Workers - When do you build them?

[Grey Knight]

There is another thread dealing with how many workers one should have, my question is when do you build them? Wait for size 6/12? Build them before this? Go raze enemy cities until you have enough?

Cheers,
Shawn

 

[Grey Knight]

<Bump>!

Nobody builds workers here?

 

[Bamspeedy]

I don't know if this is the most efficient way to do this, but this is when I build mine: First I only build units and settlers to claim as many cities as I can. Then when I have all the cities it looks like I can claim (without warfare), and I have 2 units built/city for military police (preferably spearman, so I can upgrade easily throughout the ages), I start pumping out workers until I get 1 worker/city, then start on infrastructure. I suppose making some workers earlier might help a little, by building roads to the future city sites, but this may cost me some settlers. I will build some workers earlier, like if a city maxes at size 2.

 

[BillChin]

I like to have three cities before I think about building anything other than warriors and settlers. Attacking an enemy settler early is a good way to get two workers, if a player is willing to have an early war. Trading for a worker is a better option, but takes constant checking as they can only be purchased from the enemy capital.

I do not have any hard and fast rules for building workers. I see how many tiles of road I have to lay and build more workers if it is going to be a long time to complete the road network. I do not stockpile workers when at pop six or 12, but it sounds like a good strategy.

 

[Park Ranger]

Playing an industrious civ (the Chinese), the one worker at the start was enough to improve three tiles in each of the first three cities and link them all up...espcially useful if you have a luxury nearby!

During the initial expansion phase, I look for a city with good food surplus so I can build a worker and not fall behind in settler production. I find one worker per 2-3 cities at the start is enough to keep up with roads and the odd mine or irrigation.

 

[Yezdegerd]

My build order for new cities during the settlement phase:
2 spearmen,1 archer,then worker,temple...expensive,but it works for me on regent.

 

[spork]

I usually have a worker-building era towards the end of the Ancient age. This basically involves one or two food-rich cities that can replace a unit of population exactly as fast as they can build 10 shields. The onset of a post-despotic government might be a good time for this, because irrigation allows more growth then.

However, most of the work in my empire is almost always done by foreign labor. What I love about foreign workers is that they don't count as your units so you don't need to pay for their maintenance. All of their work is a free lunch. Because of this, I very rarely raze captured cities. In a monarchy, democracy or republic, I immediately rush-build workers, wait a round, and rush-build more, until the town I took is size 1. Sure it costs some money, but because these workers count as foreigners, they'll serve you forever, and for nothing. If you raze a city, at most half of its people survive to become your workers. If you occupy and rush, you keep the city and put ALL of them to work (well, all but one).

While you do this, make sure you don't let the city grow, because if it does, it will add one of your own citizens, and that citizen will be the next worker produced. Then he'll ask for gold piece each turn for the next X-hundred turns. No, it's better to get two foreigners who are willing to do his work for free.

Workers are always useful, even after all your infrastructure is built up. Let them alternate between cleaning pollution and farming forests.

 

[Rich]

I honestly dont believe how little you guys build workers.... Its really strange to me. I love the little guys. From what i understand you all just build settlers instead??? Is that right. I suppose you are all playin at a high difficulty setting and tryin to keep populations low. Initially atleast. I have one question th0. Do you struggle building wonders with little or no terrain improvement??

 

[Bamspeedy]

I honestly dont believe how little you guys build workers.... Its really strange to me. I love the little guys. From what i understand you all just build settlers instead??? Is that right. I suppose you are all playin at a high difficulty setting and tryin to keep populations low. Initially atleast. I have one question th0. Do you struggle building wonders with little or no terrain improvement??

If you really want a wonder, just have the initial worker working only the capital's terrain (or a nearby city that is more productive), by clicking shift-I. If you need to really beef up your capital's population quick you can send settlers from nearby cities to 'join' the capital. Getting those initial settlers out the door ASAP allows you so many more options on what you want to do. I beat the AI to the Pyramids on Monarch. On higher levels, the AI has such an advantage (# of starting units, cost of building stuff, population growth, etc), you don't really have a chance at building any of the ancient wonders without a leader, even with a fully develeped city. It's not very often that irrigating actually helps when your still in despositism.

 

[Grey Knight]

Building settlers is the key to securing as much initial territory as you can. Unless there is no more open space, any city size 2 or bigger should be building a settler!

 

[MrBiggBoy]

If I'm secure, I'll continually train workers from my cities... its the first thing I build since city locations are normally not perfect
all you need is about 10 for your WHOLE civ.. but if you're all environmental and your cities r pumping out pollution , maybe max 20

 

[CivMonger]

to the guy above me who only builds 10 or 20 workers, what size map you play on?! I'm usually on a large map, and 10 workers would definately NOT be enough for me. What else you build? I build buncha workers and still have cities with no more improvements to build and need to kill some time.

 

[Park Ranger]

Originally posted by Grey Knight
Building settlers is the key to securing as much initial territory as you can. Unless there is no more open space, any city size 2 or bigger should be building a settler!

I basically agree, though instead of looking at city size, I look at surplus. Any city producing 3+ surplus food is a good candidate, since it will recover quickly. My favourite terrain for this is the wheat on floodplain. (Though sometimes it takes a temple to get to a size where the surplus/shields mix is right).

Also, having roads while you expand is very important. It's nice when a settler can follow a road to the next city site and then just throw down his backpack (no off-trail hiking for me!). For this reason I'm always looking for the right balance between settlers/workers.

RE: captured workers.
The manual says that republics and democracies don't like slave labour (captured workers). Anyone ever see any manifestations of this?

 

[D. Boon's Ghost]

Originally posted by Park Ranger

...RE: captured workers.
The manual says that republics and democracies don't like slave labour (captured workers). Anyone ever see any manifestations of this?

My main means of labor are captured workers, actually. In an average game I end up building around 3 'home grown' workers, the rest are foreign. Even so, I have not noticed anything concerning Republic/Democracy penalties (other than the standard captured labor being half as fast as your own).
I must admit, though, that I usually spend a majority of my games in Monarchy, so when I am in a Republic I may miss a drop off (I tend to shun Democracy).
I will certainly look more closely next time, heh.

Good pointer on the 3+ surplus before building workers, Park Ranger. Thanks.

 

[BiatchGuy]

In the early stages of the game I build as many settlers as I possibly can just to keep up with the AI expansion and get my empire as big as possible. This is essential!

Then once I can't expand anymore I produce some workers...

or, like someone previously mentioned, if I have one of those towns that won't grow past 2 population, I'll build a worker there.


On a somewhat related note.. I like capturing workers during war or trading for them during diplomacy; that way I don't have to waste the resources and population on producing my own. Though, foreign workers work slower or something like that.. don't they..?

 

[Tassadar]

For each newly created city near my capital, i built first a spearman then a worker, at least 1 worker per city in the begining. Dont forget worker mean making money, because it make road and tile with road produce income $ and $ support army. Priority making road on worked tile and mine shielded grassland.

 

[Anglophile]

I'm with Rich, I build a huge number of workers - roughly 1.5 per city (current game example, 256x256, continents, 40% land, 11 civs, emperor: 10 BC, 54 cities, 85 workers, all (cities and workers) home grown). On really big maps, if you don't have a road system, it will take settlers forever to get to their destination. Obviously another factor is one's play style preference. I am a peaceful builder (not an arrow fired in this current game except against the rampaging barbarians) and that style will obviously build a lot more workers than those who choose to enslave foreigners.

My play style is to found cities where there are two+ food bonuses and then just churn out workers and settlers from those cities. I found on Monarch that three such cities were enough to keep up and eventually outpace the AI. In this game, I was lucky enough to find 5 such cities within my first 10 and so my expansion rate has been very fast this game but lots of workers are even more important for bad starting positions; first to improve them, second to get to some place nicer quicker.

Finally, a general comment. There are (almost) no universal startegies in Civ3. Unless one prefaces their remarks with info on map size and type, difficulty level and optionally play style, the recommendations provided will not be optimally useful and may seem incomprehensible to someone who plays very different style/size/etc game.