Whipped Workers

[Khan Quest]

Whipped Workers

Sometimes you play a game where it is crucial to connect a road to an iron resource a turn early to upgrade warriors in to swordsmen, or to dig a mine on hill in a wonder producing city to win the build race. I’d like to be able squeeze a little more work out of my workers at critical times, kinda like hurrying a job.

Workers would have a health bar with three blocks. A worker could be “whipped” to perform a task at twice the speed, but lose a health point in the process. A worker that is reduced to zero health is lost. Health may only be regained by being idle, one health point per turn being idle.

Whipping workers should have a negative impact on happiness for more progressive governments like democracy. Whipping captured workers should be more tolerated in more primitive forms of government (Hey, they don’t work as hard native workers anyway)

Capturing workers would remain unchanged.

Workers should not be able to make improvements when within the radius of a rioting city unless whipped.

 

[Albow]

I like, however, I would say whipping a worker kills the worker ... and also, no whipping in Democracy or Republic. As for whipping near a riot, hmmm, no necessary.

my $.02

 

[Mgoering]

The idea is nice, but it should be harder to do it. Health bar is totaly good. However, I would see more an 8 blocks one. Whipping a worker saves you 25% of the time; something that takes 4 turn (a mine) would only take 3 turns (you can't make somebody work twice as hard). This task would take as many blocks as usual turns it should take (4 in our example).

Those health point can be taken back, 1 per turn like you said, but only in a city. So, if you want to hurry for 2 mines, it would take 7 turns to keep your worker, or 6 if you don't care about him, instead of 8.

In case of combined workers, it's the same. In our example, you take 3 workers to build a mine. It would be made in 1 turn. Each of them will be taken 2 healt units, as if you don't whippe them, it shall take them 2 turns to do it.

However, with all of that said, I don't really see the benefit of it, unless you can make them work twice as hard. But I don't thing that they would allow this comcept of double work.

 

[douche_bag]

i like the idea,but by democracy you should be able to pay workers,and no health blocks.If there building stuff and you "whip" them,1 citizen in the closest city should be unhappy for a few turns.

 

[NP300]

How about the following:

A worker can have 4 health points. A worker with 4 health points completes a task in 4 turns. One with 3 in 5 turns, one with 2 in 6 and one with 1 point, in 7 turns.

Whipping could then PERMANENTLY take away a health point from a worker to symbolize slaves killed by the whipping. Thus whipping native workers too many times would reduce them to the efficiency of a foreign worker.

 

[Mewtarthio]

Allowng Workers to regain health negates the point. If you can, with a single turn of lost productivity, remove all negative effects of whipping, people will whip for everything short of Roading.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, heres a possibility!

Lets say you have an 'empire management' screen, not unlike the one you have in CTPII (One of the GOOD things about this game, IMHO !) Anyway, in this screen you can adjust your nations 'rations', the more rations you allocate the slower your population growth is BUT the more productive your workers-including those that build roads, mines and railroads. In addition, you can set the 'overwork' rate of your working population, which gets things done quicker, but increases the chance of your worker units dying AND increases unhappiness in the cities from which your workers come (the more workers you have from a single city, the more unhappy that city will be if you overwork people!) In addition, you could have your worker population broken up, in the management screen, into 'Slaves' and 'Free Workers', you can then adjust the rations and overwork rates for each group seperately (thus pissing off your slaves, but leaving your own population feeling quite content!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[douche_bag]

OK, heres a possibility!

Lets say you have an 'empire management' screen, not unlike the one you have in CTPII (One of the GOOD things about this game, IMHO !) Anyway, in this screen you can adjust your nations 'rations', the more rations you allocate the slower your population growth is BUT the more productive your workers-including those that build roads, mines and railroads. In addition, you can set the 'overwork' rate of your working population, which gets things done quicker, but increases the chance of your worker units dying AND increases unhappiness in the cities from which your workers come (the more workers you have from a single city, the more unhappy that city will be if you overwork people!) In addition, you could have your worker population broken up, in the management screen, into 'Slaves' and 'Free Workers', you can then adjust the rations and overwork rates for each group seperately (thus pissing off your slaves, but leaving your own population feeling quite content!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

hey exellent idea!

 

[Albow]

a little complicated don't ya think? if you really want that mine so bad, whip the worker and it dies ... easy ...

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yes but think of the MM involved Albow! Workers already pose so many MM issues, that whipping each one you want to work faster would be a nightmare! With mine, you just make a single adjustment in your Empire Management screen and your done, at least until you want to bring their workload down again!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Albow]

I think I have ranted enough about the problems of the Modern Era ... but point taken ...

perhaps it is some deep psychological trauma in me that needs to see those workers get whipped (perhaps a little animated whip and hand a la Black & White slap?) hehehehe ;-)

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, in my 'worker' model, you build workers but you DON'T move them around! Instead they are largely tied to the city that built them (though you would be able to 'vector' them to other cities via your trade pool. All infrastructure jobs are paid for with the city's PW budget, and then you allocate workers to that job from the 'worker pool' section of your city screen, depending on how quickly you want the job done. You will still get to see the animation of the workers doing their jobs on the main screen, you just can't manually move them! You can also still defend them as normal and, if the square with the workers in it is overrun, there would only be a % chance of a worker being captured (not automatic as it is now!) Using your suggestion, though, if you DO overwork them, then I could envisage your worker animation being different, with a heavily sweating worker with an overseer standing over 'him', whip in hand, driving him on !
Oh but, hang on, if we get rid of worker Micromanagement, then 'it wouldn't be Civ anymore...' !!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Mgoering]

I'm in love with Aussie Lurker's idea on bringing the CTP2 Emprire Management screen idea. I played with it and like it very bad. Civ 3 has intriduced it with the city gouvernors and pushed it further to apply it to only 1 city. But one thing that was also a good idea was Public Work. You give up a certain % of production to PW, which allows you to build land improvements, without any workers, though.

If you combine these two elements, you can make a complement. I think it should be possible to go for both of them. You can build workers, which will directly build roads etc, and also allocate PW that will give you the ability to build land improvements without workers. Those improvements will appear right from the start, but as a building site. Workers would have the ability to help those building to be built faster. On the other hand, a worker can be allocated PW to build his improvement (his way) faster. A special button will have get done, which will tell you how many PW you'll need to do the work (for example a mine), in 3, 2 or 1 turn. Those amounts would grow fastly. For example, it needs 10PW for 3 turns. It would take 25PW (x 2.5) for 2 turns and 75 (x 3) for 1 turn.

I think this way is quite easier, cause whipping worker can be a long time debate. But simply higher their % or work in that Empire Management screen is also a good idea, to me.

 

[Albow]

hmmm, your suggestion of having an overseer is interesting. But you are right, this idea is far too radical and you are obviously trying to make Civ something other than what it is. Perhaps a round of whipping will set you straight?

Only prob tho. Ancient era, you really really want to control what you are doing. I'd rather retain control of workers like it is here. Perhaps your system could come into effect in Industrial era, after the invention say of Bureaucracy tech ...

Whatchareckon?