Automating workers doesn't do you much good in Noble, either. I was struggling when I first went to Noble (having read the forums, I manually assigned workers) and decided to automate workers after getting obliterated. Well, that didn't help at all. It became worse. So I only improved my Noble game thanks to the forums.
Honestly, Prince isn't a cakewalk for those of us who aren't as good! The AI still gets bonuses!