Workers

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have put some changes to the worker units in for the next release under my modules so people can turn them off if they don't like them.

The main change is that now workers upgrade.

Gatherers available from start (work speed 1)
Workers available with Sedentary Lifestyle (work speed 2)
Indian Fast Workers available with Polythesum requiring Indian Culture (work speed 3)

New
At Plough/Plow (with work speed 3.5)
- Work Mule if you have a Mule Trainer
- Work Elephant if you have an Elephant Trainer

At Gunpowder (with work speed 4)
Industrial Age Worker

At Motorised Transportation (with work speed 4.5)
Modern Worker

Clones have work speed 4.75
Androids work speed 5 (I need to change the art for these at some time.)

 

[Nevets_]

Small suggestion:

Maybe move the industrial worker to Explosives or Steam Power. It wasn't until the introduction of TNT and the Steam Shovel that manual labor changed from the picks / hand shovels / wheelbarrows that people had been using since Classical times.

I can whip up some new buttons tomorrow, I'm thinking just adding a small Mule/Elephant/TNT/Jackhammer in the top left of an existing icon, maybe change the colors a bit.

 

[climat]

What does work speed mean? movement?
Indian Fast Workers (work speed 3) are upgraded to Work Mule/Elephant (work speed 2.5). Isn't this a loss?

 

[Hydromancerx]

Don't forget the Clones and Androids that are already in the game.

Clone
Req Tech: Cloning
Req Building: Cloning Lab
Movement: 3

Android
Req Tech: Androids
Req Building: Android Lab
Movement: 3

I think the Modern worker should be able to upgrade to them. So something like ...

Gatherer -> Worker -> Fast Worker -> Work Animal -> Industrial Worker -> Modern Worker -> Clone -> Android

And then change the speed of the Clone to 4 and Android to 5.

What do you think?

EDIT: On a side note I think perhaps the Fast Worker should be just taken out and have the Indian unique unit replaced with the Urumi Swordsman.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Small suggestion:

Maybe move the industrial worker to Explosives or Steam Power. It wasn't until the introduction of TNT and the Steam Shovel that manual labor changed from the picks / hand shovels / wheelbarrows that people had been using since Classical times.

I can whip up some new buttons tomorrow, I'm thinking just adding a small Mule/Elephant/TNT/Jackhammer in the top left of an existing icon, maybe change the colors a bit.

Well at least someone noticed my obvious mistake. I meant to use Explosives but typed Gunpowder in the file. I will fix.

The button idea sounds great.

What does work speed mean? movement?
Indian Fast Workers (work speed 3) are upgraded to Work Mule/Elephant (work speed 2.5). Isn't this a loss?

Work speed is the base speed they do stuff at, build improvements and so on. It is actually x100 and the percentages from techs are applied to it.

The numbers in the OP were miss typed. Fixed now.

Don't forget the Clones and that are already in the game.

Clone
Req Tech: Cloning
Req Building: Cloning Lab
Movement: 3

Android
Req Tech: Androids
Req Building: Android Lab
Movement: 3

I think the Modern worker should be able to upgrade to them. So something like ...

Gatherer -> Worker -> Fast Worker -> Work Animal -> Industrial Worker -> Modern Worker -> Clone -> Android

And then change the speed of the Clone to 4 and Android to 5.

What do you think?

EDIT: On a side note I think perhaps the Fast Worker should be just taken out and have the Indian unique unit replaced with the Urumi Swordsman.

Yes I had not gotten to them in my experimenting is all. I have been tweaking the numbers by seeing how it goes in game. With these upgrades you need a lot fewer workers.

 

[Koshling]

Well at least someone noticed my obvious mistake. I meant to use Explosives but typed Gunpowder in the file. I will fix.

The button idea sounds great.



Work speed is the base speed they do stuff at, build improvements and so on. It is actually x100 and the percentages from techs are applied to it.

The numbers in the OP were miss typed. Fixed now.



Yes I had not gotten to them in my experimenting is all. I have been tweaking the numbers by seeing how it goes in game. With these upgrades you need a lot fewer workers.

Do you need to bother with auto upgrade via python? If you make them regular unit upgrades why not just make the player pay to upgrade them like any other unit?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Do you need to bother with auto upgrade via python? If you make them regular unit upgrades why not just make the player pay to upgrade them like any other unit?

Mainly because the AI doesn't upgrade its units. In this case the different workers can only do worker actions that are available when they are. Thus a gatherer can't plant a farm. I was fed up with the hover over text going off the screen.

 

[Koshling]

Mainly because the AI doesn't upgrade its units. In this case the different workers can only do worker actions that are available when they are. Thus a gatherer can't plant a farm. I was fed up with the hover over text going off the screen.

The ai does upgrade it's units but only if it thinks the upgradesareworth it. It may be that the ai doesn't include worker speed in it's evaluation. If so I need to change that anyway

 

[Nevets_]

Does the 'worth it' calculation look at the final cost of the upgrade? Maybe you could give all workers a warlord type promotion and make them very cheap to upgrade.

 

[Nevets_]

Here are the new buttons I promised. I wasn't able to test that they work properly in-game, so if you can't get them to show up let me know.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Here are the new buttons I promised. I wasn't able to test that they work properly in-game, so if you can't get them to show up let me know.

Those are cool buttons.

 

[Koshling]

Does the 'worth it' calculation look at the final cost of the upgrade? Maybe you could give all workers a warlord type promotion and make them very cheap to upgrade.

Yes, the ai understands the cost side, but it may be (I'm traveling and oly have access to an iPad currently, so I can't check) that it doesn't understand the benefit ithe specific case of worker speed.

 

[Nevets_]

Would it be possible to give workers strength ratings and 'only defend' like scouts?

Just really low numbers, but enough that upgrading them is a no-brainer for the AI. Plus, it gives your workers a chance to fight off animal attacks.

Gatherer 1
Worker 2
Mule Worker 3
Elephant Worker 3
Industrial Worker 5
Modern Worker 8

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Would it be possible to give workers strength ratings and 'only defend' like scouts?

Just really low numbers, but enough that upgrading them is a no-brainer for the AI. Plus, it gives your workers a chance to fight off animal attacks.

Gatherer 1
Worker 2
Mule Worker 3
Elephant Worker 3
Industrial Worker 5
Modern Worker 8

Thanks for the buttons, see first post.

Giving combat strength to work units causes CTDs. Afforess reckoned it was really deep in the code and possibly in the bit we can't mod.

 

[ori]

Giving combat strength to work units causes CTDs. Afforess reckoned it was really deep in the code and possibly in the bit we can't mod.

aren't mud golems in FFH/rife worker units with defense only combat strength?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

aren't mud golems in FFH/rife worker units with defense only combat strength?

All I know is that removing combat strength from worker units fixed a CTD or "Waiting for Civs" bug that was stopping RoM/AND.

 

[ori]

I seem to recall (now speaking of FFH) that there was such a problem with giving units with a combat_type other than workers the ability to create roads,

Edit: but its easy enough to test, I'll probably just see what happens if I do this in my local copy

 

[ThoricFrame]

Yes I remember elephant units that could build roads often caused RoM to break... Something about trying to build roads somewhere with enemy units in the way?

 

[ori]

ok, now I gave every worker some iCombat and the Canonlydefend tag. Lets wee where we go, so far no crash

Anyhow: Is it on purpose that the stats for clones and androids are listed both in the main Civ4UnitInfos.xml and the worker_upgrades_CIV4UnitInfos.xml in zzExperimental?

 

[Koshling]

ok, now I gave every worker some iCombat and the Canonlydefend tag. Lets wee where we go, so far no crash

Anyhow: Is it on purpose that the stats for clones and androids are listed both in the main Civ4UnitInfos.xml and the worker_upgrades_CIV4UnitInfos.xml in zzExperimental?

The ai will do bizarre things on occasion u less it gets recoded to cope properly with workers that can defend. This could be a fair amount of work to get right. I don't really recommend. I can so,ve the ai's desire to upgrade workers much more easily by a more direct route which will be a far simpler and more localized change