I noticed something rather amusing : didn't you notice that we have two means to do the exact same thing ? You have workers that can chop forests : it grants instant production bonuses because wood have been in all times a great ressource. On the other side, you have city workers : when they work a forest tile, they produce few production per turn. But working a forest tile can mean either hunting and collecting raw materials of different kind, wood included (chopping), and that last bit leaves no doubt when we know that a lumber mill increases forests raw materials. So we have unit choppers, and citizen choppers. Isn't that a little too much ?
OK, the first provides an instant and subtantial benefit, while the second a very moderated per turn benefit, but can't one or the other of those two different operations (which is represented by the exact same reality aspect) be both devoted to one or the other concept ? For example, why couldn't a city worker instant chop (in the same amount of turns a worker now does it), or why a worker wouldn't be able to infinitely plant/chop forest, beside the micromanagement aspect of this ?
In the same vein, why farms should be created by workers, while the "citizens" (which are in fact peasants) could and should do it on their own ?
We see here two redundant concepts : wouldn't it be possible to streamline this a little ? Of course, one could think it would be tricky to charge the workers of all the tasks : it would be a micromanagement fest and very unpleasant to play. So, why not delegate all the tasks to citizens ?
One could imagine that when a citizen works a tile, he starts to transform it, or maybe transforms it immediately according to the task he wants to do. OK, there would be far less "things to do", but it would IMHO alleviate the old game mechanics in order to create new more relevant ones.
The worker system is as much old as the series. It was there only to give the player something to do, because at start, Civ was not a strategy game, it was only a civilization simulation, with little units to move. It was meant to be a garden, ridiculously easy to play, you just had to know that you could create units and move them. Now ,there have been complaints. Some players begged that it was always about the same strategies. Incidally ! Civ was not a strategy game. But it became one.
So I think that, Civ being now a strategy game, we could streamline it a little. Workers do not marvel anyone anymore. On contrary, they are micromanaging, just that. How to create roads ? With an ingame editor. Maybe roads aren't build immediately, but they would cost money. Etc... How do you enslave other entities workers ? You enter a worked enemy city tile with your armies, and the city population of said city is reduced by 1, while a city of your choice improve its population by the same 1. (plus it would encourage field battles greatly)
As long as it takes a reasonable amount of time to plant it or for it to grow after planting, I wouldn't see anything wrong with it. They could balance the time to regrow such that you gain more production by having a forest with a lumbermill over the same time than you do from a cycle of growing and chopping down.
