Worker moves

[KayEss]

What would happen if on turn 3 you woke one of the workers, would you be able to use that worker and the forrest chop still complete?

Turn 1 one worker works
turn 2 2 workers works
turn 3 wake 1to move onto a new project, leaving 1 to complete the chop.

Of course that would not be easy to keep track of to say the least, but you could cancel one, look to cancel the other, and see if it still had 1 turn to go, and if it didn't reassign the first one. Time for some experiments I feel....

Edit :- as an alternative, just use an irrigation since as Sirpleb suggests roading then chopping is normally bad.

It's a good idea. I'd already done this with screen shots a few hours ago, but haven't gotten around to posting it yet.

I'll give the punch line away though so you don't try it in a game. Do not even think about doing it!!! It's a complete disaster and you end up wasting even more moves than you could in almost any other way.

@AlanH - I did get a very nice culture win on a PbEM against a friend on the Mesoamerica scenario (he was not happy as he was sure he would win). The game seems to announce to the last human player when win conditions are met. I guess it checks at the end of turn cycle (this last is from memory and we play so many PbEM that now I think about it I'm not so sure...)

 

[RFHolloway]

Presumably from your post cancelling a worker takes out the worker turns from the bucket that that worker has already put in, rather than just stopping them being added - I was afraid of that.

 

[KayEss]

Presumably from your post cancelling a worker takes out the worker turns from the bucket that that worker has already put in, rather than just stopping them being added - I was afraid of that.

It seems somewhat worse than that... You'll see in a couple of posts time, but first I want to show the simple case....

This will work equally well on a single player or a multiplayer game.

Building a road with one well timed, but late addition

Turn one

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We have two workers. The highlighted worker is going to move NE and join the worker on that tile.The other worker is instructed to start the road.

Turn two

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The second worker has now joined the first we tell him to build road.

Turn three

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The road is complete and we have both workers available to instruct.

 

[KayEss]

And now the nasty one

How to really waste worker turns
or Building a road and re-assign

What does this mean? We are going to try to see what happens when we put the two workers to making a road but instead of allowing the final worker turn to be wasted we’re going to re-assign that worker to irrigation. Here’s how it works out.

Turn one

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We have two workers and we tell them both to start building a road. We know it will only take three turns, but we also know that we can re-assign a worker just before it completes so we’re not worried.

Turn two

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We have two worker turns in our bucket but don’t want to waste the fourth turn that allowing both to continue would do.

We select one of the workers and cancel their instruction.

Turn three

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Hold on. We have one worker irrigating, but the other was still making a road last turn. Shouldn’t the road be finished and the road building worker be back under our control?

Turn four

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Finally the road is done and we can move the worker who wasn’t irrigating away.

So what happened here? As far as wasted worker moves go this seems to be complete disaster!

What it looks like is happening is that cancelling one of the workers removes the work that he was about to do from the bucket. The second worker just back in some work into the bucket that never even got in there.

This is why the road turns up even later. The moral of this story is don’t change your mind!

I presume that this is to avoid an exploit. In Civilization I there was a way that you could use the 'cancel worker action' to gain any improvement in the same turn you start and they really didn't want it happening in Civilization III.

 

[KayEss]

I think I have this all straightened out - or at least, as straight as it can be until more is worked out (as it were).

I've updated the first three posts in the thread with the new information and created a new Word document that tries to put it all together in a more articulate way.

This can be fetched from:

http://misc.kirit.com/C3/workers/Worker moves.2.doc​

 

[Thot]

One additional tip and one comment from me:

1) If you have the time, then use single slave workers to build roads. Compared to using a normal worker you save one basic worker turn (bwt), when you move to the tile to be roaded with a slave worker.

2) This is about „waking up“ workers:

What it looks like is happening is that cancelling one of the workers cancels both their moves for that turn.

I think that not both worker moves for that turn are cancelled, but that all the previous worker moves for that worker are cancelled. I am not too sure about this. It’s also possible that the amount of worker moves to be cancelled when you wake up one worker, is the number of worker turns already worked on that tile divided by the number of workers doing this.

Not very important detail anyway. Just try to avoid waking up workers unless it it really neccessary (e.g. if they are threatened by barbarians).

 

[RFHolloway]

The way to test which of the two is happening, is to do some jungle chopping, then if by removing one worker the time shoots from 1 turn remaining to 12 turns remaining, its all the worker moves for that worker, if it is still 2 turns to finish, then it is both worker moves.

 

[GD_france]

Hi,
I'm translating your analysis into french, and I've noticed what seems to be an error:

CHAPTER: Regaining lost Single Player moves
Regaining lost Single Player moves
"What it looks like is happening is that cancelling one of the workers cancels both their moves for that turn."

according to my experience, when a worker is ordered to cancel working, the entire job he made is lost.

For example, mining a mountain needs 24 workers' turns
Send 6 workers there and order them to mine.
2 turns later, the bucket is half full (12/24)
stop all workers except one (they need 2 turns for completing the work) the last one will need 21 turns for completion, ie the bucket is 3/24.

BTW, another tip not to waste any worker turns, and I do use and abuse it, is sending another gang finishing the job just before the task's completion (a road is needed):
Turn 1: 5 workers begin to mine a hill: the bucket is 5/12
Turn 2: the bucket is 10/12
Turn 3: 2 workers arrive and mine the hill: then job is complete and the 5 first workers are available; for example they go on to the next hill and mine (5/12)
Turn 4: both other workers join the gang; the second mine is completed.
That's very useful on Industrial Era, either for building a railroad network or by using this network.
I'm not familiary with e-mail game, so I can't say if it works in those games

P.S. 1 What does "BWT" mean? Basic Worker Task?

P.S. 2 If you speak french, I shall send you the document before posting on my french forum

 

[bouncelot]

P.S. 1 What does "BWT" mean? Basic Worker Task?

By The Way.

 

[GD_france]

--> thot: Sorry that I point the same problem you did 3 months ago; I did write the post first and read the thread later...

And I found the answer about BWT (not BTW... bouncelot ) in your post, too...

 

[KayEss]

Hi,
I'm translating your analysis into french, and I've noticed what seems to be an error:
For example, mining a mountain needs 24 workers' turns
Send 6 workers there and order them to mine.
2 turns later, the bucket is half full (12/24)
stop all workers except one (they need 2 turns for completing the work) the last one will need 21 turns for completion, ie the bucket is 3/24.

French - great. Je parle un petit peu de Genevoise, mais pa du francaise. (and please excuse any and all spelling mistakes)


For the error I'll have to check. The part that you're refering to was mainly conjecture on mine and a few other's part - I think there's a bit of discussion about it in the thread.

It wasn't anything that any of us went into too deeply and I'll have to sit down with the game and my old notes and see what theories the new data are consisent with. Thanks for pointing it out!

I don't have access to the game right now I'm afraid so it will have to wait until next week when I'm home again.