Worker Automation

[shadyforce]

I usually set options to 'never build over existing improvements', and 'don't chop forests', so in the early stages, I'd manually build all the important improvements, and then when the important stuff is done, I'd automate the workers to finish off all the rest.

Maybe there should be an option to decide what improvement should go on what tile as a global rule for your workers. Like you decide to farm half of the fresh-water grasslands, and cottage the other half, mine all plain hills, windmill all grassland hills, etc. Though that doesn't address city-specialisation, it does help towards overall control of what they do, and maybe in combination with various other suggestions we're coming up with, could be pretty solid.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I think probably a stronger city specialization interface would solve most of the problems.

Perhaps if there were just two more levels of emphasis (so that a city can be told to emphasize or BAN, XY and/or Z through the Governor, and than it can also select 1, and no more than one, thing to be the city Specialization (Food/Commerce/Hammers/Science/Gold/Culture/or any type of Great Person)

And those should also be the general governor options
3 on the top
3 on the bottom

and a little check mark by each of the specialists

So each of those could be chosen as an emphasis or a 'Ban', one could be chosen as a specialization.

If something is 'Banned' then you avoid making sure you have some 'minimum' and you weight it at 0
ie a 'Ban' on Food would mean "aim to Stagnate Growth", Otherwise it would aim to have at Least 1 food excess
a 'Ban' on Hammers would mean ignore Hammer output of tiles/improvements... otherwise you would aim for some minimum hammer output (~1 per pop up to say 10)
Commerce/Gold/Science... with no 'Ban' they have some weight, with a Ban they haeve no Weight at all
'Specialists' with a Ban you just never assign those specialists (usually to avoid polluting a GP Pool.

One other thing that would be useful for some of the really lazy perts of the game, an option on the City Production Governor for Buildings only (where it would just build Non-Limited Buildings (probably leaving off Cathedrals as well as Wonders of all types) based on the emphais/need in the city... so unhappiness/unhealth would encorurage buildings that would help that and a city that had Science as its overriding focus would not build Barracks... although it would build Couthouses and Granaries, ie the Generics, and it wouldn't build Marketplaces unless it was unhappy... once it ran out of usefull non-decision needing buildings, it would go back to normal and ask for your input.

So this would allow a Good City Governor to control Citizen Assignments, Tile Improvements, and Buildings.

(one idea wqould be to make the Default option to "not build over old improvements unless there is a resource there" and then the player could say either say 'replace ANY old improvements=OK OR keep old improvements over new resources.)