worker spam?

[Jamuka]

I'm curious about how workers are going to play out in Civ 5. It's known that, unlike civ 4, you can build workers without delaying city growth. And the upkeep of workers is insignificant (I think?). Is there some sort of limiting factor? Like, a maximum number of civilian class units, or something? I fear workers in civ 5 will play out like formers in SMAC - where you just built so many that you never had to wait for any tile improvement.

 

[Ahriman]

you can build workers without delaying city growth

They still take hammers you could be spending on buildings, units or wonders.

And the upkeep of workers is insignificant (I think?)

What is your source for this? Its quite possible that upkeep could be significant.

s there some sort of limiting factor? Like, a maximum number of civilian class units, or something?

Not that I am aware of. My guess is the limiting factors are opportunity cost and upkeep.

 

[Fin]

Well, you can't stack Workers this time around, AFAIK. Building more of them seems to counteract not being able to crank out improvements more quickly with just a few of them. But I don't know why anyone would want to spam a huge number of workers. The upkeep would just add up, and the Production and Gold could be better spent on many other things. I'm thinking only someone who didn't know what they were doing would spam massive hordes of workers.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'm curious about how workers are going to play out in Civ 5. It's known that, unlike civ 4, you can build workers without delaying city growth. And the upkeep of workers is insignificant (I think?). Is there some sort of limiting factor? Like, a maximum number of civilian class units, or something? I fear workers in civ 5 will play out like formers in SMAC - where you just built so many that you never had to wait for any tile improvement.

Well you can only have 1 worker per tile, so you will always have to wait X amount of time for an improvement.

The production cost is that of 2 Warriors, and Warriors probably cost 1 gpt to maintain... so Workers probably cost at leat that much

 

[bjbrains]

There are several factors limiting worker spam this time:
They do count as units in the "supply" screen for maintence (although the specific math is unknown).
You can't stack workers to build things faster.
Workers cost 70 hammers, in combination with not using food to build them makes them much more difficult to build. For the cost of a worker, you could build a chariot archer at 60 hammers, or two warriors.

 

[Schuesseled]

It was a good idea to spam workers in civ 4.

 

[Schalke 04]

In previous version of Civilization it was a good strategy to have a lot of workers around.

In CIV V I guess it is no longer a good idea.

Firstly, you don't need to spam roads anymore. Quite the contrary, every new road costs gold!
Secondly, due to the 'happiness cap' you can't spam out cities in the first turns. Therefore there are less tiles to improve.

So, why would you need a huge number of workers?
One single worker can improve the tiles of the capital while it is producing a settler. When the settler is completed, the initial worker should have improved enough tiles of the capital, so it can deal with the second city.

Surely it is too early to estimate an appropriate worker/city-ratio, but I think it's obvious that it will be lower than before.