%$@# Worker Automation!

[Cabbagemeister]

I like worker automation, because who wants to fiddle with 30 workers at the end of the game? But if I leave my workers automated around my big, developed cities, they knock down my farms and build cottages. So suddenly my cities are starving (because each changed tile is -2 food, after biology), and in return I get +1 commerce (and it will never increase much, since I'm too close to the endgame to develop new towns). When I realized what was happening, I had to hunt down every single automated worker and either send them on useless railroading projects to keep them busy ("We need railroads across all our desert tiles! No, you're not allowed to ask why! Get busy!"), or put them to sleep in cities and inevitably forget where they were when I actually needed something to be done.

In Civ3 there was an "only improve bare terrain" command. Is there something similar in cIV? I can't find it. Also, I'm not much of a modder, but does anyone know if there's an easy way to make the workers chill on the cottages?

[Addled Platypus]

1. dont automate
2. make a worker que

I have managed to do more with less workers in Civ4
It took me several games to realise this..a HUGE improvement over C3

[snepp]

Try looking in the game options, "don't destroy existing improvments". Though they will chop down trees.

[bonscott]

I've noticed that you really only need about 1 worker per city and really even less then that except at certain crush times (like lumbermills becoming available or rails). I find 1 per city is about right. It's not like Civ 3 with stacks of 10-12 and multiple of them no less.

[Cabbagemeister]

Oh, it's definitely better than Civ3; I certainly don't have stacks of 100 running around unpolluting stuff anymore. But to me, manually directing workers is only strategic and fun in the early-to-midgame, when it actually makes a significant difference which tiles I improve. Later on, I'm worrying about things like "do I have enough artillery to take that city", and I don't want to mess with the workers, even if I've gone minimalist and only made 5 or 10 of them.

What's a "worker que"? Like a building queue? You mean, you can set up like five things to do in advance? How? (drool).

[Cabbagemeister]

Originally posted by snepp
Try looking in the game options, "don't destroy existing improvments". Though they will chop down trees.

That's exactly what I was looking for! I thought it would be a ctl-shift-alt-dash-L command or something. Thanks!

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Cabbagemeister
What's a "worker que"? Like a building queue? You mean, you can set up like five things to do in advance? How? (drool).

Yes. Hold down the shift key and click the action buttons and they will be queued up.

[ZanThrax]

How does one go about queueing orders up for units anyhow?

[MattPilot]

You don't have to move 10-20 or even 30 workers around each turn. What you can do is make "groups" of them.

At the time of lumbermills, railroads, i stack 3-5 together to get jobs done faster. So if i have 20 works, i only have to move 4-5 "groups".

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by snepp
Try looking in the game options, "don't destroy existing improvments". Though they will chop down trees.

If the forest tile has a lumbermill, they will leave the forest alone with that option on. Only once I have all the forests I want with a lumbermill in them do I turn on automation.