Weird sound, like one of your workers collapsing?

[MrSweetchuck]

At least several times a game I hear this weird sound. It sounds like one of your workers fainting or collapsing, and then you can hear the sound of a shovel being dropped. The strange thing is, you don't see any on-screen text saying anything, nor do you see any animation of anything happening. Anyone know what's going on here?

 

[tjs282]

I get something similar occasionally, with the "bombardment explosion" animation + sound-effect getting played right at the end of the interturn/ during the auto-move phase of my turn, instead of following the unit-animation and "Bombardment successful! Their/Our units injured!" message.

But I have most unit-animations turned off for my games, I only leave "Animate battles" active (unless there are a lot of stack-bombards happening, in which case those animations are switched off as well!). So... have you got the unit-animations turned on or off in your Preferences?

 

[justanick]

There is the file "Civilization III Complete\Art\Units\Worker\WorkerDeath.wav". Is that the sound you are looking for?

 

[Bartleby]

If it's happening inbetween turns, maybe the AI is running out of cash and their workers are getting disbanded? I think I've seen that before.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

If it's happening inbetween turns, maybe the AI is running out of cash and their workers are getting disbanded? I think I've seen that before.

When I have my way (like my current game), the AI is always running out of cash. CivAssist is valuable for this alone, keeping me up on trade options. (Only issue is it doesn't keep up like it used to & I have to keep manually loading each save. Anyone know of a fix for that?)

 

[MrSweetchuck]

So... have you got the unit-animations turned on or off in your Preferences?

I have all the animate options turned on except for "Animate Our Automatic Moves."

But I was actually able to find the sound file that I heard in the game folder. It's called WorkerDeath.wav So now my question is, how and why do workers die?!?

 

[tjs282]

In an unmodded game, Barbs are the only units that can kill Workers.

 

[Fergei]

I have all the animate options turned on except for "Animate Our Automatic Moves."

But I was actually able to find the sound file that I heard in the game folder. It's called WorkerDeath.wav So now my question is, how and why do workers die?!?

Despite the title of the wav file I think this sound applies to any disbanded unit. AI disbands units as it has a budget defiicit and cannot afford unit supprt.

To check sound, run an AI debug game with full map visibility and watch them kill their scouts (with the accompanying sound effect I believe).

Side note, I often don't even show friendly moves, let alone animate, and I still get these sounds hitting me.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

For anyone curious, disbanding your own workers plays the WorkerDeath.wav sound, but when disbanding captured workers, it plays a different sound, one where you just hear a shovel being dropped. So, since I've never personally disbanded workers before (if I ever need to, I just add them back to a city, but even then that's pretty rare), then the worker death sound that I'm hearing at least a few times every game must be the AI disbanding their own workers, and that's why I don't get a notification or even see an animation of it happening.

 

[Quintillus]

I've also seen the AI disband their workers, presumably because they're hard up, and rather than turn their science below 30% (I don't think I've ever seen them put it below 30% in a non-modded game), they just let units get disbanded.

As for why workers in particular get disbanded? I'm not really sure, but I'd suspect they are an early priority because they are cheap but still cost maintenance. Never mind that it's hard to increase income when you've disbanded your means of doing so.