Industrious Civs - Use workers in battle campaigns!

Libertarian · November 12, 2001, 07:35

It's a bit tedious, but boy does it ever pay off! Bring workers along with your military when you're fighting. Industrial workers build roads and railroads fast. You can literally lay down roads and railroads for your military units right under their feet as they advance!

This works only if you're in your own or neutral territory. As you approach your battle target, let your workers pave the way all the way as far as you can. This often enables you to stage artillery close to the scene, and advance and remobilize your units with the highest possible efficiency. Once you've taken your objective, your workers can get to work on improvements right away.

Be sure to keep them protected, though. The AI loves snatching unprotected workers.

challenge · November 13, 2001, 16:50

When approaching the border of another civ, I've been bringing one or two workers along as sort of an engineer corps. The build the roads for the follow-up units and the defensive fortifications to hold the terrain with. Two of them can build a road really fast -- advanced movement, no waiting.

Monoriu · November 13, 2001, 20:06

-I 100% agree with using workers to build infrastructure as my army advances. I have been doing that since civ2 and this is one of the few civ 2 strategies that still work.

-However I disagree with being industrious just for this reason. I am not industrious but I can still instantly build roads and railroads by using 2x workers for the job. I have 60+ workers sitting around doing nothing because every tile has been improved to max and there is a maginot line of forts at my borders already. Workers is not a rare commodity in civ 3.

Kc7mxo · November 13, 2001, 22:24

I too often wonder what to do with the hordes of workers that I end up accumilating. I'ven oticed that I can trade for workers with enemy civs, why can't I sell mine?

I ussually just stack them up on a mountain in a fort with a defensive unit and forget about them.

Monoriu · November 13, 2001, 22:28

You need to park them in your capital before you can sell them.

What to do with useless workers:

- join cities to increase population
- pollution cleaners.
- build railroads in tiles out of city range so that you won't accidentlly move units into those tiles and lose a turn
- use them as combat engineers as described earlier in this thread
- infinite forest exploitation (IFE, copyrighted by soulassassin).

Zurai001 · November 13, 2001, 22:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
I too often wonder what to do with the hordes of workers that I end up accumilating. I'ven oticed that I can trade for workers with enemy civs, why can't I sell mine?

I ussually just stack them up on a mountain in a fort with a defensive unit and forget about them.

You can sell your workers, if you have them in your capital.

IronSpam · November 13, 2001, 22:44

message deleted

Sava · November 14, 2001, 08:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Monoriu
- infinite forest exploitation (IFE, copyrighted by soulassassin).

LOL, thats RIGHT!!!

I'll post a post various save games that show the evolution of the game when IFEing from the beginning. I don't think you guys understand how much IFEing can be exploited. There is no way Firaxis intended for it to be used in that way.

challenge · November 14, 2001, 13:24

Or maybe they did consider it and figure it was just a way to help us win?

Actually, it's pretty limited to harvest at the beginning. Until you have the ability to replant trees (which my early Civ seems unable to do) IFE replaces a steady 2 shields/turn with one quick 10 shield hit on production. Six turns afterward you are losing ground since the effective gain of removing the trees (10) is offset by the cost of removing them (2*6=12).

Without the ability to replant the trees you are giving up long-term production for a short-term gain. Okay, if that's what you want, but I don't think IFE(tm) is the grand solution you portray it to be. It takes time to harvest, time to replant (with the right tech) and I'm not sure you gain all that much in the end. As a way to kick start a building project, or to put the finishing touches on it when nearly complete, I can see it. As a "game winning" strategy, it has a short coming (but don't they all).

IronSpam · November 14, 2001, 13:43

Planting trees comes with the Engineering advance, so recycling forests doesn't come until the Middle Ages.

ranald · December 12, 2001, 20:08

Quote:

Originally posted by Monoriu
-I 100% agree with using workers to build infrastructure as my army advances. I have been doing that since civ2 and this is one of the few civ 2 strategies that still work.

-However I disagree with being industrious just for this reason. I am not industrious but I can still instantly build roads and railroads by using 2x workers for the job. I have 60+ workers sitting around doing nothing because every tile has been improved to max and there is a maginot line of forts at my borders already. Workers is not a rare commodity in civ 3.

The time I took 15 cities in one turn from someone who didn't
have railroads, I was *very* glad to be Industrious. I didn't
think it was possible, but I had to build so many damn railroads
I was starting to run out of workers.

Anything that gives you the same results for 1/2 the initial
investment (and reduces the micromanagement burden) is
good in my book.

Venger · December 13, 2001, 01:52

Some notes -

First - I've previously suggested the creation of a Combat Engineer unit, 6/6/1, which can build roads, railroads, and forts. This unit should also introduce minefields in a hex (okay, that was off the top of my head - could work with some thinking though...)

Second - I usually conquer my enemies after they have roads and such, take a city, and use the new city radius to advance units to the next one, take it, use that city radius to advance units, etc. This way you avoid the cant use incompatible city roads (!?!?!) of enemy Civs...

Venger

Provost Harrison · December 13, 2001, 08:37

Pollution cleaning in the industrial era becomes an important task for my workers. Before mass transit, that population-based pollution is a real pain, so you need a lot of workers around to tackle any problems that may occur.

But yeah, I had a right of passage with one nation so I built a railway right across their territory so I could get my grubby hands on beavers by capturing a city. Did the trick

Ineffablebob · December 13, 2001, 09:00

Quote:

Originally posted by SoulAssassin

LOL, thats RIGHT!!!

I'll post a post various save games that show the evolution of the game when IFEing from the beginning. I don't think you guys understand how much IFEing can be exploited. There is no way Firaxis intended for it to be used in that way.

Note that they fixed this in the patch. It says that you can now gain the shield bonus for woodcutting only once per square per game.

rah · December 13, 2001, 11:47

Quote:

Originally posted by challenge
Or maybe they did consider it and figure it was just a way to help us win?

Actually, it's pretty limited to harvest at the beginning. Until you have the ability to replant trees (which my early Civ seems unable to do) IFE replaces a steady 2 shields/turn with one quick 10 shield hit on production. Six turns afterward you are losing ground since the effective gain of removing the trees (10) is offset by the cost of removing them (2*6=12).

Without the ability to replant the trees you are giving up long-term production for a short-term gain. Okay, if that's what you want, but I don't think IFE(tm) is the grand solution you portray it to be. It takes time to harvest, time to replant (with the right tech) and I'm not sure you gain all that much in the end. As a way to kick start a building project, or to put the finishing touches on it when nearly complete, I can see it. As a "game winning" strategy, it has a short coming (but don't they all).

Your math doesn't work when you include corruption. There is no long term production loss when the city will never produce more than one shield whatever you do. And sometimes you can't afford to put the city person on the forest because you just aren't generating any surplus food.

ranald · December 13, 2001, 19:41

Without lumberjacking (IFE) you are always better off
removing the forest and never replanting it.

You get better production from improving the underlying
terrain (mines/irrigation), and it only gets better when you
can build railroads.

With IFE, you can turn workers' downtime into extra shields.
If you can stand the micromanagement, IFE encourages
you to simply build as many workers as you can possibly
afford and rewards you with amazing production.

BTW, before the patch you could plant and harvest the same
tile any number of times in one turn. At one point in one of my
games I found it took 3 workers to instantly plant a forest
and 4 to instantly cut it down, so I had these 7-workers teams
that would move from city to city, lumberjacking for whatever
city needed the boost the most at the time. I think the most
workers I ever had working one tile in one turn was 42.

Personally, I'm glad the patch removed IFE.

GeorgeWang · December 14, 2001, 06:51

IFE is good because as mentioned before, workers aren't hard to get in Civ 3. It actually gets better in the industrial age because workers become really cheap, you have a ton left over from railroading your empire, and you are probably in a democracy.

Consider industrious + democracy + engineering (x4 worker efficiency) that keeps builds workers when there's nothing else to build. Sure, an extra 10 shields isn't going to make that big of a difference in industrious age. However, 20 teams, not at all hard to get, and its +200 shields per turn for less than a hundred gold upkeep.

Now, look at your empire. Doesn't it often seem you waste alot of shields because city shield production doesn't neatly fit into the limits. I.E. it wastes tons of shields on the last turn... So really, that +200 shields/turn which was alone would be approximately the shield output of three cities is actually even better than that because its far more efficient. And of course no corruption loss...

gnomos · December 14, 2001, 11:16

Well, I have to say I'm disappointed with the solution to IFE. Granted, something needed to be done, it's nonsensical to be able to harvest the same square 4-5 times in a turn. But planting trees and reharvesting them is workable, lumber companies have been doing this for generations. The big problem I think was allowing stacked workers to instantly create a forest. it makes no sense that you can throw a pile of workers on a tile to make trees grow fast. What do they all do, sit there and think good thoughts at the tree? "Grow, my lovely tree, grow strong!" I think replanting and harvesting should be allowed, just limit it to only allowing one unit in the tile to be planting during a turn.

Padmewan · December 14, 2001, 16:17

Don't let those workers over-accumulate! You pay gold upkeep on them. If they're not doing work for you, have them join low-pop cities.

Xin Yu · December 14, 2001, 18:55

It is better to use a settler to build a small city inside enemy territory to a) provide a rest place for your injured troops and b) let your troops move faster (inside enemy terrritory road is useless since your troops move 1 space per moving point even on roads). Workers can be obtained easily by razing enemy cities, so it is not necessary to bring your own.

Generally, you use one settler to build a city then launch attack from it. Then raze large cities to get some workers and move them back to your city to rush build some more troops. Keep small cities since they'll be ok after a short period of time.