So my city is starving and...

[Fireseal]

...its because I found my automated workers replacing farms/towns with forts. I have the "Workers leave old improvement" option on, and this city was in the middle of my empire...

I dont look forward to managing ~50 workers manually...

 

[Scramble]

I hate automated workers. They always demolish my towns for farms or something. I make sure they cannot demolish old improvments, and make sure to keep control of them for the greater whole of the game. When i get so many that I cant control them, i automate them one by one. If i find them building stupid things in stupid places, i grab control again for a few turns.

 

[bonafide11]

I control my workers until there's nothing major left for them to do, then I usually tell them to build trade routes and late in the game I'll tell them to build improvements, but even then I select the option to leave old improvements. I've never seen this happen though, must've been bad luck.

 

[Badesumofu]

I find that queuing up worker commands (by holding down shift) makes them easier to manage. It makes cottaging large areas easier, just tell them to build cottages on all the empty squares yo can see, they won't bother you for a while. If you're playing on Marathon, you can group your workers in threes. Because everything on Marathon takes three times as long, you don't waste any worker turns by putting them in 3s (or 2s with Serfdom and after Steam Power).

I also set mine to build trade routes once I have nothing left for them to do. That way roads and railroads just magically appear all over your empire without having to spend ages pressng 'R' over and over.

Hope that helps.

 

[Tlalynet]

Build trade route is about the only good automated worker action as far as I can see, and that just becasue its a pain to overlay all the roads you need with Railroads since Route too mode isnt point to point but based on minamal worker time (So it tries to avoid mines on hills, great...)

 

[meatwad4289]

what they need to do is add a disable autobuild fort option.

Then another idea, if u havea source of water in your territory you can do that Fish farming thing. adds happyness and food.

 

[ViewFinder]

I've noticed that since I got BTS, if I have my workers automatically build roads, and they have finished building roads in every tile in my empire, that they then start to build improvements automatically (which often means tearing out my towns for farms or something stupid like that). this means if I want them to build roads, I have to watch them carefully, and turn them off as soon as they finish. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not.

In vanilla or warlords, they would go to some city and chill out. I like this much better.

 

[Tlalynet]

I have workers leave old improvments checked and always upgrade every tile around my city before sending them to autobuild roads, so far they havent destroyed anything. The programers put too much emphisis on forts though, probably becasue they have new porposes in BtS.

 

[Breunor]

I have workers leave old improvments checked and always upgrade every tile around my city before sending them to autobuild roads, so far they havent destroyed anything. The programers put too much emphisis on forts though, probably becasue they have new porposes in BtS.

I don't automate much, but I agree with Tlaynet, the key is to make sure that you have the option set to leave old improvements; in that way, whatever they are doing they only workon 'new' tiles. I also have it so that they don't chop, which I think is important.

Breunor

 

[Shawnosaurus]

Trade route automated workers do seem to do more than roads/rails. I had one worker that no matter where or when I trade route automated him he ran over to this one oil patch and started a fort. It got to the point where I deleted the dumb little bastard. I do see them build forest preserves a lot too when set to trade route.

 

[Dominico]

I had this problem. there is an option to tick to stop them building over old resources if you go to options but they will still build forts which is just dumb and annoying!!

Its fair enough when they build it before you have the technology so that the item is yours but later on they were still building forts even when you have the tech!! The strange thing is it seems that when the forts are built then i am getting some of the resources. Is this supposed to happen? For example i had a fort built over some deer and i was getting them as a health bonus! Well... some of these changes are confusing me so much!

 

[Bushface]

"Do...not...automate...workers."
Repeat this twenty times while the game is loading. And remember it during play.

 

[ViewFinder]

I had this problem. there is an option to tick to stop them building over old resources if you go to options but they will still build forts which is just dumb and annoying!!

Its fair enough when they build it before you have the technology so that the item is yours but later on they were still building forts even when you have the tech!! The strange thing is it seems that when the forts are built then i am getting some of the resources. Is this supposed to happen? For example i had a fort built over some deer and i was getting them as a health bonus! Well... some of these changes are confusing me so much!

I think that if a fort in on a resource, it gives it to you now, like cities build on a resource do. The AI builds forts on resources that are outside all our cities' fat crosses, because the fort gives you the resource and the added protection for units on that tile. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

I never automate workers except for building roads, because I hate doing that myself (at least, once I've built all the major roads I need, I let them fill in all the other tiles with roads). However, now instead of stopping once all tiles have roads, they start changing improvements. Very annoying.

 

[Dominico]

There is a button to tick in options to stop them putting over old improvements. You prolly had it ticked like me in your old games but now in bts it unticks it again.

 

[seasnake]

I haven't had that problem yet, and I auto workers early in the game: If you emphasize a production in your city the workers will respond accordingly: towns for gold, mines for hammers, farms for people (which is why I love caste system, lots of specialists and with a few wonders = GP farm).
I've had only forts built near frontiers of my land OR on the resources outside the city. Mostly they build appropriately (plantations on dyes, etc.)

 

[Quildavyr]

I have never controlled my workers.Really need i them to control?

 

[Aurelius321]

"Do...not...automate...workers."
Repeat this twenty times while the game is loading. And remember it during play.

I agree with Bush here but with one caveat. While you do need a good amount of them around there is no need to have immense armies of them unless you are playing Domination on Large Map size and you've just conquered a few opponents. I have about handful of them set on Trade Routes for poopzngiggles but everything else is done manually.

I have the box "Leave old improvements" checked and have yet to have a worker place a fort on top of anything old.