Worker : an alternative use

[TrentMarian]

First: sorry for my poor English (not my mother tongue). My questions is as follows. I'm looking for threads, articles or strategy talking about using a worker to boost a city. The idea is that the AI does it very currently at the Divinity level. This is a good medium to boost a city near the boarders of an other CIV and help this city to develop its culture more quickly than the cities of the other civ. Alternatively, its also a medium to use big cities with all improvements to produce workers (instead of wealth for exemple) and speed up small cities.

 

[Shabbaman]

I think it's somewhat of an exploit, but here's an article on alternative uses for workers: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_workers.shtml

Welcome, by the way.

 

[gugalpm]

Welcome...

BTW, what language do you speak naturally?

 

[TrentMarian]

As I come from the Frech part of Switzerland, my common language is French

 

[Prime Mover]

I don't know if this idea has been thougth of or not but I thought of this last night.
Over the course of the game I can accumulate hundreds of foreign workers. I perfer to have them make tile improvements than to have them join cities, plus they don't cost anything anyway.
But if they work half as fast as domestic workers just make 2 of them citizens, build a worker, and you still have 1 etra citizen paying for the extra cost of a now domestic worker with whatever the citizen produces.
With that in mind is there ever a reason to keep any foreign works other than for fodder?
The game may run faster with less workers too.

 

[Gothmog]

Re Prime Mover: Wow hundreds of workers, you must be the infrastructure king.

I don't think adding workers to a city is an exploit unless you are then using them as whipping fodder. If I have a good food production city with a granary and I am all done expanding I skim off excess workers when my population is maxed out. If I have enough workers then I will often send them out to smaller cities, especially ones with poor food production. Otherwise that food just goes to waste - this is sort of like the old civ2 food caravan.

 

[Prime Mover]

I thought it was normal to accumulate hundreds of foreign workers.

 

[billindenver]

Probably one of the stupidest things the AI does with its automated workers: if enemy units are near it's city, it pulls all workers into the nearest city. It doesn't pull them back to another city to keep working. It puts them right in the city you are about to capture.

As to whether to keep them or add them to a city, I usually keep them if I have anything for them to do.

You've also got to be careful. If the civ you took them from is still hanging around, don't put too many of them into any city near their capital because they maintain their nationality.

 

[Gothmog]

Re Prime Mover: It may be normal for you, but not for me. You must play on a huge map or something! I typically play on a standard or small map. I normally don't keep more than two workers per city (maybe four if they are foreign), often not even that many later in the game (once I have cleared jungle and improved mountains). Of course I don't automate my workers so they are much more efficient. Also, I am not a warmonger and so don't get hundreds of slaves.

 

[Prime Mover]

I use to like keeping them around also because I needed to develope infrastructure. They do not cost anything but they only work half as fast, right? So for every 2 you have, for instance, they both join a city and the city makes one domestic worker. Now you have 1 that works at full pace and an extra citizen making money to pay for the cost of the new worker and shieds too. There then should be no reason to have any foreign workers at all, right?

 

[cracker]

Prime mover,

You need to hold back on discussion of game play until you get out of your timewarp black hole and load to the current software patch version with V1.29.

Workers that you join to your cities retain their nationality until randomly assimilated over time. If you joine two workers in and then build a new worker that new worker will probably not be a full speed worker of your nationality. Settler and Colony cleanisng of nationality can be somewhat more effective but again your view of these features will be severely distorted if you are still playing with all the bugs and flaws in the out of the box V1.07?version.

 

[Prime Mover]

It would still make more scence to get rid of workers this way, this wouldn't have anything to do with the patch.

 

[cracker]

Wrong.

You may need to read some articles and understand the value of different civ traits and different strategies under different terrain, difficulties, and desired victory conditons.

Patch it and get on with life.

 

[RufRydyr]

The foreign workers (my slaves ) work at half speed, but don't have any upkeep cost. I love em. I wind up with hundreds of them. Sometimes, I'll even use them as explorers into enemy territory during war. It's so funny how the AI will waste moves by capturing these workers instead of attacking my military units.

 

[Gothmog]

Geeze, what do you all do with hundreds of workers (even at half speed)? I find that about 2 workers per city is more than enough. I often just have them sitting around later in the game, waiting for pollution. There are a couple of brief periods where more than that is good. In my current game i've just reached the AD's, I have 15 cities, and every tile I own is fully developed - including the mountains! I am keeping my workers around for the advent of rails, but I did join a couple into some border cities. Also this must really slow down your games - e.g. there go 150 of my automated workers across my territory looking for something to do, or nothing to do right now, lets push the space bar a couple of hundred times. What am I missing here?

 

[billindenver]

Originally posted by Gothmog
Geeze, what do you all do with hundreds of workers (even at half speed)? I find that about 2 workers per city is more than enough. I often just have them sitting around later in the game, waiting for pollution. There are a couple of brief periods where more than that is good. In my current game i've just reached the AD's, I have 15 cities, and every tile I own is fully developed - including the mountains! I am keeping my workers around for the advent of rails, but I did join a couple into some border cities. Also this must really slow down your games - e.g. there go 150 of my automated workers across my territory looking for something to do, or nothing to do right now, lets push the space bar a couple of hundred times. What am I missing here?

I'm with you. I usually max out at 2-3 per city right at railroad time (I build a lot of my own during the time before/right after I get Steam Power). Once the whole continent is railed, I usually join most of them back into my cities, keeping enough for pollution control. Mostly, they just lay around my cities eating bon-bons and watching Jerry Springer all day.

 

[RufRydyr]

I'm an ICS lover. I always seem to find uses for the workers. In the beginning I'm mining just about every square within 10 tiles of the capital and FP. At the end I'm milking and trying to convert everthing to irrigation.
Also, I'll pillage roads to block AI access when I'm at war and need workers to rebuild those.

 

[Allemand]

I sometimes build a wall of foreign workers along my border, to keep out the riffraff.

In faraway cities I often disband them to gain a few shields. If you have hundreds you won't miss a few.

I don't put them into my cities until I conquer their homeland.

In stacks of six, foreign workers can be managed without too much tedium. Just move the stack to a tile and give the orders.

Also like to have them clear out jungle tiles. It keeps them busy and out of trouble.

Or I could move them to their home border and execute them. But does that make the AI angry?

 

[RufRydyr]

Originally posted by Allemand
I sometimes build a wall of foreign workers along my border, to keep out the riffraff.

That is fun to do. I'll sometimes use them to surround a foreign settler. Eventually they'll just disband him.

 

[Alric]

Yea as most said: upgrade land around the city, or you can transfer population from one city to another via workers

Build a worker (or settler) from the source city and move it to the distination city and click on "join city"