Worker trading

[Paul#42]

Subject of this thread is the trade of workers to gain slaves.

Just as it does not belong to a single rival, I thought we'd post all relevant info here rather then in the embassy threads.

We should discuss timing, numbers and trading partners here.

worker tasks and efficiency

Here's some numbers on the effeciency of workers and slaves.

Spoiler :

The numbers are the base numbers which are exactly the movement costs of slaves. Our workers get those costs devided by two. Add there are no odd numbers, slaves are for us exactly half as efficient as our native workers.

Job BWT
road - 6
Irrigate - 8
Mine - 12
Fortress - 16
Barricade - 16
Railroad - 12
Plant forest - 18
Clear forest - 4
Clear wetlands - 16
Clear damage - 24

Trading Rules
To trade workers, both trading partners have to have towns on a common landmass.
The workers to trade have to be in the trading partners' capitals.

Does it work if neither capital is on the shared landmass?

Timing
This is a judgement call.
The timing should be determined from the balance between the necessities to perform urgent worker tasks and to save unit support costs.
And of course we should have a trading partner.

The timing also involves the time to bring workers to the capital and slaves to the operational area. This is obviously minimized when the land is railed.

 

[cubsfan6506]

I don't like Slave workers. I don't like the loss of production. Can't we make a poll.

 

[Paul#42]

I don't like unit support cost.

Of course we could make a poll.

 

[sirdanilot]

A little example:
Let's pretend we have 10 workers. These ten workers are all on an unroaded tile. They cost, urm, we're in republic, so that's 20 gpt right?

They can road their tiles in 3 turns. So in those three turns, we have to pay 60 gold. But after that, all those tiles produce one extra gold per turn, so that is 10 gpt.

After 6 turns from the beginning we have paid 120 gold, and we've gained 30 gold from all the roaded tiles...

Allright, I guess that proves it for me then. I began that fictive expiriment to prove that trading workers shouldn't be done, but I guess it is more lucrative after all if we do trade them...

 

[Paul#42]

A little example:
Let's pretend we have 10 workers. These ten workers are all on an unroaded tile. They cost, urm, we're in republic, so that's 20 gpt right?

They can road their tiles in 3 turns. So in those three turns, we have to pay 60 gold. But after that, all those tiles produce one extra gold per turn, so that is 10 gpt.

After 6 turns from the beginning we have paid 120 gold, and we've gained 30 gold from all the roaded tiles...

Allright, I guess that proves it for me then. I began that fictive expiriment to prove that trading workers shouldn't be done, but I guess it is more lucrative after all if we do trade them...

And you even made a small mistake: Three roaded tiles just get you 3gpt. And after ten more turns the tiles are also roaded if you have ten slaves improving them. So it's just 30g spared in ten turns (or 18g in 6).

But on the other side, if your military units do not exceed your free unit support, your native workers are for free also...

It's just not that easy...

And that's why we'll have to discuss that, there is no single truth like "we need to trade all workers at once" but there are certain points in the game were it makes sense to trade a certain amount of workers.
One of them is when most territory is improved and another when most territory is railed.
Of course there's always enough to do for workers, you can do forestry actions, join them to cities...
It's the most powerful unit in the game.

And we'll have to synchronize the trade with trading partners.

 

[Niklas]

What Paul says. There will come a time when trading workers is beneficial, simply because the pressing need for terrain improvements is less than the cost of keeping the workers around.

I should also note that this is not an end-all decision. We're going to need lots of workers (hopefully) when railroad comes around. At that point we could agree to switch all the workers back again, to make good use of their efficiency. We'd have to put it in a clause that all workers must be kept around, never disbanded or joined to towns (not that anyone ever would).

 

[Aigburth]

A sort of compromise would be to keep our current workforce native for now and just trade new workers. Do we need any more settlers from Gulag? We could do 2 turn workers here and therefore be able to trade two workers per turn (Chamber and Bayou/Gulag alternatively).

 

[cubsfan6506]

I say we do this we trade most of our workforce all but four. But do we even have any Unit support costs right now? I say we trade when we need to

 

[Paul#42]

First we'd have to figure out whom to trade with and how (swap towns).

Then we could try to plan & calculate worker tasks and categorize them from urgent to nice-to-have. We could put this into a schedule that also contains prospected research dates for Steam Engine (railroads) and Replacable Parts (double worker speed).

That would be quite an effort worth a mentioning in the Pantheon of Councillors...

Or we discuss and haggle over every worker and find a compromise. Less effort and way better shared between The Councillors - not worth a place in the Pantheon of Councillors

But as I stated before, for now we need many more of the natives - I'd estimate that it would take some time like at least 25 turns till we should trade the first of them...

 

[General_W]

A sort of compromise would be to keep our current workforce native for now and just trade new workers. Do we need any more settlers from Gulag? We could do 2 turn workers here and therefore be able to trade two workers per turn (Chamber and Bayou/Gulag alternatively).

This is a good idea! But it would require us allowing FREE a more permanant city on our land. Are we sure we want do this?

 

[Niklas]

We could give away a town in a location that would otherwise go unused. I'm thinking for instance of the tundra forest N-NW of The Igloo. If we settled a town there, the cultural pressure of the neighboring towns would ensure that it would only ever get the tile 1SW of it (also tundra). As long as FREE (or whoever) never builds any culture there (which the treaty would ensure) then we really don't lose anything by giving away those two tiles.

 

[General_W]

That sounds perfect Niklas!

I'd probably prefer a more organic deal like a couple workers every now and then (even up to 2 per turn) rather than trying to orchestrate a mass exchange all at once.
And I don't really see the value in trying to strike a deal like this with more than one team… especially since Saber is so perfect. Allows us to keep trading with them on friendly terms without having to double-cross our technology deal with FREE.

 

[donsig]

I'm still not so sure I like the idea of giving anyone a permanent place on our landmass. Would this work if we each had a city on one of the minor islands? Of course SABER doesn't have one of those. Why are we thinking that we have to give SABER a city? Can't they give us a city? Or do we each have to have a city on the other's landmass?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

if we did something where we traded back for workers when rails came in, we would have to phrase it so if we got rails and the other team didn't, we got our workers back.

 

[Paul#42]

(in single player) It is sufficient to have one city on a shared landmass.

I really like Niklas' suggestion but I also agree to donsig's con:
If we give them a permanent foothold we might be vulnerable.

The site however is phantastic for that issue. If agree that they shall never build culture or a unit there, we can easily control it till flight?
And if they offer us a similar site, we have another cheap science farm to get another unit's support for free

FREE of course would spot it if we keep trading maps casually. However they don't own us but maybe our relationship will get a hit

All in all, I like this idea very much.

Let's find out what SABER thinks about something like that and if they can offer the same.

 

[cubsfan6506]

Do we have any Unit support costs now. No reason to do this premutarerly.

 

[dl123654]

Do we have any Unit support costs now. No reason to do this premutarerly.

38gpt as of last turn (122) meaning 19 units at 2 gold each.