What do you do with your workers?

[doc mabuse]

Once you improved every tile around all your cities and build railroads, do u destroy your workers? Does that harm anything if you do? (your rep f.i.)
I have an average of 3-4 workers per city(just to speed up in the beginning)

 

[bingen]

You merge the workers into the slow growing cities. Disbanding your workers has no negative effect. Disbanding captured workers worsens your opponents attitude towards you, but why would one disband captured workers, they are free.

 

[Turner]

I keep them, generally. Quick response to pollution, and to RR into enemy territory as I capture more land.

 

[thetrooper]

I keep them fortified somewhere. Not in cities, I tend to forget them. On a hill or mountain close to my capital. As Turner said: for quick response to pollution. I never disband my workers.

 

[morchuflex]

I keep them to micromanage tiles around cities: in the early game, I mine all "green" tiles. As soon as the city has an aqueduct, I irrigate them. When pop hits 12, I mine them back, leaving just enough irrigation to maintain pop. Then, I irrigate again after building hospitals, and mine back once the pop can't grow anymore or the city no longer has tiles to be worked. If the city has a wonder to complete, I'll re-mine some irrigated squares even if pop isn't maxxed yet. Etc. In fact, there is rarely any time when my workers really don't have anything to do, even though I build tons of them.

 

[Bartleby]

I milk most of my games, so I add native workers to cities to help get the population maxed as quickly as possible. The slaves I keep...and like what thetrooper suggests, I keep them in stacks near the capital...stacks of 12 for polluted flatlands, 24 for hills and 36 for mountains. Click-tastic!

 

[morchuflex]

What on Earth does "to milk the game" mean? I've occasionnally heard this, but can't figure it out.

 

[Bartleby]

Basically milking is a playstyle wherein the goal is to get the highest possible Firaxis score from your situation. You must maximise your population while making sure they're as happy as possible and control as much territory as possible (generally one tile short of the domination limit of your map), and then play until 2050 AD.
Many people (understandibly I supppose) find this overly tedious.

If you want to know more, this is where you can learn from the best

edit: also you can visit CFC's HoF subforum and see some spectacular games.

 

[morchuflex]

Thanks Bartleby.

I have already done this once in Civ1, without knowing the word, and scoring about 5.000 pts (on a large map). It was BEYOND tedious, and after doing so I couldn't play Civ for months. I won't ever do it again! :thumbdown

 

[jb1964]

The first time I read about "milking" a game, as I was interested in maxing out my score, I decided that winning the game was more than enough.

On topic - After, maxing out production in my core cities I'll join the workers to less populous cities but be sure to keep enough workers around to respond as needed.

 

[gunkulator]

After every tile is improved, join most of them to your cities but leave about a dozen or so for pollution control. Keep all slaves irregardless of the number. If you have a lot of slaves, you don't need many native workers.

I used to leave them on a mountain like others have said, but now I just Shift-A them (automate but don't alter). They'll wake up automatically for pollution, clean it and them go back to sleep in a city without you having to do anything. You do need to open the city screen and rework the tile, however, unless you have one of the governors enabled. In cities that are all done growing, I leave the happiness governor enabled so that pollution is not a problem at all.

 

[Flintlock]

I automate them near the middle of the middle ages. I've already gotten everything important done, and all they do is improve those last few tiles on my umimportant cities, or simply fortify somewhere.
Once steam power comes around, I gather up a bunch (either by waking them, or building more) and construct a rail network between my cities. Then I automate them again to go rail circles around cities or clean up pollution. I leave them automated like that until the end of the game.

 

[tao]

Another use for workers is blocking amphibious landings by the AIs (at least until they have marines).

 

[thetrooper]

@tao: good point!

 

[morchuflex]

Another use for workers is blocking amphibious landings by the AIs (at least until they have marines).

This is an exploit, IMO.

 

[tao]

This is an exploit, IMO.

Not if you do it in your own territory. It is exploitive, if you block e.g. resources in AI territory.

 

[danz]

The annoying thing about wutomated workers is that they do things piece-meal. Instead of all running to clean up a polluted tile, one of them will start to clean up while the rest go off clearing jungles and irrigating deserts. Thus, I've never found it practical to automate all workers. Sure, you can let the extras run around doing their thing, but you always need to keep a small core in reserve for cleanup, or building airfields and radio towers and otherwise participating in the inevitable wars.

 

[morchuflex]

Furthermore, if you have, say, 12 workers, and several polluted tiles, they will divide themselves into several groups and start working on all polluted tiles at the same time; it would obviously be better to completely depollute one, then another, then another...

 

[thetrooper]

Stack move them to one, hold ctrl and hit D 12 times. No big deal.

 

[morchuflex]

Stack move them to one, hold ctrl and hit D 12 times. No big deal.

Of course. But why can't the stupid program do it itself? It's not hard to implement, is it?