worker help - civ III vanilla

[Civlet]

Hello all! I'm quite new, please bear with my asking questions you've all heard over and over again...

I have been playing regular civ III for a few months but just dabbling, and I only now started bumping up the difficultly (and even then not by much). My main problem is how to deal with workers. I had always automated them, but I was never all that happy with what they did. It just seemed like too much work to do it all by hand

First of all, does anybody have any general suggestions for how to manage workers, how many per city and what their priorities should be?

Also, I bought the game as an online download and didn't get a manual with it, so I don't know any of the keyboard shortcuts or anything like that. I know with workers you are supposed to be able to do things like direct them to build a road/railroad from point A to point B. Can you also do things like queue up actions, like telling a crew of workers to all build mines in these three squares, then irrigate these three, etc?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

 

[MAS]

Did the download package include a PDF manual? The "Complete" release of the game also doesn't come with a paper manual, but the PDF is included on the DVD.

Anyway, the end all be all guide to worker moves is here:
Improving Your Opening Play Skills, by Cracker
Note the small menu to the left, its a multi page guide.

AI worker moves are very bad, if you follow the following very simple instructions, you will already do better than an automated worker.
#1 road every tile that your worker moves on. Don't move a worker off a tile before it has a road. (Except when threatened by hostile units, of course. but try to clear the thread rather than move the worker, if you can.)
#2 irrigate plains, mine grassland.
#3 improve easy to improve land first, flat land such as plains and grassland. Improve harder land such as hills and mountains last. (not to mention jungle and march) exceptions are if a road somewhere has a very pressing strategic purpose.

here are some more complex instructions: (but still not as complete as Crackers)
# under despotism, Irrigate tiles that allow you to break through the despotism penalty. Such as cows and wheat, but also wines on grass (but not wines on plains)
# once outside of despotism, irrigate as many tiles as you need to get enough food to support a size 12 city, or irrigate as much as you need to get a settler/worker factory to work. Obviously a city that has many hills and mountains in its radius will need to have some of its grass tiles irrigated.
# cities outside of your core cities are so corrupt they are only useful as specialist farms. Irrigate all the land around these cities to allow them to support as much specialist as possible.
# at the start of the game, your cities are constantly building settlers and workers, so they won't grow past size 4 for a while. Thus you only need to improve the 4 strongest tiles around each city, then focus on connecting cities with roads, then refocus on improving worked tiles (worked by citizens), then fill in the gaps with roads.

Number of workers:
There are 2 rules of thumb:
#1 Build about 1.5 to 2 times as many workers as you have cities. More isn't bad.
#2 Continue to build workers until you no longer need them. That is, all the land is improved,or will very soon all be improved.

Other rules of thumb.
#If a city has citizens working on unimproved land, then the cities next (or current) build should be a worker.

and one more tip:
If you decide you need to irrigate a grassland tile, and you can chose between bonus grass and a normal grass, irrigate the bonus grass! This way, in a golden age, or if you use mobilization, both tiles will have +1 shield, instead of just one tile.

 

[Civlet]

Thank you! I had not seen this site before, it llooks helpful. Now to see if I can wrap my brain around implementing all of this at once....

 

[Vidar]

and one more tip:
If you decide you need to irrigate a grassland tile, and you can chose between bonus grass and a normal grass, irrigate the bonus grass! This way, in a golden age, or if you use mobilization, both tiles will have +1 shield, instead of just one tile.

Oh, never thought of that. Thanks a lot!