To Automate or Not Automate?

[obsolete]

Automation rocks. I also love how you can have units automaticaly run around on patrol or to discovr things. This really slowed down my game having to do it manually in the early days of Civ III.

 

[Canuck Bill]

I never automate, I know I do a better job.

 

[Ledneh]

I like putting Scouts on automate in the early game--I just point them in the general direction I want to explore in, and set them off. Workers, generally I only automate trade networks, on account of I hate building roads unless needed for resource connections.

 

[gimhalos]

I usually manually build cities until I have them in the general way I want them, then auto. (there are 2 options I turn on, they go something like "Workers leave forests" and "Workers leave existing improvements") They usually just cottage everything they see, from what I've seen... And I've actually had one farm a wheat I overlooked.... I dunno, maybe I just don't have the attention span to micromanage

 

[Mathemagician13]

As Mathemagician has said (and he stole my suggestions, you bugger! )

I am sorry. I will sacrifice 50 warriors to appease you.

I REALLY wish there was an option to go into a (to be added) Governor Options screen for each city. Have a little triangle (like in Master of Orion 1), and you tell the governor how much percentage to focus on food, hammers, or commerce (and this tells workers what to emphasize), or something...

Oh well.

You mean, kinda like these?

 

[VeXeD]

Auto worker does round off your cities, it does build mines and does what it thinks is best for the land, ei, mine on hill, or windmill on hill, but after a while you will start to see your workers, rebuilding on the same spot switching the tile from mine-wildmill-mine-windmile???

And it does biuding farms, on lands that can build farms, and cottages on others, but if i city is only size 2, and doesn't seem to be growning fast. why is all the land improved, for two citizens??? this is something that the AI does, it just knocks everything down it can. And thus it takes more workers to work your cities in the long run, cause you have your workers working over lands for only a 2 pop city, and then you have a 10 pop city with no land improvments!!!

I admit i used to automate workers in civ 3, cause there was only a few improvments, but now, i do not trust anything the AI does in civ 4.

 

[knupp715]

The AI in Civ4 likes to build a lot of cottages, if you automate the workers, they will do the same for you putting you behind in production. I will always manually operate workers until the end of the game when I have already improved all of the tiles in my city radii, then workers will just build railroads and roads. Remember though, the option for "automated workers don't improve already improved tiles" in the option screen is extremely useful.

My personal experiences: People who manually work the land to best suit each city's specific needs will do much better than a person who lets the AI do the work for them.

 

[Galon]

Does anyone know if there is any mods that automation workers have been changed to say automate just farms or chop forest or jungle things like that.

The game allows trade routes but not specifc cottages or improve city but not improve city with farms or chop all jungles.

 

[RandomInsanity]

if they had an option to make the nearest city grow to its maximum size (put enough farms to get to max number of tiles worked *2) and then make the rest your choice (ex. grow to max, rest commerce). This way when you recieved civil service or biology, things would automatically change. Although if they did this then the AI would have this option too, making things much harder, and the game might become too simple on lower levels.

 

[Kyrinthic]

I am sorry. I will sacrifice 50 warriors to appease you.

You mean, kinda like these?

I think he means something where that decision, or something like it, would affect what the automated workers did around the city. that option doesnt seem to affect them one bit

I'd love to see the ability to 'pretag' a tile. IE, found a new city, select what needs to be a farm, what needs to be a cottage, etc. then the automated workers would make them all as time permitted. that would let me get exactly what I need, without having to keep coming back to the buggers every third turn.

-Kyrinthic

 

[eric_]

I used to automate.

Now I don't.

It's slowly making a huge improvement. My games are also lasting twice as long

I'd love to see the ability to 'pretag' a tile. IE, found a new city, select what needs to be a farm, what needs to be a cottage, etc. then the automated workers would make them all as time permitted. that would let me get exactly what I need, without having to keep coming back to the buggers every third turn.

Good idea! It would also be nice if they would only build improvements until you have one more improvement available than you do population, so that there's always something for a new population unit to make use of, but not more.

 

[BrutalusMaximus]

Sure are alot of threads about this same thing over and over. Maybe there should be a sticky for it so they can all be in one gigantic thread.

 

[Artanis]

I'd love to see the ability to 'pretag' a tile. IE, found a new city, select what needs to be a farm, what needs to be a cottage, etc. then the automated workers would make them all as time permitted. that would let me get exactly what I need, without having to keep coming back to the buggers every third turn.

-Kyrinthic

If it helps, you can hold down the Shift key while giving a Worker orders to queue up several improvements in a row. For example, you can tell a Worker to go to Tile A, build a Farm, go to Tile B, build a Pasture, go to Tile C, build a Mine, then go to Tile D and build a Cottage, and the Worker will go off and do so without any further input from you.

It won't technically be automated (as in "controlled by the AI"), but you can get a worker out of your hair for a couple dozen turns putting up exactly the improvements you want