Workers

[steviejay]

got a question about workers.

my island is filled with cities and I have quite a number of workers. Is it a good idea to leave all of your workers on automatic, let them do thier own thing or not? because I remember reading on this forum that automation isn't a good idea and people don't like it, is this true?

Cheers

 

[Hawkster]

I used to leave workers on automatics but after reading the strategy guides here I discovered that it is not the best option.

On auto workers don't make the most of the available terrain - the starting guides in the war academy (esp cracker's opening play strategy is a must read- it gives a lot of info on managing workers).

Managing a lot of workers manually is a pain but you can balance shield/food/trade production better than the AI does .

I will usually have at least a couple of workers on auto pollution clearing (shift p) late in the game but all others are under my control.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Well, it depends. Workers on automation handles the workers much more ineffective than a competent player does, but it will spare you quite an amount of micromanaging.

So put your workers on auto if:
1) You're a really bad player (so that you will handle the workers even worse tha the AI)
2) If you really hate micromanaging workers.

If none of these apply, then don't automate them.

For the record, I don't automate workers. The only exception is workers on islands completely controlled by me (so that they cannot violate borders), when all working squares are railroaded and mined/irrigated. In this situation I sometimes set the workers on "clean up pollution only" (shift-P).

Notice that if I ever get more pollution than your workers can handle in one turn, then immediately take the workers off automation, since they will spread out and not finish any clean-up the first turn.

 

[col]

I manually control all my workers in the early game.

I automate them (shift A) from about 100AD onwards when I tend to have quite a lot.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by col
I manually control all my workers in the early game.

I automate them (shift A) from about 100AD onwards when I tend to have quite a lot.

That's what I do too. It is a game after all. Certainly by the time of Imperial Rome, the Emperor didn't supervise every gang of workers, though he may have supervised certain pet projects.

In any case, the Auto's main weakness is that it doesn't mine grassland. I micro-manage in the early game and by the Middle Ages, most cities are already well-mined, so I begin to relinquish control. With the advent of Railroad, I usually produce extra workers, which I use to connect my cities with shift-ctrl-R, then shift-ctrl-I the capital and a few other major cities, then finally shift-A. When the Rail System is complete, I will rejoin some of the workers to the cities.

However, there are always special projects which require micro-management throughout the game. And a gang of workers can be very useful when combined with an invasion force to build Roads, Rails and Forts.

 

[Mindless Reason]

I take it that you guys are against the city governors too?

 

[DaveMcW]

The city governor is very good at managing citizen moods. They update before anything else on your turn, so if an AI did something to make your people unhappy the governor will create an entertainer to keep the city out of disorder. You can give the governor a clue what tiles to work by emphasizing food/production/trade.

However, the governor's build order is really bad. I would never let them automate production.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Using the Governors to manage moods and food or production (shield production not what the city produces, I always control what the city builds) can work quite well and save alot of micromanagement.

However, if you have a couple of cites that are overlapping workable tiles they may not work the tiles the way you want because of the way the cities grew. For instance, you may have one of the cities closer to a palace and it has less corruption, you want it to work the best tiles that are shared between the two cities. Just turn the governors off on those two cites, rearrange the way the tiles are worked and then turn the governors back on in those two cities. The governor will keep those tiles working the way you set them up unless it totally conflicts with how you have told the governor to do the job.

[Edit] The on topic part of my post - I pretty much do what Zachriel does. Manage early and automate most later in the game with some under my control to perform special functions and fix mistakes the automated workers might have made. If it takes you a half an hour to manage your workers each turn, your working the game waaaay too hard.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Yes, manage all your workers at least while you are in despot, and probably until somewhere in the middle ages (or when you have 100+ workers , then you can shift-A and just keep a few on manual to do special tasks.

The governor is also a big pain when pollution comes up, because after a tile gets cleaned up by pollution, some other city may grab that tile. So instead of cities stablized in growth, you have 1 city gaining 4 food, and 1 city losing 4 food (this is when I was milking my HOF game and had all grassland irrigated and railroaded).

I love using the governors (manage moods), but I'm starting to see how micromanaging does save some shields/commerce/gold. If you have the governor emphasize production, but NOT control moods, he won't assign citizens to tiles, but he will assign new citizens based on whether you have emphasize food/shields or commerce.
So now in the beginning of the game I set the preferences this way:
Control Moods: OFF
Emphasize Food: OFF
Emphasize Production: ON
Emphasize Commerce: OFF

So if you emphasize production,then the turn that your city grows the new citizen will be more likely to be placed on a high shield tile (if there is no bonus tiles to claim). The turn that the citizen is added, you get the shields (but no food or commerce until the NEXT turn), so you'll get an extra shield or two every time your city grows, because the citizen will be placed on forest (for example)and get the shields, then you can move the citizen to the tile you really do want him to work (getting more food).
And with micromanaging you get a 1 turn grace period before your city will revolt, so that unhappy person that should send the city into revolt, will give you some shields for 1 turn before you have to increase the luxury or turn him into a specialist/entertainer. The governor would instantly make him an entertainer missing out on a shield or two (unless you increase luxury tax the turn BEFORE, spending an extra turn of having more happiness than was needed).
But by micromanaging, the amount of shields you actually gain in 15-20 turns will most often be lost if you aren't paying attention and let a city go into revolt every 15 turns or so.
Needless to say anyone who micromanages more than 20 or 30 cities like this, should be shot and put out of his misery......Keep your sanity and use the governors.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy


And with micromanaging you get a 1 turn grace period before your city will revolt, so that unhappy person that should send the city into revolt, will give you some shields for 1 turn before you have to increase the luxury or turn him into a specialist/entertainer. The governor would instantly make him an entertainer missing out on a shield or two (unless you increase luxury tax the turn BEFORE, spending an extra turn of having more happiness than was needed).
.

Good point, you can leverage this by turning off the governor the turn before the city grows and then turning the governor back on after you got the extra sheild or two.

 

[Roman1]

Is there a mod available that will let you queue worker tasks? It gets pretty confusing sometimes when you are managing tons of workers and you are trying to remember what each one is supposed to be doing when the next turn comes up. Better yet how about a colored indicator much like military units to indicate their current status. Such as red-building a mine, blue- irrigating, green- cutting down forests or clearing jungles, and yellow- building a road.

 

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee
If it takes you a half an hour to manage your workers each turn, your working the game waaaay too hard.

That's me!!

 

[hbdragon88]

Automation to me is the work of the devil. It is outright coded in there badly. I keep a small batch of workers at hand, and it takes little time to get them into place. I keep them in stacks of three and they can road, RR, and irrigate anything in two turns.

 

[Lynx]

I usuall keep them manual untill the indusstrial age, so that they can get pollution out of the way, and i cut their numbers down so that they have to only do pollution, not improvements as it seems pollution is a higher priority.

 

[Bamspeedy]

It is outright coded in there badly.

Yeah, I guess anyone can see the AI worker task pattern in this screenshot....

 

[Cartouche Bee]

The theory must be to get it right 50% of the time, nice screenshot!

 

[coup d'etat]

Hmmm, I haven't messed with automation very much-- from what I've seen I would NEVER want to automate... I tryed automating once in modern era when all they were doing was cleaning pollution, and I found they started trying to mine grasslands that I needed (and were already) irrigated... So it seemed to me from that point on automating workers at any point in the game was a bad idea... As for city governors-- seems they are equally useless beyond the initial phases of selecting which squares to work. As has been mentioned, I too would *never* use them for production orders...

The whole idea of automating workers and city governors seems strange to me actually. I've been playing since Civ1 (I didn't play SMAC but I did play Colonization if anyone remembers that one ) so I'm used to all the little micromanaging tasks. In fact it seems to me doing all these tasks yourself is what strategy in the civ series is. I guess theres still battle strategy and what not, but who can wage an effective war when the computer has been inefficiently handling your production all game?

 

[Park Ranger]

Once I have mined all the bonus grassland around a city, I might set a worker on Auto/no altering/this city only.

I use "road to" and "railroad to" a lot, even if its just for 2 tiles.

Also the "jungle only" switch can be useful but watch them they will clear ALL jungle, not just the tiles cities will use.

Auto-pollution is useful once you start building factories and hospitals.

 

[pdescobar]

Personally, I hate managing workers. Early in the game when there's just a few I tell them what to do.

Later on, I normally have one native worker or two-four slaves (depending on whether or not I've done much conquest) automating around each city. I'm lazy and normally just shift-I them at this point, but if I ever decide to learn how to optimize irrigation/mining I'd use the shift-ctrl-I so they don't screw it up.

Once I learn railroad, I unautomate everyone and manually build rail to connect all of my cities in the least number of tiles. After the rail interconnection is complete, they go back to working individual cities.

If I have a bunch of slaves to use, as the natives finish their city, I hold them in reserve for emergencies or for building rail between conquered cities during war. When I get hospitals up, I will often just join all the natives into the cities and let the slaves do all the work. Hoepefully I have a slave surplus so I can keep a stack fortified in case I need them.

Once individual cities are fully improved, the remaining slave workers are set to shift-A (could be shift-ctrl-A if you want to protect mining/irrigation) so that they go and rail any unused territory and deal with pollution as it pops up. My only real complaint with this method is that the computer loves to cross "friendly" territory if you acquire another city on the continent not connected to yours and then I'm forced to unautomate everybody if the intervening territory isn't railed and easily crossable.

The problem I have with auto-pollution is that once pollution is cleaned, they just stop and want me to tell them what to do. If auto-pollution worked like regular automation and they slept in cities when they were done, I'd probably use that instead late in the game and deal with any extra roads/rail i need myself.

 

[hbdragon88]

I was referring to Ctrl+N. It roads to every city and resource. It cost me five turns in which I could have told my workers to do something else.

And yeah, when I conquered France, I had that identical thing - neat columns of mines. Same thing when I overran France, England, and Germany.