Does anyone manage a city's workers?

rwprice · April 7, 2002, 01:31

I'm just curious...do any of you take the time to check on the positioning of the workers in your cities? I was thinking about this, and this is something I rarely do. Maybe that's because the few times I bothered to do this, I rarely found a whole lot of difference by moving them around. Have you found that you can gain an advantage by carefully managing this aspect yourself?

PhoenixPhlame73 · April 7, 2002, 01:45

I usually only manage my city's workers if there is some reason that my attention has been brought to the city, for instance, if it was no longer growing at size two or three, if it is producing something particularly important, or if it is one of my four or five largest cities, those I check regularly.

Playa del Carmen · April 7, 2002, 02:18

I do occasionally. But generally I let the governor take care of things. And of course, if the city's rioting and I can't make anymore entertainers without starving people, I have to let them starve. Kind of sad, kind of necessary. But that's generally the only time I mess with the little boogers.

Ethelred · April 7, 2002, 02:22

Sometimes. Nearly every city at several times a game.

When I run out of happiness.

When I hit the aquaduct limit

When I hit the hospital limit

All those call for setting growth to zero and maximizing production. Otherwise I can be wasting a lot of time producing unused food.

Occasionally I go in to maximize growth. Sometimes wealth.

Aeson · April 7, 2002, 03:47

I almost always manage my city's workers until about 500AD. After that there are just too many of them to keep up with, and the rewards for doing so are minimal. During the initial expansion phase, taking a couple turns off of each build (especially Settlers) can lead to an exponential increase in production. The returns double about every 15-20 turns, making a big difference throughout the rest of the game.

Jawa Jocky · April 7, 2002, 03:56

You can do better, but why bother.

Beren · April 7, 2002, 04:47

For example. Small (size 2) city in plains area. I build irrigation and I make sure the city immediately switches.
I sometimes check it out and every time I am in a city I just click once to make sure they spread the production nice.

nbarclay · April 7, 2002, 22:20

I'm definitely a micromanager. I've had too many times when the game wanted to put a person in forest or on a mountain to maximize production when I wanted the person on a tile that would emphasize growth to trust the game in that regard. And keeping up with where people are working lets me focus on building tile improvements when and where they are needed; I hate working unimproved tiles (except maybe forest with game in despotism), but building tile improvements that won't be used for a long time wastes workers' time.

Nathan

Marquis de Sodaq · April 7, 2002, 23:16

All the time! Whenever a city starts building something new, I try to optimize the shield production. As Aeson points out, doing this early on reaps rewards later. In the later stages of the game it matters less.

rpodos · April 7, 2002, 23:40

I've been lazy lately, and have just let the city governor manage things.

It's a boon in terms of game "speed" and let's me focus on the big picture and the metagame. Also, no disorder.

That said, I think I am going to follow Aeson's example, and micro-manage until 1000-500BC.

The one thing that I do mid-game, to deal with the governor not managing food when you already have 12 pop, is to draft a Rifleman every time a city hits 12. I'm still figuring out what to do with all the conscripts... so far I've been using them for mountain fortresses (the math still works well, even with only 2 hps).

Deathwalker · April 8, 2002, 05:37

Personally I like to manage my workers, It gives me more control over were I want roads ans so on. Just as a quick question what are to commands for workers to do specific jobs

player1 · April 8, 2002, 07:19

Sometimes when I build new Mine or Irrgration.

Always when polltion start.
Sine you need to put laborers back after pollution is cleared.

And in several other cases.

player1 · April 8, 2002, 07:23

Hey!

I became KING (Prince ==> King).

Now, 2000 more post to go (for Emperor).

Nym · April 8, 2002, 07:35

I usually let the governor manage the worker (default management), but I intervene when the city :

can't grow further (aqueduct, hospital...),
produces a wonder (I try to improve shield production, even with starvation beginning if valuable),
encounters happiness problems (I try to solve civil disorder, even with starvation).

bigvic · April 8, 2002, 09:55

I generally find it a pain, wish they had taken a clue from the ctp series and not only gotten rid or these memory and time eating unit that invariably at some point appear in hordes of animated busyness, but also wish they had gotten rid of the entire concept of allocating city workers to specific tiles. Again, what a pain, even for the micromanager freak. As much as I hate it, if you let the AI do all the above and do not carefully moniter things, the AI will screw you yet again.

Stupid things the AI does w/ both workers and city laborers (they are inextricably related)
1. Sets workers to irrigating city squares of cities unable to grow due to lack of proper growth improvement, even to the point of tearing down mines when the city is doing just fine. Watch for this, the AI does it every time.
2. Allocates city laborers to food producing tiles even when unable to grow (same reason as above) instead of maxing out gold or production.

Am I missing something? I just do not trust these governors.

3. Does not really attempt to link empire w/ roads soon enough. If you want that somewhat removed iron or spice city linked anytime soon, you have to do it.

4. Can't understand the efficacy of "worker mobs", i.e. lumping togethrer hordes of workers around, usually, wonder producing cities and busting out production and sometimes pop growth improvements.

5. Fails to adequately re-assign laborers immediately after completion of harbors, or growth. When you simply click on the city to re-assign workers after completion of a harbor, it often completely ignores production in favor of food, and you must manually tinker w/ it till you get some growth and shields.

Again, I don't mess w/ governors much at all, so maybe I'm spouting out a bunch of ignorant garbage here.

rwprice · April 8, 2002, 12:48

I guess I need to clarify this a little. I'm not talking about the units that you can see on the map and which build roads and improvements. What I mean are the ones within the city--actually I should have used the term "laborers" rather than "workers". I'm asking about the placement of the laborers to maximize food, shield and wealth production. Thanks for all the replies so far.

Ethelred · April 8, 2002, 16:34

Quote:

Originally posted by bigvic
I
Stupid things the AI does w/ both workers and city laborers (they are inextricably related)
1. Sets workers to irrigating city squares of cities unable to grow due to lack of proper growth improvement, even to the point of tearing down mines when the city is doing just fine. Watch for this, the AI does it every time.

Try Shift-A automation. Then they won't replace anything.

Late in the game I set most of my workers to SHIFT-A and keep some to do the things I can't trust the automation to take care of. Like mining the grasslands.

twistedx · April 8, 2002, 16:43

I usually just let the AI do it itself, with three exceptions:

- If city is at zero growth because it picked out piss-poor places get get food from.

- If city is in revolt, and I need some entertainers.

- When I conquer a city, and I need to use it more as a strategic base rather than a city. I usually set all the people to entertainers and let the discontents starve.

Other than that, I find it EXTREMELY boring to manage them.

-- twistedx

Felch · April 8, 2002, 18:16

I generally avoid micromanagement.

Adm.Naismith · April 8, 2002, 19:09

Micromanaging is the most relevant difference between mediocre and great game results.
I usually am so lazy to check labourer only every some game turn or after special events, and I use specialist very scarcely, if not for raising happiness, but often my games end with a ranking not worth to mention.

Great players usually micromanage in excess, carefully reallocating labourers and specialists almost every turn. It's a very bad and heavy task for me, as I hate this kind of time loss.

I want to be a strategist, a general ruler, not a tactical player, but the game governors aren't good enough to relieve me from the task, as bigvic already mentioned before.

Civ III introduce some enhancement to reduce micromgmt, as get rid of Caravans and Spies units but the horrible and well hidden - they confused covert operation with covert interface

- espionage mission panel and the unbalanced mix of costs vs results ruined the improvement.

Nothing good happened with labourer rules, I'm afraid, and that is one of the missed Civ III opportunity to evolve into a new game. But that's another story no one wants to mention again, I suppose.

Rasputin · April 8, 2002, 23:04

i only tend to adjust my labourers when i need to rush production of a wonder of city improvemnt . Apart from then i allow the game to manage without me. Except of course to occasionaly re-assign entertainers that are no longer needed.

bigvic · April 9, 2002, 13:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Ethelred

Try Shift-A automation. Then they won't replace anything.

Late in the game I set most of my workers to SHIFT-A and keep some to do the things I can't trust the automation to take care of. Like mining the grasslands.

Thanks for the tip. Still, one must keep an eye out. I kind of fear I might overlook something in that case, though keeping a couple of worker mobs undder my control would plug the gaps when i do want to replace an improvement. Have you noticed the harbor thing? I hate that. Makes building harbors a pain. Even if the ai could allocate workers to get, say growth in 10 instead of 6 turns and still have enough production to build that temple in 20 instead of 40 turns, it will invariable choose the food deal, then allocate the growth laborer to more food. Ick.

PerpetualNewbie · April 9, 2002, 14:24

I didn't quite follow you, bigvic. What is the harbor problem? The +1 food from water tiles making for more rapid growth? I usually account for the harbor effect before I begin irrigating any tiles, so the net result in most of my coastal cities is that while before they were capped at 6-8 due to lack of food, they now grow to 10-12.

Usually, managing tile improvements (irrigation or mine) is much more important than managing the actual city laborers, at least in my games.

Incidentally, I wish there was a set of checkboxes for worker automation. I personally would set workers to never irrigate unless told otherwise. That would involve a lot more intervention for the desert communities, but drastically reduce the mistakes it makes in improving terrain in grassland and plains...

bigvic · April 9, 2002, 15:15

The problem is that when the ai could balance growth and production in these situations (city w/ harbor) it almost always completely ignores production. This can be a real pain in terms of micromanagement in the case of running a civ stuck on an iceberg continent, or any that depends on a lot of coastal cities located on less than fertile plains. Oh well, guess that's just a part of the game. Micromanagement can be fun sometimes, unless its 3 in the morning, in which case I should be sleeping anyway.