Automated workers lounging in cities

[LongKnife56]

Since I am just learning Civ 4 I automated each of my workers to improve a city and later for a number of them to further improve a particular city and then kinda forgot about them.

Later, when I went to check on them, I found them lounging about inside the city. I assume they were just resting from their hard labors and were not doing anything useful.

How come you don't get a message saying we can't find anything else to do at your pathetic level of tech and resoources for this city - how 'bout you move us to a different one?

Is there a way to cycle through just automated workers? I guess once I get a better feel of what to build and where and when, I won't automate them, but I was doing it while learning the game partly to see what they thought was important to build.

[Saldrin]

Yeah, they are pretty lazy lol. Reminds me of when I was interning at a state job...wow talk about laziness.... They worked harder at not working than actually working.

What I do is every once in awhile, just click the city name bar once, and it will list what units are in there. I look for the workers and send them back on thier way.

[lordbrat]

I used to create a worker per city and have it improve that city only. After a bit I noticed that the workers seemed to be lounging in the city... I guess there was nothing left to improve in that city.

For my current game, I've set each worker to improve the entire country and that seems to have worked. Only recently have I noticed my hordes of workers hanging out in a few key citys. But there are roads, farms, cottages and all sorts of stuff littering.. er dotting the landscape.

Also, if you don't restrict them to working one specific city, they are more prone to connecting cities and resources to your trade network via roads.

[Silencer]

Workers work just fine - if they aren't working there is simply nothing more to work on. But if you won't to make manual adjustments then do so... I use automatic workesr now and find it very usful... not like in previous civs - workers now are smarter (but not that smart as WE would like )

[Slartibartfast]

Razing towns

Another thing about those automated workers: I started out doing all tile improvements manually, including building some nice cottages on places where I thought they might be useful.

After a while I put my workers on auto, and they promptly started building workshops on the same tiles. Meanwhile my cottages had grown to towns - and it seems like a waste to raze gold-producing towns, doesn't it?

[Slartibartfast]

Just an afterthought

Is there any way to instruct those workers to improve only those tiles which don't have any previous improvements (except roads)?

[Lasher555]

Re: Just an afterthought

Originally posted by Slartibartfast
Is there any way to instruct those workers to improve only those tiles which don't have any previous improvements (except roads)?

In the option menu u have automated workers leave old improvments