The first post of this article completely failed to take into account the differences between single player games and multi-player games. This was entirely my own fault as I only do Play by Email games these days. My thanks to Thot for pointing out the error of my ways (even though I wasn’t thanking him when I first found out
).
For those that can’t make head or sense of the thread I’ve tried to put all of the information into one more coherent document. This is available from my web site.
Also thanks to smiggins, Sir Bugsy, Pang & Tai for reading through it before posting.
Worker moves
There are important differences between how worker orders are executed between single player games and multi-player games. This analysis contrasts the differences between single player and Play by Email games – it should hold equally for other types of turn based multi-player games, but this has not been tested. For turn-less games all bets are off.
The key point is a contrast between how worker jobs are executed. The game dynamics are very different between the two types of game and anybody switching from one type of game to the other should be aware of these differences.
This is shown by the following premise:
Although true for a single player game, this is false for a multi-player game! Hopefully the analysis contained here will help players increase the flexibility of their worker gangs by shedding some light on the worker model use in Civilization III.
Please note that anybody who wants to get into this should already be familiar with Cracker’s analysis of worker orders. There’s no point in utilising this information without already understanding that.
I have been using Conquests to do these tests, but I’ve seen the same behaviour in Play the World and don’t expect that it will be any different in the vanilla version.
Important points
The analysis is a bit long in places so I wanted to get the important conclusions into the open at the start for those who just want to know the facts. For more detail continue to read the article.
The single most important point
In a single player game the dynamics are such that all workers in a stack will finish at exactly the same time even if this involves wasting worker effort.
In a multi-player game the dynamics are such that when enough worker effort has been put into a task then extra workers can be immediately re-assigned to other tasks.
Single and multi-player rules
Multi-player rules
Single player rules
Further experiments
Note that as the thread continues and theories are tested we will be trying to work out in a bit more detail how these things are calculated. I will therefore be editing this and posting either confirmed messages or further explanations as they become available.
Is the amount of work to be done on a tile always based on the BWT or, is the tribe base turn cost calculated and this then used? What’s the difference?
Basically this amounts to a question of when the rounding is done. This may affect your choices of what to team up and how many to team up. This is also likely to affect workers when they are in Anarchy. It will also affect how the bucket is filled when switching governments.
Contents

For those that can’t make head or sense of the thread I’ve tried to put all of the information into one more coherent document. This is available from my web site.
Also thanks to smiggins, Sir Bugsy, Pang & Tai for reading through it before posting.
Worker moves
There are important differences between how worker orders are executed between single player games and multi-player games. This analysis contrasts the differences between single player and Play by Email games – it should hold equally for other types of turn based multi-player games, but this has not been tested. For turn-less games all bets are off.
The key point is a contrast between how worker jobs are executed. The game dynamics are very different between the two types of game and anybody switching from one type of game to the other should be aware of these differences.
This is shown by the following premise:
If you are going to make a road that is going to take three turns to complete then you should either assign one worker or three workers to the task. If you assign two workers then you will waste one worker turn (it will still take them two turns to complete the road).
Although true for a single player game, this is false for a multi-player game! Hopefully the analysis contained here will help players increase the flexibility of their worker gangs by shedding some light on the worker model use in Civilization III.
Please note that anybody who wants to get into this should already be familiar with Cracker’s analysis of worker orders. There’s no point in utilising this information without already understanding that.
I have been using Conquests to do these tests, but I’ve seen the same behaviour in Play the World and don’t expect that it will be any different in the vanilla version.
Important points
The analysis is a bit long in places so I wanted to get the important conclusions into the open at the start for those who just want to know the facts. For more detail continue to read the article.
The single most important point
In a single player game the dynamics are such that all workers in a stack will finish at exactly the same time even if this involves wasting worker effort.
In a multi-player game the dynamics are such that when enough worker effort has been put into a task then extra workers can be immediately re-assigned to other tasks.
Single and multi-player rules
- The Industrious trait adds 50% to the amount of work that is done per worker turn. In Civilization III vanilla and Play the World this figure was 100%.
- Do not stack workers making roads unless the turns saved to make the road is more important to you than wasted worker moves.
- If you want a road from A to B in a hurry on flat land then you should use six non-industrious workers or four industrious workers in a stack.
- There is a maximum worker stack size above which you will have workers who never get a chance to do any work. This depends on the terrain and the tasks, but is in any case very high. This maximum is never less than six workers and would normally be higher (four workers for an industrious tribe).
- There are ways to stack workers and slaves that provides a good compromise for wasted moves and earlier completion of worker jobs.
Multi-player rules
- Don’t be afraid to stack your workers in any number and feel free to have workers join other workers late.
- Do stack workers doing any task other than making a road so long as they can start working on the same turn they move onto the square.
Single player rules
- If you are going to add a worker late to a stack of workers (or just add the second worker) then you must calculate whether you will be better off or not. Think very carefully before doing this.
- If you change your mind about what workers in a stack should be doing you ought not to re-assign one or more of them unless you are totally desperate. You will complete the project much later and waste even more worker turns than if you let them complete the first project.
Further experiments
Note that as the thread continues and theories are tested we will be trying to work out in a bit more detail how these things are calculated. I will therefore be editing this and posting either confirmed messages or further explanations as they become available.
Is the amount of work to be done on a tile always based on the BWT or, is the tribe base turn cost calculated and this then used? What’s the difference?
Basically this amounts to a question of when the rounding is done. This may affect your choices of what to team up and how many to team up. This is also likely to affect workers when they are in Anarchy. It will also affect how the bucket is filled when switching governments.
Contents
- Introduction - above
- Play by Email Worker Moves - The simple Ancient era case
- Worker moves in a Single Player game
- Regaining lost Single Player moves
- How fast is too fast?
[*]Factors on worker speed
[*]The Calculations
- Ganging together a worker and a slave