Will Rising Tide fix automated workers?

[Westwall]

More than anything else, automated workers are so broken in Beyond Earth that they ruin the rest of the game for me by extension.

They're so unpredictable about it too. Sometimes they'll build nothing but terrascapes, other times it's domes. I've had to disable their ability to build on top of prior improvements just so they wouldn't get stuck in a loop of building something new on top of something they just finished. Still other times they'll just refuse to work, instead deciding to stand around in a daze when roads still needed to be paved and resources improved upon.

It initially seems like a trivial thing since most of us don't automate our workers anyway, but in the mid-to-late game I can have a dozen or more workers and I'd rather not have to micromanage all of them all the time. This is something that should work. Maybe not as well as a player, but still competent.

In the past Civ games since automation was introduced, the workers may not have been exemplary, but they were at least capable of going about their business without me having to worry too much about them.

But in BE, they're just insane.

 

[Kutuzov]

Given that the AI routines that the AI uses when workers are automated are the same as the routines used by the AI to improve AI-controlled cities, that's not a bad suggestion. It would increase the difficulty of playing against an AI opponent across the boards as well. And so, whether we use automated workers in our own games or not (I don't) is irrelevant.

Who knows, with RT there will be a host of new tile improvements for the AI to consider so they might just tweak these routines to make the AI a little smarter about building them, but it is just as likely that they will make the situation you consider to be 'insane' just that little bit worse seeing as how there will be more improvements for them to consider if the city is near the sea.

Expect the worst. Hope for the best.

 

[Zenstrive]

I can go up to 10+ cities on one playthrough, and usually aim for gene vault for free workers.
I usually ensure that all of my cities 2nd ring of Hexagons and resources are improved before automate them. That'll ensure they'll build maglevs on top of roads and terrascapes on empty, viable, mostly useless terrains.

 

[Ryika]

It's not only these bugs that cause problems, but also how the Worker-AI seems to completely ignore Tile Maintenance. It spams Terrascapes even when you're at -9000 Energy per Turn (if you have any workers left by then ).

And it seems that the AI doesn't even understand the "Overrides base Yield"-mechanic. I did some tests with modified improvements, a +2 Food (no other yields), Override Base Yield Terrascape and a standard +1 Food Farm. Even on Grassland it would still build the Terrascape and gain absolutely nothing but Tile Maintenance while it would have gained +1 Food and no Maintenance if it had just built a Farm.

 

[Westwall]

Given that the AI routines that the AI uses when workers are automated are the same as the routines used by the AI to improve AI-controlled cities, that's not a bad suggestion. It would increase the difficulty of playing against an AI opponent across the boards as well.

This is a really good point. If the AI is stuck with gimped workers no matter the difficulty setting, that's already a serious handicap to AI factions and just adds to the list of things that make them woefully ineffective.

 

[oldag07]

They should just have a menu for workers that lets you specify how your automated workers should work.
1. Maximum length (time) of travel- 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 turns.
2. Avoid contact with aliens- Yes or No
3. Improvements workers should build (check all that apply)- Terrascapes, Roads/Maglev, Farms, Domes, academies, biowells etc
4. Clear improvements (check all that apply) same as 3
5. Prioritize (place in order from greatest importance to least importance)- Connecting cities, food, energy, happiness, production, science, culture, resources,
6. Clear forests- Yes or No
7. Stop producing improvements that require maintenance running a deficit of ___ energy.
8. Terrain specific improvements (pull down menus next to the terrain consisting of the type of improvement you prefer)
- Grasslands (Farms, biowells, etc etc)
- Desert (farms, biowells, etc)
You get the point.

 

[poom3619]

They should just have a menu for workers that lets you specify how your automated workers should work.
1. Maximum length (time) of travel- 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 turns.
2. Avoid contact with aliens- Yes or No
3. Improvements workers should build (check all that apply)- Terrascapes, Roads/Maglev, Farms, Domes, academies, biowells etc
4. Clear improvements (check all that apply) same as 3
5. Prioritize (place in order from greatest importance to least importance)- Connecting cities, food, energy, happiness, production, science, culture, resources,
6. Clear forests- Yes or No
7. Stop producing improvements that require maintenance running a deficit of ___ energy.
8. Terrain specific improvements (pull down menus next to the terrain consisting of the type of improvement you prefer)
- Grasslands (Farms, biowells, etc etc)
- Desert (farms, biowells, etc)
You get the point.

I think most would prefer to control it by his own (as long as it is in manageable number of course) and there are some parameter here which actually intuitive to most human player who know concept of more yield and less yield.

 

[Zenstrive]

Earlier turns, workers are good units to control around giving yourself something to do, but later when you have tons of cities and your neighbours turn greedy, you'll need to focus to other than wokers.

 

[Ryika]

Why? It's a turn-based game, you can (and, if you want to be efficient, should) care about as much stuff as you want on your turn. ^^

 

[Zenstrive]

Not everyone has the luxury of time to spent nitpicking everything each turn...

 

[Ryika]

Well, that really depends on what you want out of the game, doesn't it? Sure, if you want to play as many games as you can, then that's certainly a valid concern, but I don't really see a reason why you'd want to play as many games as possible - I'd rather play a few less games and finish them with good results.

But in the end... yeah, it's probably personal preference. Main reason why I asked was that you said you ">need< to focus to other than wokers", which struck me as a bit of an over-generalization.

 

[Zenstrive]

Well, I am an office drone, so for me, segmenting my playthrough to several days with only few small number of turns each will often make me forget what am I doing previously, and why am I being at war....so I usually do it fast per turn

 

[Xinotine]

I met AI city where all hexes around it were terrascapes, and nothing else. I had to raze it to not ruin my economy with it.

 

[Gorbles]

Terrascapes, even considering the maintenance cost, are one of the most useful improvements in terms of net worth. Balancing this against a subjective tile usage (i.e. when Farms would be a better investment) involves a lot more work, and probably AI improvements that Firaxis may or may not have time to implement.

Would this be good? Yes. Should we expect this if Firaxis are claiming AI improvements? I think so, yes.

But it's not a huge priority. You have to accept that if you automate your Workers, they're going to perform routines that the game thinks is best - and not you.

 

[HughFran]

I agree with the OP, workers are fun to manually control early in the game when you are more focused on tile improvement and when you don't have a sprawling empire. It begins to get tedious later in the game when you have done your core tile improvements and you have 10+ workers to control. I know some people said that they enjoy controlling all of their workers and focusing heavily on which tiles are being improved but I prefer to pace my games a little quicker because I only ever get a few hours a week to play the game.

The worker automation in BE is horrible and this was one of the first things I noticed when playing the game. Workers just sit there even though margrails need connected or tiles need improved and it's as if the workers have just lost their little minds or are on strike! I also used to wonder why my finances were dropping so steadily until I realised that it was workers that were causing it with their terrascaping nonsense. Hopefully some of this will be fixed in RT

 

[Westwall]

Hopefully some of this will be fixed in RT

It's hard to imagine them not doing something about it. Introducing new features and systems is great and all, but when something as basic as worker automation is so fundamentally broken, the damage is going to permeate throughout the entire gameplay experience.

As mentioned time and again, it's also a testament to the AI's ability to handle itself. If AI factions don't even know how to play the game, how can they ever be expected to pose a credible challenge to the player? What's worrying is that we haven't really heard much from the developers yet about what they plan to do to fix or improve the AI.

Just as an example, when announcing Endless Space 2, this was Amplitude's answer to player feedback regarding weak AI:

We know that AI has not been our strongest point so far, and in a strategy game we all know that a good AI is key. So we have formed an AI only team that includes two full time programmers, one AI designer and one associate producer just to work on that and nothing else. On top of these guys, we will work with a bunch of external experts in the domain. Together, we hope to be able to create a very solid AI engine, but as our work grows on that area we will reveal more.

 

[DefiantMars]

Given that there's an entirely new set of improvements with the ocean tiles I imagine that the Worker AI is being updated to accommodate for that.

This is not saying that it will fix the silly decisions the game likes to make. Just that it will be "updated". I just disable them so they don't replace improvements and build terrascapes. I don't usually have a problem with them. If I need a Terrascape or some other improvement, I take 1 or 2 workers and manually control them.

 

[x2Madda]

Why? It's a turn-based game, you can (and, if you want to be efficient, should) care about as much stuff as you want on your turn. ^^

Just to add onto what Zenstrive said, when you are playing click wars multiplayer those games almost always have timers and you are usually at war.

I find it interesting that AI workers don't spam terrascapes.
In my experience the only way to stop your workers building junk is to just never research any improvements that you don't want your lands covered in which depending on which techs you want, can be impossible to avoid.

 

[Greatsword]

It's the biggest turndown for me too. And I have to agree with everything that has been said.

By setting the city focus on "energy" the workers seem to focus an generators. For cities with few tiles they go for dome. Then it's Terrascape and nothing else.

It would be cool if we could place phantom improvements on empty tiles; so the workers know what to build. Kind of a hybrid to the Call-to-Power system.

An automate "roads only" would also help. Without strategic view it's hard to find holes in the magrail network.

 

[durfal]

Also fun is when going full Harmony and dropping Miasma Orbital Bombs everywhere, because A) you heal in the stuff and B) at least two third of your enemies will loose health in your lands that way.
Try then to automate your workers. The first thing they do is get rid of the Miasma everywhere to build terrascapes !!!!!
The first time I discovered them doing that I actually yelled at the screen why don't you understand I want the miasma there, it's healthy for me!!!!

Since then I avoid the technology and so I also skip going Purity because of it (it's in the excact same tech as the Develop Floatstone). Unfortunately most of the time my spies always seem to steal it cause all the AI's have it and then suddenly my automated workers stop doing anything else but building Terrascapes again.

Thinking about it, made me decide to mod it so that it can be only build on snow terrain.
Edit: it can be changed in CivBEImprovements.xml (always keep a copy of the original around though just in case) in assets/Gameplay/XML/Terrain