Please Change WORKERS vs. POLLUTION

[nomadbrad]

There is ONE thing in my mind that prevents CIV III from being the GREATEST Strategy Game of All Time.....how the workers deal with pollution.

I'm frustrated and distraght that I have to spend 20-25% of my time in the end game dealing with pollution. This is a bunch of garbage (no pun intended).

I'm not saying let's do away with pollution, because it's a great aspect of the end game. However, the method of cleaning it up is TEDIOUS!!!

What I have asked for in the past at CIV III and am now asking all of you is for a grass roots effort to have them put in a toggle for the Automate Workers Feature. I'd like the option of turning off certain capabilities when in Automated Mode.

i.e. workers can build roads, irrigate, build forts, deforest, dejungle, plant forest, mine, etc. In the end game I'd like to be able to leave say 30 or so workers in Automated mode, with the restriction that they ONLY clean up pollution. If there is no pollution then they JUST SLEEP. When pollution pops up, then they wake up, clean up the pollution and then go back to sleep.

The problem is now if you automate the workers, then when there is no pollution then they go around screwing up the terrain by chopping down forests you want to keep, irrigating mine fields you want to keep or mining farm land you want to keep. In other words the automated workers SUCK in their current state by not being able to toggle on and off the features you'd like them to do when automated.

Please, I would like to know if there are others out there that share this opinion and if there is ANY WAY we can get Civ III to add this as a patch to either the original or PTW?

Like I said this is THE CHANGE I would like to see in making CIV III become the PERFECT PC Strategy Game.

 

[Gen]

nomadbrad, there is already what you are asking for. Just press Shift + P

 

[Tiamat]

Gen: Shift+P only works while there is pollution on the map. Once all the pollution has been cleared, the workers don't go to sleep but need to be given orders to either fortify in a city - which means you have to then wake them up later - or do other stuff.

nomadbrad: If you use Shift+A instead of just A to automate your workers, then they will not modify any existing improvements, or chop down any forests. They will continue to remove jungle, but for the most part the is usually a good thing.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, shift-P for auto pollution control.

Also, use shift-A. Shift-A is like automating, but they don't change mines to irrigation, or irrigation to mines. They will chop down jungle, but not forests. The will also clean up pollution while on shift-A, but it's not always a top priority.

What really bugs me is when you have the governors on and after a tile gets cleaned up from pollution, some other city may claim that tile. So you may have had every city stabilized in growth, but then pollution hits, and then some other city grabs that tile, and you have 1 city losing 4 food/turn, while another is gaining 4 food/turn. If you don't use governors, you have to look for all the tiles that had pollution, to reassign those citizens back to that tile EVERY turn.

 

[Quillan]

I agree that specifying your automation would be nice, but here is how i deal with the problem:

1st, set workers on CTRL-SHIFT-A, which will stop them from changing any exisiting improvements.

2nd, in addition to having automated workers, i keep a small amount (equiv. of 8 full worker units, 2 grassland pollution clearings in non industriuous) fortified near my capital so when i need that extra pollution clearing i can handle it manually with a quick CTRL-P.

3rd, just a personal preference; by mid-late game i don't like to have any paid workers, i solely use slaves... i know, bad me, but it saves you 50+ gpt in worker fees under a representative gov't... i also use the eliminated civ's workers to ADD to exisiting cities and keep enemy workers around to actually work (eliminated civs will never make my peoples unhappy when i beat on their parents).

Hope that helps a bit.

 

[MSGT John Drew]

aaa... a question regarding this.

for Shift+P'd workers, what do they do after cleaning all the pollution? Go to a nearby treeline and chop wood? Go inside a nearby city and sleep to wake-up in the occurrence of pollution?

I do know that automated workers sleep inside cities if they lack anything to do. For this, I would have hoped that Civ3 had a feature that allows you to select the next unit with a touch of a key.

 

[nomadbrad]

Tiamat, that's just it, when I automate my workers, if there's no pollution they don't behave themselves, they DO change irrigation to mines and vice versa and begin chopping down forests. I'm playing on the latest patch and it's DRIVING ME CRAZY.

I'm a veteran of CIV I & CIV dating back to 1991. This has always been a bother for me.

Perhaps CIV 3 could do a patch to change the Shift P to be an automated polution worker that either sleeps or cleans pollution depending on whether pollution exists or not. In fact, maybe that's the BEST fix.

What do you guys think?

Do you guys feel that you waste a lot of time cleaning polution manually?

 

[Tiamat]

nomadbrad, are you using A or Shift+A? I never use A to automate, because then the workers will change exisitng improvements. I have never had any worker change existing improvements when I automate them using Shift+A.

Also, under Shift+A then the workers will clean pollution automatically, once they have completed the task they are currently working on. I usually have enough workers, slave or otherwise, running around to get the pollution cleaned up in a couple of turns.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

I would like to see an automated worker given a priority list that can be set by the player. You could toggle on or off the decision to change existing improvements. Mine in the end game would be:

Clean Pollution if there is any.
Irrigate where possible without destroying existing improvements.
Build road/rr
etc. (in the late game new conquests and victims of warming need their replacements inmproved).

 

[Mathias]

I remember a game I played prior to 1.29 where I had half of my workers on Shift-P to clean pollution. When there was no pollution to clean, they simply ran to the nearest city and waited for more pollution, or for me to tell them to do something else. It seems that this functionality was removed in 1.29, what a pity.

 

[cgannon64]

Originally posted by Quillan

3rd, just a personal preference; by mid-late game i don't like to have any paid workers, i solely use slaves... i know, bad me, but it saves you 50+ gpt in worker fees under a representative gov't... i also use the eliminated civ's workers to ADD to exisiting cities and keep enemy workers around to actually work (eliminated civs will never make my peoples unhappy when i beat on their parents).

Hope that helps a bit.

I have thought of this. If I normally have 20 workers, I would just need to have 40 slaves to match their improvement capacity. Of course, by late industrial ages, after your land had been railed, there is really no need for workers besides pollution control and te occaisonal improvement tweak.

CG

 

[Sim_One]

nomadbrad, I believe if you download the 1.29f patch your automated workers will consider clear pollution highest priority.

 

[Reboot]

Not much problem with fighting pollution in my turf... but I'll love to have a function where the cities automatically re-occupy the tiles that were polluted-but-now-clean instead of me having to do that for them. I don't use governors.

 

[Pillager]

Originally posted by Reboot
Not much problem with fighting pollution in my turf... but I'll love to have a function where the cities automatically re-occupy the tiles that were polluted-but-now-clean instead of me having to do that for them. I don't use governors.

That would help an awful lot, as I've said before a few times. I hope FIRAXIS listened.