Workers management is a chore

I haven't seen many people complain about workers. I'm sick of managing them and they're too stupid to manage themselves. It feels like more than half of the game is spent finding something for them to do (i.e. looking for a tile without a trade post). The mechanic has been in the series forever so I don't see them changing it in CiV's expansions. But for me it's an issue as bad as the awful AI or the comeback of ICS, because it makes peacetime a chore to slog through.

Do other people feel this way or is it just me?

 

It's always been a chore, in every Civ. Nothing has changed, except you don't have to road every tile anymore.

 

Well I manage the workers only in the beginning to build the roads the way I prefer + to cut down forest/build mines/lumber mills when rushing wonders e.g. Apart from that, I think the automation is quite ok.

 

Workers management is a vital part of the strategy of the game. It works just fine.

When do you start to build them? How many to build before building one or two new settlers or a wonder? Which tile should you work first? When shall I start to build that road? How can I protect the worker, and perhaps still use it, while attacked by barbarians or other foes? Do I have enough techs to get use of all the workers I have built early? Etc... The use of workers are vital for succsess in all Civ-games, never use them automated.

Get my point? Workers are challenging and fun, basta!

 

I like managing workers and never automate them.

 

These choices only really matter for the very beginning of the game and don't make up for how much they slow down the rest of the game.

Not really a choice; there's pretty much always a correct choice so it just becomes a matter of finding it (which is what I'm complaining about.

Not a significant choice

Like the first thing you mentioned, barbarians only matter for a tiny part of the game. With other foes it's trivial (just a chore) to pull them back to safety. If you figure out a way to have them on the front safely it's only a small difference.

Do you really find this aspect compelling?

I never claimed otherwise; the problem is you have to do this boring thing because it's an integral game mechanic.

No, I don't.

 

Well, I find all those points above challenging. Good management of workers gives you an upper hand on your opponents, no doubt about that. I agree the impotance is largest in the early game, and in my opinion this is one of the things that make the beginning of a Civ-game so thrilling. Guess we have different views here, nothing new there.

 

I'm with the OP on this one; the idea of the enumerated points sound challenging on paper (err . . . on pixels), but there never really is any "strategy" to it - there is always one best choice that you have blindly execute. It just makes this game more like plugging numbers into a formula.

 

It had more strategy to it in previous Civs. In the current iteration it's a bit of a holdover since, as you say, there just isn't much to choose from in what they do. You're right, they might as well just get rid of workers entirely.

 

I agree that managing workers optimally should give you an advantage, which it does, and as you say it mostly matters in the beginning of the game, which I do enjoy.

What is tedious is managing workers turn 200 plus, when you may have over a continent worth of cities. I really don't care and don't think there is a huge benefit from microing workers on city #56.

The biggest issue is that you can't automate them AT ALL anymore, the automation is horrible. Click automate turn 200 plus and your worker will run half across the continent to build railroads everywhere or start making mass farms on a low pop puppet you want trading posts at.

Why can't they implement (and I think they will) some intelligent automation, where is the "Improve Current City" and the "Improve Trade Network" settings? How about some focus selections, gold, hammers and food. Let us choose what they will build, then we can automate at the end of the game without worry.

 

If they got rid of workers, then you'd really be pushing "Next Turn" and doing absolutely nothing. And yeah, the main reason the workers suck right now is (1) the terrain and improvements are crap and poorly balanced, and (2) the AI produces way too many workers and absolutely destroy game speed.

 

To bad you can't zone the tiles in advance so the workers will only improve the tile to what you want it to be.

You'd still have to set it up, but you could then automate your workers and know that they wouldn't change anything that you didn't want them to.

 

In Civ4 you could shift click to queue worker orders. That way you spend one turn planning out your worker's actions for the next 20+ turns. I think it would make more sense that the longer a tile is worked it starts to produce improvements over time without a separate worker unit to build them. Not everyone is a fan of less micromanagement though. The side effect to that is the focus would shift even more towards combat and war instead of empire building.
What bothers me is, now that embarkation is a part of the game, we have to build worker boats to produce fishing nets. This seems dumb to me. Just make it so workers build sea improvements like any other improvement instead of building a one shot worker boat.

 

Totally agree with the OP. There are other ways to keep the strategy component of workers without having to actually move workers units around.

The mid to late game is so tedious. The only tiles that need working don't have citizens working the tiles, so you can either keep improving tiles you can't work or you can put your workers to sleep (you don't really want to disband them because you'll need them for railroads/uranium/aluminum etc. later on). Then when your cities finally grow you have to go through the tedious process of hunting down tiles that can now be worked, finding your sleeping workers and sending them off to work, then when the improvement is done you have to make sure a citizen is working it. Blah, not what I want to be doing.

If that wasn't enough, the game suffers from the resources required to manage all the ai workers.

 

Agreed. In fact I'd like some future mod to include a cryogenic tank building I can store the little guys for a few centuries. (Not sure what the equivalent would be in early eras!) There'd be a build cost but then storage would be free and you'd save the maintenance per turn for the workers while they'd normally be just sleeping.

 

Yep, this. Now it's mostly just deciding what improvement to do next, there's few options of what to build. I used to love figuring out how to best optimize each city with improvements, now it's like "okay I need to build a farm here." Getting rid of cottages was a huge mistake in my opinion.

 

I think SMAC had mothballing. You paid a small fee to mothball a unit and it would cost no maintenance until you gave it a new order.

There's a chance I'm misremembering this from a different game.

 

+1. If a victory his imminent, than I just put them to sleep or delete them. I just wish they had to option to change the "build path to" feature so workers would build roads, and not railroads after you research them. I dont need railroad connection between two cities 60 tiles away from my capital.

 

this ^^

its always been part of the game. and doing it wisely helps, a lot, always has. maybe even more so in Civ5 due to the nature of the tiles. in all the hours and in all the civs, ive never automated a worker.



while im at it.... road maintenance is a great move too. no more stupid spam roads. it needed to happen.

 

Yeah I would agree. It's not as fun to manage workers because there are fewer options to choose from. I spend a lot of time looking for new tiles or tiles without a trading post and then building one. Maybe I have a city with some hills so I am waiting for their tiles to pop so I can build a mine, but there's not much to choose from, so it's pretty boring. I find the automation option to be less good. More options was better in the previous Civ for automation, but doesn't really apply to V. Worker automation focuses too heavy on routes. Routes to my cities or city states. Not enough on oil. Building over previous built improvements.

I try to get a commanding lead in the game and then set them to automate but after a while they piss me off for not getting a strategic resource so I have to pull one or two off automation.