Teleported Workers??

[MrSweetchuck]

Had a rather strange thing just happen. I'm sure it's just the AI cheating, but can someone please explain how this happened?

I'm in the middle of a war, and the AI just rolled a Modern Armor three squares into my territory and captured three of my workers who were on a square with no roads. I have a spy, so I can see the AI's troop numbers. I know they had zero workers before, and now I can see that they have three workers -- my captured workers. But they are no longer located on the square they were captured on -- the one without any roads. So the question is, where are they? I want to try to capture them back. They could only be moved one tile during the AI's turn, right? But instead it's as though the AI was somehow able to teleport them

(See the screenshot below. I highlighted the square where my workers were captured.)

 

[Bartleby]

Are they definitely your workers they have now? Often times the AI will disband workers after they capture them, if they can't get them to safety.

 

[vmxa]

For sure they were disbanded. The real question is why were they within range and not covered? You have lots of tiles that could be worked that were safely out of reach? Anyway you can pop out workers at no real strain in the modern age.

 

[Fergei]

Given workers can teleport between capitals when gifted, who knows!

I agree I have seen workers I have lost vanish without the standard disbanding animation/noise to explain it. I also assume they were disbanded.

The follow up question is does the AI often disband slaved units they capture (Mayan UU etc)? That would be bizarre.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

Are they definitely your workers they have now? Often times the AI will disband workers after they capture them, if they can't get them to safety.

I suppose that's possible. I think the thing that really threw me was that I was watching their troop numbers on the Military Advisor screen each turn, and they went from having zero workers to having 3 the same turn they swooped in and captured my 3 workers. And then, if they really were disbanded, I didn't hear the usual disbanded worker sounds -- they just simply vanished. But maybe it was just a perfect coincidence.

The real question is why were they within range and not covered? You have lots of tiles that could be worked that were safely out of reach?

Yeah, you can blame the worker automation for that one. By this late stage in the game, I start to use automation for the workers because I get tired of manually assigning them to clean up pollution and whatnot. I usually try to remember to halt the automation orders whenever I get into a war, but often times I forget, or there's too many captured workers to try to track down and stop, and without thinking, they'll rush into a hot war zone trying to rebuild a road or something. They're like bait to the AI

 

[Spoonwood]

The follow up question is does the AI often disband slaved units they capture (Mayan UU etc)?

I'm guessing Bartleby's comment above correct. Recently, I think at least three times, I've had some difficulty killing some Javelin Throwers with attackers, and the AIs getting slaves as a result. I saw one worker move with some Javelin Thrower back to a city. I don't know if you know, but if you capture those slaves, they end up with your nationality.

So, I guess one tactic for generating workers would involve throwing warriors at any javelin throwers with some attackers and maybe catapults also. Then kill that javelin thrower before the turn ends up hopefully. The warriors attacking could function as sacrificial units which maybe weaken a javelin thrower, though auto-promotion will come into effect.

Is 30 shields less than or greater than 10 shields and one population point? I don't know. Still, if you have spare warriors around that you don't want to upgrade, maybe throwing just one at a javelin thrower that you can anticipate killing might be worth it for the opportunity of a captured worker.

The real question is why were they within range and not covered?

I have enjoyed many times using armies to cover workers who just built railroads. Though admittedly much less often with bombers around.