Limited Replaceability of Non-Native Workers

[Solomwi]

A minor point, and one that may have been obvious to most of you, but just in case... (btw, for the purposes of this post, native refers to citizens/workers of my civ)

We all enjoy the benefits of maintenance-free workers, even if they are slow and lazy. The only real problem I've ever had with non-native workers is that they aren't replenishable, like native workers are, which makes them ill-suited for airfields, colonies, etc. to the extent that one uses them, but also puts a crimp on your non-native work force, since it becomes more a product of happenstance than design, to a large extent.

I'd noticed this before, but it never really clicked until my current game (the Germany one I've posted about). When building a worker in a city full of foreigners, the worker comes out foreign. I just always thought once that happened that I was still paying maintenance on that worker, since I did build him. Turns out that is not the case, creating a win-win situation when you've got an enemy core that you've conquered and now need to subdue. I should state here that especially on my own continent, I generally don't raze cities. As always at this point in the game, I've got many native cities that are small enough and unimportant enough to be worker factories, so my postwar method for those obscenely large metros the AI loves so much has become:

1. Get a Library/Temple up ASAP, and get those borders out, as well as building anti-flip culture, and markets as needed for happiness.
2. Queue up nothing but workers until the first native citizen shows up in the city.
3. As food allows, mine the over-irrigated tiles with my own workers.
4. Meanwhile, building up my worker force from my small tundra towns, those building aqueducts/hospitals, those squeezed between metros, etc.
5. Once the metro has been reduced as far as possible through creating workers, add a stack of native workers to get it back to optimum size.

This is primarily for former rivals on my continent, where I can still manage some semi-productive cities out of the AI core. The benefits I've found are as follows:
> lack of rep hit for razing
> no need to stockpile settlers during conquest (I abhor letting that many idle pop points sit around and, due to the rush of getting them at the right time, the loss of a few productive cities that could be building improvements/units)
> no need to rebuild any improvements your troops spared
> maintain some productivity, science and trade-wise, during the process.
> large force of free, non-native workers now available.

As implied, I've had my best success with this in my Ind/Mod wars. I don't know how it would work on smaller maps, since the scale of a huge map means the maintenance of building 20 native workers and keeping them doing odd jobs for 10-20 turns before they can be added to a couple of cities is merely a drop in the bucket.

Like I said, a fairly obvious premise, I just wanted to throw it out there for any of you who, like me, hadn't connected all the dots.

Of course, the drawback is a chance of flipping in the interim (small, the way I play, but YMMV)... and sometimes it's just fun to raze a size 30 city.

[Harovan]

Well, there is another method to get foreign workers without wasting lots of cash to rush temples/libraries etc., and without having to micromanage anything. Just raze the city and have about 1/3 - 1/2 of its population instantly converted into foreign workers.

[Solomwi]

Eh, rush the library/temple now in a size 24 city or next turn in a size 1. Six of one hand half a dozen of another, the way I play.

I should add that a real boon to this in my current game was getting the Internet while I was destroying China, eliminating the absolute need to buy a library. Other than those one or two goldrush jobs in each city, and setting up the queue with workers, there's surprisingly little micromanagement to this, especially if you skip step 3, which is more a pet peeve of mine than a crucial part of the strategy (though it does help hold off that first native citizen).

And besides, do you really want to raze a Beijing with the Pyramids?

[Harovan]

Wonder cities should be spared, of course. Also, your method works only after the resistance ends, and with big metropolises that may mean many turns guarding it with half of your army, and still having a risk.

There is another method to get the city with almost no risk to having it fliping back. That's Aeson's "Recycling Blitz" strategy. It works, after you discovered Recycling; when you sell improvements, you get 1/4 of their initial cost back in shields, additionally to the gold you usually get. Take the city with mobile units (mostly modern armor). Since it never flips back at it's first turn, you have exactly one turn time. Set the city to a settler and then sell improvements, till the shield box for the settler is full. The settler will be built next turn, regardless if the city is under resistance, riots, or whatever. It will be a foreign settler, but that doesn't matter. Now abandon the city and refound it with the settler. You get a city without resistance, with only the stock war weariness ("Stop the aggression against our mother country") and with only one instead of 20+ foreign citizens. And what wonder, this citizen will produce the same (1 shield, 1 gold) the 20+ would have produced, too. This method doesn't net you workers (hence it's off topic here), but it's a nice tactics to get around the flipping risk.

[Solomwi]

No doubt, I hadn't seen that one before. It's looking more and more specific to my playstyle, but I never have to guard the city with units I could otherwise use. The China conquest was typical of my late Ind/Mod wars in that a couple turns after the war ended, resistance was over.

This is a combination of the war taking a while, since China was well defended and had a couple of spots, as all AI civs seem to do, where even the fastest mover needed two turns to get to another city. Once I had taken their fringe cities with the outdated defenders, I had 30+ Cavs sitting around with nothing better to do than quell resistance, and until the borders expanded, every city I took got an MI at least to keep a counterattack from succeeding, and any Panzers I needed to get healed quickly, so by the time I made peace, a good chunk of resistance was already taken care of. The turn after the war ends is always the biggie. Most of my units are sitting idle that turn, and with them spread out over the cities, almost all the possible resistance tends to end that turn.

Just for the record, though, I'm getting 56 shields and 44 commerce from one Chinese city (captured with factory intact), and after just a few turns was getting more than the one shield in most of them. As I said (or should have, if I didn't), it really only works with an area that can be productive. Waiting 10 turns for each worker, or having to spend 36 gold per city every other turn would point toward razing.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
There is another method to get the city with almost no risk to having it fliping back. That's Aeson's "Recycling Blitz" strategy. It works, after you discovered Recycling; when you sell improvements, you get 1/4 of their initial cost back in shields, .

I didn't know that about recycling. good tip

ontopic, sort of:

I noticed a little while ago that when you build a settler out of foreigners, it shows up at the bottom of the F3 scree with the captured workers. Weird.

[Datajack Franit]

Just seize the most important (aka Wonders) cities, raze the others, found your own new ones and fill them with the slaves- facile