Workers - Automate or no?

[Sisiutil]

The main reason I avoid automating workers until very, very late in the game is a point alluded to by smackthewise: the AI doesn't really understand city specialization, whereas a human player does (or should). The improvements around a city need to be chosen to support its specialization, and you can only do that by manually controlling your workers.

Once the late game rolls around, however, I often start automating them, because there can be a lot of other things to micro-manage in the late game (especially if you're at war). I only do this after I have Railroad and I've built RR on all the tiles where that provides +1 and I've connected each city to every other city by a direct rail route (taking advantage of the aforementioned production tiles where possible). And like smack, I consider "Leave forests" and "Don't build over improvements" to be essential settings.

I should also mention that I will not automate workers if I am fighting (or anticipating fighting) a war on my continent. I may not miss a few workers captured near my borders in the late game, but it will add to my war weariness, and we all know what a bear that can be in the late game.

 

[Willem]

I've always automated my workers and was just wondering if that is hurting me at all, or if its better to micromanage.

Yes it is, yes you should. Computer AI is still a long ways away from being as good as the human brain.

 

[StargazingDog]

as for the workers sitting idle. you're right. sometimes you can get a stack on the same cycle. i think i use stacks of 3s. then with steam power stacks of 4s.

btw, i play marathon so that might change the dynamics of workers.

Ya think? Heh. A stack of 4 workers in regular speed would be overkill.

Maybe this is why people think six workers is not enough... everyone is playing on epic or slower.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

I micro manage them in the early game for sure, but late in the game when you have a big empire and you have improved just about everything possible in your cities, there is a point of diminishing returns (as the economists would say) where the extra time it would take to micro manage may not be worth the time and effort in significantly changing the final outcome very much. The compromise is to automate most of them, but manage 2 or 3 yourself just to make sure that important things get done in a timely manner. For example, once I research Calendar I want to make sure they all building the plantations immediately. You might want to go into the "options" and check boxes there so that the workers don't mess up things you have built in certain cities. They might otherwise cut too many forests, build too many farms, etc.

 

[sabo]

I need to Micromanage EVERY aspect of the game, mostly cuz I don't trust the AI. I manage my citizens too.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

I need to Micromanage EVERY aspect of the game, mostly cuz I don't trust the AI. I manage my citizens too.

"I need to Micromanage EVERY aspect of the game, mostly cuz I don't trust the AI I'm a control freak like almost any Civ player."


Fixed that for ya.

 

[Mathalamus]

i dotn see the need for speciailization. why specialist at all? if.. say the AI gets smart enough aand captures every production and military cities what do you have left? youd have to change your GP and cottage cities into military powerhouses and that takes time. when your facing Monty, you don't have time, you already lost.

i generally let my workers do whatever the hell they want. and build every building, thus if even my capital ( always the core research, financial and production city) is captured and/or razed i can still carry on without changing a thing. usually i set up my second city to be the second most productive, etc city.

 

[Sisiutil]

i dotn see the need for speciailization. why specialist at all? if.. say the AI gets smart enough aand captures every production and military cities what do you have left? youd have to change your GP and cottage cities into military powerhouses and that takes time. when your facing Monty, you don't have time, you already lost.

Ahem. If you specialize properly, this will not happen. At least not in the long run.

However, you seem to be speaking of the beginning of the game. It's too early, at that point, to specialize your cities... much. You're right, the small number of cities you have will have to serve several different purposes. And if you have Monty or Shaka next door, you will probably need to emphasize military over everything else.

However, specialization helps you determine which tile improvements to lay down and which builds to prioritize as the game goes on, ensuring you get the biggest bang for your buck... or for your hammers, as it were. Thus, you prioritize a library in a city with an excess of food so you can run specialists, or in a city with high commerce; but you prioritize a forge in a city with high production (and low commerce/research) to take advantage of the production bonus. You might eventually build almost everything in every city, but you do so in an order that takes the biggest advantage of each city's best capabilities. In contrast, you de-prioritize buildings that do little good; thus, you delay building a library in a city with high production that only produces four research points; you'll probably be better off having that city build another military unit instead.

Just out of curiosity--what level do you play on?

 

[Mathalamus]

i play on noble. and for some reason i always have at least one known warmonger near me. not on isolated starts, which i favor.

and besides, the only city that is half decent or better is the capital, all other cities just plain suck, in any era. i could play a one city challenge and itll be better.

 

[Sisiutil]

You'll probably find as you move up through the levels that specialization and micro-management of your workers becomes more important. I certainly have.

The quality of my other cities depends on the map. I usually have a handful of cities--a mix of captured ones and those I've founded myself--which are as good as the capital. A lot depends on the map, but a lot depends on placement as well.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Auto workers can specialize cities, sis. They can cottage, workshop, or farm according to your governor settings, and their end tile improvements will only be marginally worse than yours if at all.

The caveat is they waste turns.

For example in my shadow of madscientist's game where you had to start as england, move the palace to the new world, and then spawn england as a colony (without any civs starting in western hemisphere), I didn't micro my workers in the new world 1 second outside of pressing "A", and yet the whole thing turned into workshops and I beat mad's space time (though that was more because he tried to go crappy rep + bio rather than straight hammers with less setup costs).

Improvement cycling remains a problem unless you force them to leave old improvements, but at least some auto really speeds things up. Also note that betterAI found and eliminated improvement cycling from both the AI and player auto workers, if you are playing that mod.

You can do pretty well up through emperor by cottaging the capitol early and just farms + whip everywhere else (building wealth after whipping granary/border pop/library/MAYBE courthouse). Click "emphasize great person" in the one with the highest food and whip more spec slots there. Bulb philosophy and/or education or run trade missions, and you should get 600-1000 AD liberalism or have the versatility to produce an army quickly (units rather than wealth) to make an opportune attack. Stick oxford in the capitol for a 300 BPT or so bureaucracy city and you should get any renaissance tech you need to set up a more end-game tile improvement setup. Communism for workshop spam, constitution + bio for specialists (don't listen to the garbage that you need caste or high end micro to make this work), or lib + democracy for cottages. Alternatively you can just pick a military tech and draft rifles/whip other things and kill someone then.

The only early game cities that REALLY need specialization other than some productive capacity are your GP farm (national epic, wonders, specs), a military crank (heroic epic), and your commerce site (probably bureaucracy capitol).

Every other city gets a border pop, granary, whatever is needed to unlock national wonders, and courthouses if expenses are too high. If you whip those things (stacking anger is fine if you can trade to get your cap up to take it) then build wealth you'll develop quickly.

Try to make one of your earlier GP's a scientist for an academy in the capitol.

The only reason I don't auto workers very early is that in order to get them to farm, you have to emphasize food. If you emphasize food, however, the city starts working tiles with excessive stupidity (food beyond reason, deliberately working unimproved tiles and junk to grow into ). We are stuck then with either micro the citizens or micro the workers. There are far fewer workers than citizens, so I micro workers instead for most of the early game at least.

 

[troytheface]

Fact- read on script thing in multiplayer- "Damn i forgot to work that corn this while time"

Fact- Automated workers do not forget

the evidence is clear

 

[conception]

In response to the need for specialization, the one thing I've found is that it seems more important to specialize on normal speed than it is on epic or marathon. I used to play everything in marathon because I liked long games, where I could engage in military conquests and things and it didn't feel like the game was about to end before it even started. But because of time restrictions I've had to play a couple on faster speeds, and on these it seems much harder to accomplish good military production without having a couple cities devoted to it, as the tutorials say. As well, its much harder for even my more refined cities to be able to get all of the buildings until later in the game.

I used to not believe too much in specialization, but there is definitely a need for some degree of it for an effective game.

 

[civverguy]

Fact- read on script thing in multiplayer- "Damn i forgot to work that corn this while time"

Fact- Automated workers do not forget

the evidence is clear

This is the "superior"

Actually, if you were more careful, you would check your workers and see which ones were working and which ones weren't. And what if the worker builds a cottage on the corn?

 

[Wlauzon]

Auto workers can specialize cities, sis. They can cottage, workshop, or farm according to your governor settings, and their end tile improvements will only be marginally worse than yours if at all.

The caveat is they waste turns.

That is the real kicker for me. I have seen the AI rush half a dozen workers to a spot to build a farm. Late in the game when you usually have an excess of workers, it does not matter much. Another thing they do that is annoying is to totally neglect some cities for a while, stunting its' growth.

Another stupid thing they will do is to build cottages and farms on resources that you cannot use yet, such as silk or wine. In some cases that actually makes sense - if you cannot drill for oil for 50 turns, might as well use the land for something, but it is annoying when they build a farm 3 turns before you can build winery.

Once I get about 6-7 cities I start automating some workers, as in most cases the first half-dozen cities will always be your best - many of the later cities are as much just to occupy territory or to get a specific resource as to actually produce anything.

 

[karadoc]

The main reason I don't automate workers is that they tend to mess up my irrigation chains. I hate it when an automated worker builds a cottage on a tile that I was saving for an important farm, and then the city works that cottage instead of some other cottage. Also, they build roads on tiles that I want forest to grow on - and for some strange reason one cannot pillage one's own roads.

So yeah.. I very rarely automate workers because not only do they not focus on what I want them to focus on, but they do things that actually have a negative effect on my empire. At least "leave old improvements" prevents them from destroying irrigation chains that are already in place, and "leave forests" stops them from wasting forests. If only there was a "leave jungles" option to stop them from messing up my jungle defense choke points and my jungle national parks... Do you think that maybe automated workers are in cahoots with the enemy?

 

[Tarkhan]

I usually manage my own workers early game, then when they are plentiful/cheap I set some to automate. Specifically, to build road/rail networks

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ya think? Heh. A stack of 4 workers in regular speed would be overkill.

Maybe this is why people think six workers is not enough... everyone is playing on epic or slower.

You need more workers on fast speeds than slow speeds.

 

[Artful]

You need more workers on fast speeds than slow speeds.

I haven't done the math to figure it out, but since it takes more turns on marathon to complete a task, but once it's done you get the improved yield every turn, it seems intuitive to me that you may do better to have MORE workers/city on a slower setting - is that wrong? wouldnt be the 1st time my intuition has been wrong...

 

[Freyas]

Actually, having more workers is more important on faster speeds. Moving your workers between tiles takes relatively more time at faster speeds, which equates in slower improvements with an equal number of workers. Mining a hill takes a comparable number of turns between different speeds, but it takes 10x as long for the worker to move onto the hill in normal as opposed to Marathon. Imagine moving your worker onto the hill and then have him sit idle for 9 more turns in Marathon.

Although I typically build less workers than I should, I usually have at least around 1 worker per city, and I'll often realize that I've forgotten to start improving terrain around a recently founded city because I've got 2-3 workers working on chopping out a wonder or clearing jungle at other cities. It's better to produce extra workers so that your cities get their infrastructure in place earlier and get extra units/specialists/commerce sooner, than to have a city sit around being worthless until later in the game. You can always delete some of the workers (or gift them to an AI) later, once you don't need as many to update improvements as you unlock their techs.