy buggers apparently wont.
 
Originally posted by ElRocco
Users are the most important unit in the game. In addition to the above mentioned uses, you can use huge stacks of them to rush production in cities far away from the center: Have them consecutively plant and chop down trees, and each time 10 shields will be added to the production of the nearest city. You can harvest trees unlimited amount of time on any tile, so keep a stack of lumberjacks near all peripheral city to get things done, as the lazy buggers apparently wont.
Click to expand...

This exploit was fixed in the patch. It makes sense. No matter how many people you have working on it, it will take more than a couple of years for trees to grow large enough to provide any value by chopping them down.
 
Originally posted by Zxqv8
If you have, say, an American city with some of your people mixed with the Americans, and you choose an American citizen to become a worker, does he come out as an American worker, or a German worker?
Click to expand...
Nationality is retained. That is, your German civ's American city will produce an american worker if that citizen is the one in line to be used. I'm not sure how the city chooses the order the citizens line up - when I've added my own citizens to a newly captured city, they don't just line up at the end, they get mixed in with the others.

However, to increase your civ's influence, replace the american citizen with a german, and send the american to join an all-german city.
 
It's too bad the AI doesn't use workers to boost his pop much. Otherwise, the gift idea would be really great, since foreign nationals are one of the key factors in determining flips.

Imagine if you could set up a ROP with a neighbor, flood workers in and build up his cities with your guys, and then wait for the flip!
 
Don't know what to do with your multitude of workers?

Build stacks of forty and make them alternately plant and chop down forrest. You can do this an apparently unlimited number of times on any usable tile each turn, harvesting ten shields for each four workers (under democracy or having discovered electricity or whatever it is that makes them run faster)

In this way, you can build e.g. a factory or a battleship in one turn, even if the city is in disorder. Very convenient for managing those fringe cities in perpetual disorder.

So: are your workers loitering in the colosseii lacking honest work, chaingang them, workcamp them and _make them sweat_ !!

Tolerating inactive workers is high treason!

And: If anyone knows how to move a stack of forty units in one go, please tell me.


pshychophage
 
Originally posted by psychophage
Don't know what to do with your multitude of workers?

Build stacks of forty and make them alternately plant and chop down forrest. You can do this an apparently unlimited number of times on any usable tile each turn, harvesting ten shields for each four workers (under democracy or having discovered electricity or whatever it is that makes them run faster)
pshychophage
Click to expand...


This has been mentioned a couple of times but this exploit was removed in the patch. Any tile can only produce the 10 shield deforestation bonus once per game.
 
Originally posted by ElRocco
Users are the most important unit in the game. In addition to the above mentioned uses, you can use huge stacks of them to rush production in cities far away from the center: Have them consecutively plant and chop down trees, and each time 10 shields will be added to the production of the nearest city. You can harvest trees unlimited amount of time on any tile, so keep a stack of lumberjacks near all peripheral city to get things done, as the lazy buggers apparently wont.
Click to expand...

Since the new patch, I don't think this works anymore. You can only get this advantahe once with trees that were there at the beginning.
 
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this idea, because frankly, I don't have time to read every post, but ...

Have you noticed that the AI will pay between 15 and 30 gold for every worker you sell. Now if you produce say 2 workers per turn (or more), and if you have 10 AI civs, then by swaping who you trade with (so the AI don't get over-loaded), you could get yourself an additional 30-60+ GPT by trading your workers. This might be tedious, but if you're playing Deity and having to check with the other civs every turn anyway, why not ....

NOTE: this is the average price the AI pay in industrial / post-industrial times, it might be less in ancient-medieval times ... I haven't tried.

LET THE SLAVE TRADE BEGIN ;)
 
Read here that fortifications impart the zone of control to units placed inside. That is remarkably significant, and I will from now on always fortify my borders. That takes workers, and if you have lots of them, you could do a little more.

How about an ROP where your workers build fortresses in the rival nation that you will later occupy? I've noticed that ai civs are not fort-crazy like in CIV2.

Fortresses spaced one square apart in ancient times and two or three squares apart in the days of ranged artillery could really hurt incoming rivals. I like the idea I saw in another thread about using workers to build forts on the battlefield during the conflict.

So here's a list of things to do with workers:

1. chop trees (esp. tree outside your own borders)
2. build forts
3. landscape the rivals out of food or production
4. buys, sell, or gift to/from other civs
5. combat bait
6. combat movement obstruction
7. add to city before or after pop rush
8. add to city as specialist poplulation
 
Someone already mentioned that he used the Workers as walls by his borders, but I used them another way...

As walls on my shores! An invincible island until Marines!
Works both in war and peace...


Posting some images:

small.jpg


smaller.jpg
 
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