Workers

[DocsDew]

I do not know if this has been posted before, but I will go ahead anyways.
Maybe it might be good if there would be a chance to instruct workers to do only one job. Like build only roads where possible or irrigate, eg. mine and railroad where possible as well as only clean polution. That way not all the workers would pill up on one square and you do not need to woarry about your land so much.
Also, some more units, more specialised to certain civs rather than just on UU per civ. And last, maybe some more wierd, futuristic wonders and city improvments (I am thinking more of the line like Call to Power - the city shield and the polution killer).
What you guys think

 

[Rik Meleet]

Don't automate your workers and they won't pile up if you don't want them to.

 

[tidho]

I actually like this idea. Its just semi-automation.

A rest function would be nice too. Maybe you could save up to two turns of work up through rest. I'm sure most people would use it to jump start railroads but I can think of a few things to do with it.

 

[DocsDew]

I know not to automate, but later in the game, when you hold baout 20-30 works and you have to railroad you land (which then should be a good size) it gets very time consuming and takes away from the flow of the game. The function to set one work on "railroad all tiles" would be great and can only improve the game.

 

[GenMarshall]

I would like to see the removal and a placement of a civil works much like in the Call to Power series.

 

[Landmonitor]

Another good thing to do with workers for railroading is to put them at one end of the continent and tell them to railroad to the other. Alternatively, you can get every worker, no matter where they are, to rail to capital or other big city.

Usually, I make half of them do the rail to the other end of the continent thing, then get the other half to railroad every tile around the capital (or main producer city) to increase mines (and irrigation in RAR) so I can build wonders quicker.

I would be really cool, though, to put them on "permanent pollution cleanup" so you don't have to give them new orders if they clean it all up. I usually give that job to slaves from whatever AI civ I hate the most!

 

[Horus Kol]

SMAC had "automate farm" and "automate road" and "automate all" orders for their formers (workers) - i can't see it being a difficult thing for Civ4.

 

[Volstag]

Personally, I'd like to see the individual "worker" units abstracted right out of the game. Perhaps replace them w/ domestic "slider bars" (civil engineering, agriculture, transportation, etc)?

 

[Rik Meleet]

I know not to automate, but later in the game, when you hold baout 20-30 works and you have to railroad you land (which then should be a good size) it gets very time consuming and takes away from the flow of the game. The function to set one work on "railroad all tiles" would be great and can only improve the game.

The current game does have kindof that option. IIRC it's called "railroad to". It makes the worker railroad towards the tile you've chosen.

But frankly; when it is railroading time and my 200+ workers are going to do that; I'll choose to do it this way:
- collect all free workers on 1 tile.
- CTRL-J to move them nexr to the tile I want railroaded.
- keyboard-key: "railroad to" multiple times; until the tiles is railroaded (pretty quick).
- do that to the next tile.

If my tiles are all railroaded and need some new improvement (cleanup or build fortress for example): I select all workers, move them there and keep the CRTL_C or CTRL_F keys pressed until the tile is cleaned or has a barricade. It goes quickly enough for me (1-2 seconds).

 

[sengfossil]

It would be nice if you can give commands to a whole worker stack. After inventing railroad, I usually take all my workers to stacks to build railroads. But it's a lot of doing always the same command to 20-30 worker....

Second, I always disliked that automated workers killed every forest. After some time the map looks booring. It's highly unreal too.

 

[mastertyguy]

I don't automate my workers until all my territory is railed and I have to clean pollution, so I can't comment about better automation. Even to rail your territory, i don't use them. They could rail a forest in tundra when mny core isn,t linked, I don't want to see how bad they are.

 

[Soter]

Personally, I'd like to see the individual "worker" units abstracted right out of the game. Perhaps replace them w/ domestic "slider bars" (civil engineering, agriculture, transportation, etc)?

That's a good idea, Volstag. Ideally, their replacement could occur later on in the game when there are so many more things going on, or when their number has exceeded a limit, e.g. 30 workers. I say this because I quite enjoy giving them orders at the beginning and it isn't that much of a strain when there are only a few of them.

The suggestion I wanted to make was that it would be good if our workers could fill coastal squares. I don't like my cities to overlap and very often I'm a tile short of placing one. It could take a worker 50 turns for all I care, as long as the option's there.

 

[mastertyguy]

You just have overlapping squares, what is the problem?

 

[Soter]

No real problem, mastertyguy. But neighbouring cities that share squares can sometimes thwart the other's population growth or shield production.
I recently found this to be the case when I appointed my capital and its sister city to build Leo's Workshop and Sistine Chapel simultaneously. They were interfering with each other.
I don't know. I have to admit city placement is the aspect of Civ that troubles me the most.