After reviewing Tad's recent save...
Micromanaging workers and cities are some of the toughest things for inexperienced players to handle. I understand that, having struggled with micro-management for a long time. After reviewing Tad's recent save, I saw a number of things that I would chalk up simply to inexperience (nothing personal, Tad). So, I saw an opportunity to have a "teaching moment" on micro-management.
One major praise for Tad: We have
8 native workers and a slave at this point. For our amount of cities, that is excellent. Big
I think it is appropriate to post this because Overseer originally set this game up as a teaching tool for newer players. As an experienced player, I hope to help you guys out without bashing you. I hope that tone comes across here
.
If you wish to ignore or forget all I've said here, feel free. I won't take it personal as it is a LONG post. It will help our current game, and also hopefully teach any less experienced players a couple of things in micromanagement. I hope that you find it valuable.
And when you finish this SG and go back to playing solo, you can play HOWEVER you feel like
. I won't be looking over your shoulder to see if you are micro-managing well.
With that caveat, and without further ado...
This is illustrated with lots of pictures, so hopefully it is understandable...
Terrain Improvements:
Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, terrain improvements are things like mines, irrigation, roads, forest chops, etc.
OK, here are some screenshots from the last French save.
(According to the numbers in red)
1. Two workers are
irrigating a sugar. Normally, this might be ok. However, we are in despotism, and so we'll lose the irrigation food bonus until we change governments. More important, we should be mining this sugar because Lyons is already pretty food-rich with an irrigated fp and lots of coastal tiles.
2. The fp is irrigated. That is also normally ok, except that I posted on at least a few occasions that should not improve extraneous tiles around Paris because it messes with the city governor. Other than that, this one is Ok.
3. We have
three workers roading this jungle square. My issue with this: we do not want to go for these dyes yet as there is too much jungle needing to be chopped and our workers are better used elsewhere for now. We should be going for the Dyes near the big
"4". So, I can
maybe see one worker building this road, but three is a huge waste.
4. Following up #3, this hill tile should have been roaded LONG ago. The nearby river grass tile is a much more valuable city location than #3, and gives a "military" road toward the Aztecs.
5. This grass tile did not need to be mined yet, which resulted in wasted early worker turns, which can be crucial. I'll be posting a screenshot later on in this post of Orleans, which will show why this tile did not need to be mined (only roaded).
Number of Workers Used
This can be a matter of personal preference to some degree, but (although I didn't post the screenshots) each of the workers on the screen are actually
stacks of two or three workers. That can a huge waste.
Doubling up some worker tasks can waste turns in the actual task (too complex to explain here) and it can also waste time when moving your worker stacks all over the map. Better, early on, use your workers alone, only doubling them up for critical tasks.
Paris-specific Terrain Improvements
Ok, the main reason I am pointing this out is because I know that in at least
5 posts I talked about irrigating
2 plains tiles around Paris. Only one is still irrigated.
The numbers represent the tiles that should be worked for Paris to be a four turn settler factory.
The circles signify plains tiles around Paris:
either one should be irrigated now and worked (if you road and irrigate the horse--my preference now--then DON'T work the tile marked with a number
"1".
More Info on the Paris Settler Factory
Ok, lots of marks on this screenshot.
Black Circles: They highlight Paris' current food produced and the status of the Paris food box. Notice we are making +5fpt. This is GOOD
. Notice we are also going to grow in 1 turn with
0 food wasted. Excellent.
Red Circles (bottom half of screen) : They highlight Paris' current shield production and build status. Notice we are making 6spt and only have 2 shields left on our settler--> that is a waste of 4 shields next turn, not good.
Notice too that Paris is at size 5, BUT we are
finishing the settler next turn. Another
This is where we should be following that spreadsheet I posted, and having that last plains tile irrigated.
Paris should have
started the settler
last turn (the first turn that Paris would grow to size 5). Then, Paris should work all the tiles that it is
currently working in this screenshot (the fp, the wheat, the 2 BGs, and the
1 irrigated plains).
Make sure that
other cities are working the tiles marked with the
red "x"s .
The turn that Paris grows to size 6, the city governor should pick the tile marked with the
red check mark
The turn that Paris grows to size 6, the governor will pick that forest tile. HOWEVER, we do NOT want Paris to continue to work that forest. You will have to micromanage Paris and make it work one of the tiles marked with a
small red circle (hopefully irrigated by this point!!!).
Then, let Paris work those 6 tiles for the next two turns and voila!, a four turn settler factory (And everyone reading this says, YEAH!!)
If you count up the shields, on turns 1-4 of this cycle, Paris will produce 6-->8-->7-->9 shields, which adds up to the perfect 30s needed for a settler.
Please refer to my spreadsheet for more info on all this.
Orleans Micromanagement (last screenie)
Black Circles again highlight the food situation, this time for Orleans. Notice we are making
+4fpt and grow in
2 turns.
If we work the mined grass tile that the big
red arrow is pointing at, rather than the forest tile marked with the
red circle, we would get the extra food that we need to have
+5fpt and grow every
2 turns (rather than 3).
Notice, too, that if we work the two cows and the grass tile, we make 5 shields on the first turn and
7 shields on the second turn. Why? Because when the city grows, we'll get the extra 2 shields from working the forest at the governor's command.
That means we are producing 12 shields every 2 turns for a 10 shield unit, a waste of 2 shields each time.
That is why mining the grass tile was useless for now.
Micromanaging Cities
You may be getting the sense by now and if so, you are right, that to do all this you need to
check every city every turn. That's right!
Because the city governor can assign screwy tiles and with the settler/worker builds, you will have to constantly tell your cities to work the right tiles.
But hey, that's why playing SG is so easy, right?
. You
"only" have to play 10 turns at a time, allowing you to micromanage the cities and not get burned out.
Congratulations if you made it through this post, and thanks for reading.
and those make sense too, so we can add that to our list of things to consult about. I would add response to demands, my refusal of them often gets me into unwanted wars, usually costing more to get out of than the original demand. Right now, if it's just money, give it to them. I say never give away tech to demands, but hopefully we'll never be that weak in the first place. Another thing might be whether to gift tech or not, I don't usually, but some seem to get major benefits out of it. 
I guess that's all for now, good luck HyCrest on your Turn. 
Oh, and as far as personalized settings go, it's up to each of us to mind our own business(or not). As far as that goes, I'm telling you all right now, I ain't changing anything of mine!
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooook then 
