So, Builders or Workers

[Ryika]

Builders are just awesome. Finishing a bunch of Improvements instantly is such a great feeling compared to the slow nature of given an order and then waiting.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Edit: Nor have I done any analysis on the benefits of chopping to see how valid it is to chop your way to a city rather than a slower growth with improvements.

I haven't done any analysis either but it sure is satisfying. "BLAM! Take that, Jungle!"

 

[Staal]

I haven't done any analysis either but it sure is satisfying. "BLAM! Take that, Jungle!"

Removing jungles were so annoying.

 

[Acken]

Builders are a good idea. Not sure if 4 uses base would feel a bit better or no increasing costs though.

 

[racha]

My instinct is to say workers, but I think that's just because builders are new and grrr, change. Like many have commented, the instant tile improvements are nice.

I like builders but not their escalating cost.

Initially, I thought this would be a legitimate concern, but toward the end of the game it's taking 1 or 2 turns to build them which is fine.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Really ?

With all due respect for a fellow Civ6 player, allow me to harshly disagree with your statement.

My guess is that you took bad habits in Civ5 to set your workers to auto-improve and queued all buildings in more or less random order in your one-tile-capital, "NOW ONTO CRUSH MY ENNEMIES". Is it ?
Well if you had taken control of them in Civ5 you would realize how amazing the builder system is. It shifts more power to the player, in adding more layers of decision making, prioritizing, and city planning. They actually require way LESS micro-managing than the workers of Civ5 (given that you weren't setting them to auto-inprove) and the actions they undertake are more impactful.

Furthermore, to check which tiles are worked.. Citizen management. You can manually lock tiles or let your advisor decide and give her general directions (focus on food, on prod, etc).

With the new pins system, you can lay out your city planning in a second. Pin the tiles you want to save for specific districts and remember to cut down forests/jungle on these and not improve them.
I often find myself straight up pining at least Commercial District, Housing spot for good Appeal for mid-late game, and a distant <6 tiles Factory spot that would be adjacent to other cities' factories.

My advice to you is to just dedicate a bit of time/effort to get used to this new system and I guarantee you will embrace it. I think your current opinion is just another case of "fear of change".

Have fun.

I agree with your post as well. Instant tile improvements?? I could not believe this, that is for sure a watered down version of Civ. I started reading this thread in disbelief. I do not like builders and I do not see how people think they are more micro. I always enjoyed workers. One thing I miss is stealing workers which is for sure a huge exploit but I liked the idea of converting others to join my Civilization and either they were assimilated or slaves. Now it seems you can just steal settlers and make a new city. I like that idea but I think it hurts the AI even more than worker stealing.

To everyone who thinks that steal and buy builders is gone I seem to have no problem when I warmonger and steal plenty of builders that I don't need anyway cause cities don't need to grow that much. I warmonger, sell some units, buy a builder if I need it. Pretty simple. I even have been stealing builders off of CS's when I want and peace out or even just take over a CS which seems to not be a problem at all on Deity. This game is kinda like Civ Rev right now where you can have 25-40 cities and it doesn't hurt you.

 

[Gicusan]

It is so much fun how so many people who never played Civ. 1 to 4 are glorifying the worst decision Firaxis made - 1upt. All other pros and cons left aside, it made a bad AI - all series had a bad one - very bad. With 1upt micromanagement and especially war is so much in favour of the human player that the game becomes a joke. Would any sane person fight a war against an AI that was ahead in military tech, production and income and expect to win very easy (and conquer all that nation) in Civ 4? In Civ V and VI that is doable by any decent player with some proper planning ahead.

As for the builders-workers. Both are fine. There are some tweaks needed (like builders and support units should be able to overlap on roads and work together - like one is clearing a forest and the second is building a mine, but especially for de-congestion.). Community mod in civ v (the only way that game is playable) did good with the overlapping workers (even if, by their nature they could not work together).

 

[ddd123]

Making the builders not scale would mean you can build them quickly anywhere, removing the cost/benefit decision or timing from the player. Builders are not the most expensive things in the world but there is no reason to make them trivially inexpensive.

Ok but numbers, like i said, builders in practice cost 2 turns...
So its either keep it like this or go towards 1 turn in big cities, there is no middle ground for how civ is right now.

 

[StrideColossus]

Workers.

Builders are an obvious concession to the limitations of 1upt that work out to be rather poorly balanced and bring an unwelcome level of micromanagement. (And this is from someone who never automated their civ 4 workers!)

Why are builders "poorly balanced"?

Why more micro-management?
civ V: move worker to wherever, build improvement, repeat, move somewhere out of the way and sleep until there's more work to be done, wake...
civ VI: move worker to wherever, build improvement, repeat, wait until there's more work to be done, build another...

And you don't need to build roads manually. Looks like less MM to me.

You know what a better solution would be? No 1upt!

On a related note, the changes to road building and movement rules work against 1upt, significantly slowing worker movement and increasing bottlenecking.

Jeez not this again

Oh, and 75% for builders.

 

[dtfauss]

I can see an argument being made that builders might oversimplify certain decision making and leave less options for balance tweaks as far as upgrades.
What I mean is one builder charge does in 1 turn:
farm, mine, lumber mill, civ unique improvement, etc, etc

The worker while able to do the same improvements, took a "number" of turns to build, which was different depending on the terrain, and item being built.
In theory, the devs could tweak those turns to balance something... and it lead to slightly more evaluation as to what to do, and when.

I'm willing to sacrifice that a bit. I feel a bit sad at liking simplification, but I like that I don't have 30 workers around the map in various states of sleep/work.

 

[Ryika]

I can see an argument being made that builders might oversimplify certain decision making and leave less options for balance tweaks as far as upgrades.
What I mean is one builder charge does in 1 turn:
farm, mine, lumber mill, civ unique improvement, etc, etc

Is that a problem though? Improvements are limited by Population, and you want every population to ideally work an improvement all the time, so boosting out a large amount of improvements very quickly isn't really an issue imho, because any situation where you do that is a situation where you have not been working improvements before. Well, or maybe a situation where you want to switch from Food to Production quickly, but you could do the same thing by just having X workers construct X improvements simultaneously.

Workers had a lot more severe balance issues imho, namely that they would provide potentially infinite value over time, only limited by the time it takes to construct them. Builders completely avoid this issue.

 

[whyidie]

So with automation and most manual road building off the table, what would you be arguing for? Builders with unlimited charges?

I was struggling with builders (change) until I asked the same question. After 3 starts, there is nothing to miss about workers.

I like the general concept of builders, but until I get used to them they feel too taxing in the early game. I'm always feeling I need more builder actions than I have the production or time for until Serfdom's available, specially once I got my first wave of expansion. I'm always thinking "crap, this builder has only one charge left, but I really need that woods chopped so I can start a district, but that city is running out of housing so it needs a farm, omg that horse has been waiting forever now to be connected".

In addition, the pace of land development feels about the same over the course of the game, and you aren't left with a whole bunch of workers that you either park or delete in the modern age. I'm slowly coming around to liking builders.

Growth is slower compared to prior releases. They got the balance between growth and policies nailed pretty well. When you need more improvements, choose the appropriate builder policies.

Worker priorities Are one of the things I enjoyed the most in previous entries. The New simplification of builders degrades the game greatly in my opinion. Then again I never automate my worker Force until really late in the game when there is nothing left to do but some odd and really unimportant business.

Don't you still have to prioritize with builders ?

To everyone who thinks that steal and buy builders is gone I seem to have no problem when I warmonger and steal plenty of builders that I don't need anyway cause cities don't need to grow that much. I warmonger, sell some units, buy a builder if I need it. Pretty simple. I even have been stealing builders off of CS's when I want and peace out or even just take over a CS which seems to not be a problem at all on Deity. This game is kinda like Civ Rev right now where you can have 25-40 cities and it doesn't hurt you.

Haven't played beyond Prince yet, but in my limited plays, the AI struggles with barbarians. If I'm in dire need of workers I may have to take a trip to the hinterlands to get the workers barbarians stole.

 

[Photi]

Builders definitely feel like an improvement to me, it has made them a much more limited (and thus valuable) resource, which is what they were back in Civ and Civ2 days. When workers were settlers in original Civ, they cost 2 population, plus all the shields to produce and support, plus i think in Civ2 a settler unit also cost 1 food to maintain. You didn't tend to keep them around for very long, because they were usually en route to found a new city. By civ3 or 4, whichever it was that added the worker, it felt like an improvement to the game, but i think the actual improvement was being separated from the settler function, not their infinite use and lower costs to build and maintain. By mid-game or so there were usually so many workers they were no longer a limited resource and were boring. With the new builders, you regain the value they had in original Civs, but keep the improvement of them not being the same as settlers.

All in all, loving VI, despite some gripes i think it is amazingly deep and we've only begun to see the many new ways to play this game.

 

[redwings1340]

I like builders for most of the game, but I have found using them is a chore in a massive, wide empire in the late game. All in all though, I like that it adds a lot more strategic choice to build orders in the midgame.

 

[whyidie]

By civ3 or 4, whichever it was that added the worker, it felt like an improvement to the game, but i think the actual improvement was being separated from the settler function, not their infinite use and lower costs to build and maintain. By mid-game or so there were usually so many workers they were no longer a limited resource and were boring. With the new builders, you regain the value they had in original Civs, but keep the improvement of them not being the same as settlers.

Describes my worker history perfectly.

Civ3 - Hooray for workers!
Civ4 - I'm so sick of workers!
Civ5 - At least there are less of them...build pyramids every time!
Civ6 - Interesting change

I like builders for most of the game, but I have found using them is a chore in a massive, wide empire in the late game. All in all though, I like that it adds a lot more strategic choice to build orders in the midgame.

The time it takes to move around the map is hard to get used too...even with roads! Haven't gotten beyond renaissance yet, but I've found with the right policies its just easier to produce workers closer to where I need them. Do production costs for workers prohibit building them in newer cities in later ages ?

 

[ronin_cse]

The new system threw me for a loop at first but now I much prefer it. I always hated having to deal with my massive army of workers by the end of my other games

 

[Zhahz]

I like the builders and I like how they're done.

More strategic and LESS micromanagement IMO.

I really don't even notice escalating costs. I don't see how you could unless you don't ever develop your cities, don't use internal trade routes, or are only ever buying them for gold.

I swear people focus on complaining entirely too much.

The builders are an excellent change and the cost thing is about the only thing that stops you from rexxing ridiculously. Maybe some never played earlier iterations of civ with ICS (infinite city spam for those unaware, it was a bit silly).

 

[Photi]

Describes my worker history perfectly.

Do production costs for workers prohibit building them in newer cities in later ages ?

not so much prohibit, but it would make more sense to send a worker from a more developed city. in my current game i'm in the modern era and in smaller unimproved cities a builder is taking something like 20+ turns to produce on epic speed. Compared to 2-3 turns in a few of my monster cities, it might be better to produce buildings in the new cities and just send the builders. I would say though that i have like 18 or 20 cities spread across continents, and they all seem worthy of themselves instead of being those forgotten cities in previous Civs. Wide and tall even on the fringes quite doable in VI, very much worth it to plan ahead to send builders with the settlers.

 

[Lord Shadow]

not so much prohibit, but it would make more sense to send a worker from a more developed city. in my current game i'm in the modern era and in smaller unimproved cities a builder is taking something like 20+ turns to produce on epic speed. Compared to 2-3 turns in a few of my monster cities, it might be better to produce buildings in the new cities and just send the builders. I would say though that i have like 18 or 20 cities spread across continents, and they all seem worthy of themselves instead of being those forgotten cities in previous Civs. Wide and tall even on the fringes quite doable in VI, very much worth it to plan ahead to send builders with the settlers.

In my case, during the final turns of my last game (circa 1970 AD), a builder cost about 600 gold to rush. And that was basically one turn's income. I was rush-buying a lot of things during the second half of the game.

Even though districts themselves must be built conventionally, their buildings can be rushed with gold within a handful of turns.

And very late in that game, I settled a city on the far north of another continent, just to get to some Oil and Uranium, and simply rushed a builder there and some basic buildings like the Monument and Granary. Presto.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I honestly don't know if I can go back to Workers now.