Production Automation

[crossr1980]

Hi Guys

I am a keen Civ 4 player and have been playing on Emperor level for a while. You think I would know all the game basics by now, right???

Here's a question for you all......

On the main city screen there is an option for production automation. The name of the function gives away what it is but I've never used this option in all my games.

It's suggests my game could improve by utilising this but quiet exactly how and when to select it is not clear.

I mean how does this function work differently to the emphasize production icon which is also on the main city screen.

Can this option be used along side the citizen automation function or is it a case of it's an 'either or' situation

Any help and feedback would be much appreciated.

 

[Um the Muse]

You're talking about the button just below the hurry production button for slavery, right? Looks like unhappy citizen, but with a sledge hammer? Yeah, don't touch that. It makes that city's governor decide what to build next. As I understand it, you'd have better luck automating your workers without choosing your city's specialization buttons.

Emphasize production means that your city governor will emphasize tiles that yield more hammers (though it prefers special resources over normal hills sometimes). It also emphasize specialists that produce hammers (engineers first, priests second unless you have Angkor Wat, citizen specialists). This is just a matter of convenience; you can always choose where each citizen goes, but that is very tedious. A couple of tips: you can't change your non-specialist citizens without disabling; you can change your specialists though (if you hit the plus button next to a specialist without a citizen specialist assigned, you are telling your governor "no matter what, I want at least this many of this type of specialist"); and once you've pressed the buttons for this city's specialization, worker units assigned to this city will actually be fairly good at building the right improvements.

This wall of text might sound confusing, so I'd recommend just playing with the buttons and see what happens.

 

[crossr1980]

Great stuff!

Cheers for the quick reply.

I've just started a new game with De Gaulle, I'll put the buttons to the test.

Thanks again.

 

[lymond]

I never use the "automate production" button unless it's late game and I have so many cities that I don't care. You can also queue production with a few hotkeys - shift,ctl and alt-click.

The governor button combined with one of the "emphasize" buttons is a nice way to quickly rearrange your tiles based on what you want the city to focus on - hammers, commerce or food. I generally use it temporarily to switch citizens around and then might even adjust manual from there.

automating workers = bad (at least early game)

 

[Um the Muse]

I never use the "automate production" button unless it's late game and I have so many cities that I don't care. You can also queue production with a few hotkeys - shift,ctl and alt-click.

The governor button combined with one of the "emphasize" buttons is a nice way to quickly rearrange your tiles based on what you want the city to focus on - hammers, commerce or food. I generally use it temporarily to switch citizens around and then might even adjust manual from there.

automating workers = bad (at least early game)

Yeah, what Lymond said. Just to expand a bit: shift adds things to the bottom of your queue, control adds to the top. Unfortunately, there's no way I know of to rearrange your list. Alt adds an item to the queue where, once you build that unit, the computer will add another to the queue.

Even if you're manually adjusting the city, you could use the buttons to remind yourself what the city should be emphasizing.

And finally, yes, automate worker is a bad idea at the beginning of the game. You need your workers to go to your newly built/ conquered cities ASAP, so unless you've built a worker to tag along that means pulling a worker from an already established city. Plus, when would they know when to chop? Mine those pigs on a hill? Etc.

When you do start automating, don't forget that the options menu has toggles for automated workers (hit escape, click on options, click on the last tab). Usually, you don't want workers changing what you've already built, for example, but if you do, you can always hit the button again (I know if was a paradigm shift for me when I realized that I could toggle it throughout the game ).

 

[Archon_Wing]

Production automation tends to suck because they'll build nuclear power plants. And those tend to be terrible in this game. Also for some reason it'll build research instead of wealth at the very end.

Along with automated workers, it's only something you do when you've already done everything you need to do, and don't care anymore (the game's won already, etc). This usually applies to late game conquests where you couldn't be bothered to set the city up yourself.

 

[s.bernbaum]

What those above have said. Essentially, if you turn on automation, you are giving the same logic that controls the AI cities control of yours. So, if you like how the AI cities build things, turn it on but you are throwing away the advantage that you have by making rational choices. If you are happy managing your cities yourself, leave it off since it will do worse not better than you can do. It is mainly for people who hate micromanaging their cities.

 

[Kid R]

I often use "emphasize commerce/hammers/etc" but I've never, ever found a use for production automation, I mean how can it know if I want units or buildings or whatever. If I don't really need either, "build wealth" usually seems the best choice, that way I don't have to keep giving fresh units orders either

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Might be an interesting game, though - automated workers, automated production, random civ - see how you do.

 

[Um the Muse]

TMIT had a thread that was kind of like that: it was a challenge to always leave your workers and cities' citizens automated. A few even found it to improve their game No random civ though: everyone played the same start with Napoleon.