How to use your workers

[V.O.C.'02]

I've been playing for a couple of games now, and I am trying to figure how I should place mij mines, irrigation.

Can somebodey tell me which tiles I should mine and which to irrigate? What does it mean when I buil about 8 mines around my city? I get for example 8 extra shield, does that mean that a library which costs 80n turns, now only takes 72 (80-8) turns.

Please fill me in, I need to go to a decent level in this.

[Grrr]

A tile such as plains normally produces one shield. If this is the only shield producing tile in your city, then a library will take 80 turns. (80 shields / 1) If you mine that plain, it will produce 2 shields your library will be built in 40 turns. (80 shields / 2).

[Grrr]

In general you should improve the tiles a city is using. Look in the city view which tiles are being worked, and if more food or sheilds are required. Then irrigate/mine tiles to improve these aspects.

You may want to automate workers to avoid the hassle. They do a reasonable job.

[Harovan]

My general rules:

Roads everywhere
Railroads in all city radius tiles.
Forest and jungle cut in all city radius tiles (except tundra).

Grassland - mined
Plains - irrigated, except cattle and wheat (mined)
Floodplains - irrigated
Desert - depends, irrigated or mined while it makes sense
Hills - mined
Mountains - mined
Tundra - forest planted

If a city has many mountains and I need food for the miners, I may irrigate some grassland as well.

I let my workers do their jobs in 1- or 2-turn gangs. When the basic job (forest cutting, tile improvements and roads) is done, I Shift-A my workers, so they make the railroad sleaze and pollution cleaning automatically.

[Ethelred]

Sir Ralph said it well.

I redo some tiles after railroads so I am not wasting production on specialists. I try to have the all the tiles worked and just enough food for the all the workers. Sometimes a city will have so much bonus food that even if I mine everypossible tile the population will go over twenty. The rest of the time I balance the food to stop growth at twenty or earlier for cities that are sharing tiles. Then I try to balance out production between the cities for efficient use of shields when producing Modern Armour or tanks if its earlier.

Early in the game however you shouldn't just develop tiles willy nilly. Only have your workers improve the tiles that you need to work. This not always the tiles the city governor is working at the moment. If the population is growing faster than you are improving tiles there may be tiles that being worked that are not the best ones to improve.

Improve the important tiles and connect the cities and resources then you can go back and improve other stuff. I like to have roads everywhere eventually so I can move units quickly for defense but I can't do that till the workers don't have anything important to improve.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
...
Grassland - mined
Plains - irrigated, except cattle and wheat (mined)
...

If the grassland produces 1 shield already, I'll definitely mine
(becomes three production after building railroads above).
edit: otherwise not (occasionally if prod is that lousy early on)

If I have plenty food and little production, I'll also mine plains for the same reason as above.

AJ

[SlowwHand]

I put them on automatic.

[Nym]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Roads everywhere

Absolutely

[Nym]

Originally posted by Ethelred
Only have your workers improve the tiles that you need to work.

Of course. It is very important in the beginning not to lose time improving unused tiles.

[Harovan]

One more note, if you in the early game have in the radius of your capital or another city w/o corruption (must be close) 1 cattle on grassland and 1 shielded grassland tile: irrigate the cow, mine the shielded grassland. Makes a 10-turn settler factory, without bothering with intermediate productions. Build this up and set order settler, settler, settler, ... etc. Build 2-3 of them and have the base for a solid early expansion.

[Grrr]

I put railroads everywhere. It is essential for good defence.