Worker problem

[acinod]

I'm new to Civ and Civ5 is my first Civ experience. I've played a few games and what I've noticed is that from early-mid game, you need a few workers to move you forward into the game. So I tend to build a lot of workers, especially when the advisors also advise me to build workers. However after playing for a while, the workers have nothing to do because all the tiles have already been improved and most of the time, I just press F to make them sleep.

I also tried only building one worker but that didn't work because I was developing really slow early in the game.

What should I do with workers once all the tiles have been improved?

 

[delra]

1 worker per 2 cities is more than enough because cities grow slower than workers process tiles that are actually using. When your worker has nothing to do - disband him or gift to a city state for points with them. I typically go down to 1 worker over time, then get some extra ones for railroads - but don't hesitate to disband them again if they are jobless.

 

[stormerne]

In Civ4, the rule of thumb was to have 3 workers for every 2 cities. Even then you'd have to disband or sleep them in the later game. That is probably too many for Civ5.

In Civ5, I suspect you can ignore the advisor on this. I think you can start with more and later build less. I usually have one worker for the first city, sometimes adding a second, and even then they will probably improve the tiles faster than the city can start working them! If you're adding new cities quickly (not necessarily a good thing) you can grow more workers, otherwise use your existing ones. Check in your city screen what tiles the governor is working; improve those first, or change the priority or override the choice altogether.

Other uses for your workers: You'll have some trade routes to build, and you might not get the gold benefit from those trade routes without building a single road between the cities. If your empire sprawls a little, a road will help get defenders from one side to another quickly. A particularly friendly city state might want a road building between your capitals. You might want to adjust the land of cities you capture. In the late game you might want to build railroads.