Workers

[Michael York]

I was wondering when most people begin building them, how often they build them, and how many they generally have.

I start building them as soon as i can, and i like to make a worker city with my fourth or fifth city. It is not uncommon for me to have 30 workers for 15 cities or 120+ for a decent size civ

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Workers are my last priority, I tend to designate a fastgrowing, low production city as worker factory, then rely on war captives. A granary is a must in the settler factory.

 

[Octavian X]

Whenever I have a city in the middle of the jungle, tundra, or any other unprocutive terrain, after it makes its culture builing (either temple or library), I'll have it build a worker. Also, occasionally in the late industrial or modern age, I'll have a huge city spit out a worker to help with the pollution problem.

 

[Sirp]

The best way is to build lots of workers, asap. The improvements workers build *dramatically* increase the productivity of your cities. I would recommend getting a bare minimum of one worker for every city you have, but probably more.

 

[TheNiceOne]

I mostly agree with Sirp.

In the very early stages of the game, it hurts to build a worker instead of the warrior or whatever, and you lose a precious pop from your 2-3 pop city, a pop that was producing a shield or two per turn - BUT

After having got the worker, the city grows quite fast up again ( faster growth from 1-2 and 2-3 than 3-4), after a few turns the worker has built a mine thus regaining your previous production even before the pop growth, and after a few turns more you have mines and roads in two scquares, giving you quite a lot higher production and income than before the worker.

Not to mention the fact that a city that is connected by road to the capital has much less corruption, so connecting the eraly cities is very important.

Also remember that one single road square out from a city building a settler means that the settler reaches it target square one turn earlier.

And last, but not least - you need workers to connect resources.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

More of a balanced approach. Try to get as many workers out as possible, also other units to explore/garrison.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Knight-Dragon, you are of course correct. I wrote the reasons for not forgetting to build workers, but they should be built after the necessary number of warriors that you need for defense/exploration.

Personally I tend to build around 5 warriors before my first worker.

 

[Octavian X]

I usually have the capital build a worker to start networking the my cities in the capital after second city has been founded.

 

[Sim_One]

I dont know about you guys but I always have workers on automate but I noticed that if you put them under the Shift-A command they dont chop forests so I just give them all the regular A command. But for some reason automated workers have trouble building mines on plains so I would pick out a few workers to build mines to increase production where there are irrigations, only to find that in the same turn to have those mines replaced by irrigations by automated workers. This is extremely frustrating as I have probably over 100 workers in Democracy, after Replaceable Parts and as an Industrious civ. What can I do?

 

[MAS]

Don't automate them. Non of the top Civ3 players does. The AI has more "A" and less "I" then you have!

Be a prof, and don't automate workers!

(of course in late game, after all the land has been worked, you can use the special automate options to have them clean up pollution only)

 

[Sirp]

just to clarify, never build workers early on from your capital - it should be used to build settlers. But your second and third cities can start popping out workers pretty quick.

Also, always buy workers from other civs if possible. This is an insanely good thing to do; it really slows them down. Good players will check the other civs every single turn to see if they have workers for sale. But this is more a flaw in the game than anything else; the AI badly underrates the value of workers early on. There's discussion of banning this tactic in the Realms Beyond Epics.

And yes, never, ever automate workers. They do the most insanely stupid things. Controlling your workers yourself is one of the biggest advantage you have over the AI.

 

[Tassadar]

While in despotism a town support 4 units for free and you can have 2 military police to keep poeple contented.

So for each newly built city i will have 3 soldier units and 1 worker, so it cost me nothing for units support. The third soldier is for scouting purposis.

Later on, when i got marketplace and i am into republic, i will built some more.

Once in railroad time, i got about 24 worker for about 16 city ( standard map) i could go up to 36 worker if i have about 24 city.

Ususaly with this set up, i have time to do what i want ( mine, connect ressource, railroad,...ect).

I always try to stack them so they are able to do thing in 1 turn, exemple; as a german ( non-industrious) i know i need 3 worker to built road in 1 turn, so when i need a road i got it fast.

 

[MadHatter]

Tassador: "So for each newly built city i will have 3 soldier units and 1 worker, so it cost me nothing for units support. The third soldier is for scouting purposis.
"

Wow, do you really count the number of cities and the number of units, etc.? Now that's "detail-oriented"!

 

[Tassadar]

Originally posted by MadHatter
Tassador: "So for each newly built city i will have 3 soldier units and 1 worker, so it cost me nothing for units support. The third soldier is for scouting purposis.
"

Wow, do you really count the number of cities and the number of units, etc.? Now that's "detail-oriented"!

Sure i do that, so i can put research at 90 % for a while. Later on , when there is lots of road ( which mean more income), i could start building more soldier, but only after a temple is built and a libarary.

As a rule of thumb, i use about 10 % of my total budget for units support ( while in republic), this include worker and soldier.

 

[Zachriel]

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/ad1260-SteamPower.htm

 

[Shaitan]

Zachriel's graph shows it pretty well. I'll generally start pumping workers in advance of Steam Power though and maneuver them for quick RR backbones.

 

[Pillager]

I tend to have approx at least one per city, although more for Steam Power, as mentioned above.

It depends of course on the terrain - if it's jungle and tundra I'll build more, because if you don't you're not going very far.

The first worker I build would be about the founding of my third city.

 

[Shaitan]

Get some other ideas on worker use (and some misuses) at the Other uses for workers thread.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Shaitan
Zachriel's graph shows it pretty well. I'll generally start pumping workers in advance of Steam Power though and maneuver them for quick RR backbones.

I agree. The curve should start a little before steam power, but this was a "real-life" example and not everything always works out the way we plan.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Workers are, perhaps, the most important advantage the human player has at his or her disposal. If one takes the time to read many of the Succession games, almost all of those games are played with the players controlling what the workers do to improve the cities and their terrain. And they win an overwhelming majority of games played at the higher difficulty levels.