Workers and Tile Improvement Questions

[nato]

Now that some of the basic patching is done, I'm considering trying Civ 4 (Civ 3 made me think it would be a good idea to wait for the patches). However, I have some quick questions:

1. Is there still a worker unit?
2. Do you need lots and lots of them?
3. Does every tile of your empire (realistically) need to be improved with roads, irrigation, and mines?
4. Do you spend a lot of the game moving workers around and improving tiles?
5. Is there any effective automating of this that doesn't hurt your efficiency?
6. Are there tiles that you can choose what improvement to make (such as Civ 3 grasslands being able to be irrigated OR mined)?
7. Are there things like Civ 3 jungles that require even more work?

Like most here, I've been around since Civ 1 and loved it. But during the last version, the mid-game endless, mindless control of worker armies finally got to me. I don't know if I want to make the time investment for Civ 4 if it means spending most of that time repetitively RIMing instead of doing fun or strategy stuff.

Thank you for reading and for any answers!

[LordShiva]

1. Yes.
2. Pretty much.
3. More or less.
4. I get lazy and automate, which messes things up.
5. See 4.
6. Yes.
7. Yes.

[opaque]

1. Yes.
2. I don't find I need a massive amount of them, plus I think they automate quite well if you do have lots of them. The new options in the patches are particularly useful (leave trees/existing improvements alone).
3. Later in the game, almost every tile has an improvement. I build them even if the tile isn't currently being worked, just so that when it is it immediately gets the benefits.
4. I tend to put most of them on automate as the game progresses and just keep control of a couple for my own use.
5. Worker automation seems fine to me, but if you love micromanaging the exact values of every tile and city etc. you will probably find them not doing what you want.
6. Yes, there are lots of choices most of the time. Mine or windmill for a hill, or irrigation, cottage, watermill, workshop etc. for a grassland tile and so on.
7. Yes there are jungles, but they can be chopped down for a nice production bonus if you like. I like to save them up until later though because along with forests and the environmentalism civic they give a nice health bonus!

[MightyTiny]

Worker automation is... adequate, once you've developed most of the tiles around your cities. This means that you can get away with automating your workers around mid-game.

The patch gave the option of not allowing workers to cut down forests, which made automation usable. However, if you automate straight away, you'll find that your workers will build far too many farms, and too few cottages.

I (and others) have suggested an improvement that I hope to see in a future expansion, if you're interested, go read this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=146566

After around the midgame point, you'll have built your cottages and other (non farm) improvements, and you can leave the building of later improvements like woodmils and railroads to automated workers. At least that's what I do.

[petermarkab]

I find the choice I have to make for improvments is far more strategical as well as economical than in previous games. Keep forests and build lumbermills or get that early one-time boost to a city's production? There's more but thats all i can think of right now!

[freddybear]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Eventually. Don't be in too much of a hurry though, your cities will take a while to grow enough population to use them all.
4. Yes
5. No. Automated workers are *terrible*.
6. Most every tile has options.
7. Yes. Civ4 jungles still require more work.

[Bill3000]

7. Yes there are jungles, but they can be chopped down for a nice production bonus if you like. I like to save them up until later though because along with forests and the environmentalism civic they give a nice health bonus!

Meh? Jungles don't get the chopped down bonus of forests.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Bill3000

Meh? Jungles don't get the chopped down bonus of forests.

They also don't give a health bonus. They actually increase unhealthiness.

[Blake]

Automated workers are fine when you're still at the "lets try this and see what happens" stage. They only suck when you have a grand, unified game strategy.
Well, they do get the food balance wrong (too much or too little), but it's not unberable.

[Willem]

Re: Workers and Tile Improvement Questions

Originally posted by nato

2. Do you need lots and lots of them?

Not nearly as many as in Civ 3. For one thing your empire is going to be much smaller. Huge sprawling empires don't really happen in this game, it's much harder to expand due to city maintenance costs, and the maps are smaller.

3. Does every tile of your empire (realistically) need to be improved with roads, irrigation, and mines?

Eventually yes, but it takes awhile for your population to grow to the point where it's using very tile in it's radius.

4. Do you spend a lot of the game moving workers around and improving tiles?

Only if you want to. Early in the game it's a good idea to do things manually, but later on setting Workers on automatic isn't all that bad. They seem to do a better job than they did in Civ 3. Just keep a few manual ones to fix anything they do that you don't like.

5. Is there any effective automating of this that doesn't hurt your efficiency?

Yes. If you select automate trade routes, the Worker will go around building improvements and roads to connect your resources. This actually works pretty good as your city relies much more on resources than it did in Civ 3. Even food resources like Cows and Sheep play an important role in your empire.

6. Are there tiles that you can choose what improvement to make (such as Civ 3 grasslands being able to be irrigated OR mined)?

Definitely, even Hills have options, You can go for a Cottage (for money), Mines (for resources) or Windmills for a mix of everything. There's far more choices you can make for your terrain than in Civ 3.

7. Are there things like Civ 3 jungles that require even more work?

Yes, and unfortunately there isn't yet an automated command for clearing Jungles. However, you can stack commands on top of each other so you can tell your Worker to clear several tiles at a time. You can do this for most tasks in fact, so you don't have to keep telling it what to do every few turns.

Like most here, I've been around since Civ 1 and loved it. But during the last version, the mid-game endless, mindless control of worker armies finally got to me. I don't know if I want to make the time investment for Civ 4 if it means spending most of that time repetitively RIMing instead of doing fun or strategy stuff.

It's definitely much better than it was in Civ 3.

[Vynd]

I think that Civ IV rewards micromanaging your workers but doesn't make it essential. If you don't want to think about things too much then you can just activate your special resources, put mines in the hills, and establish a mix of farms and cottages everywhere else and have a successful and enjoyable game. That's mostly what I've been doing and I find that it doesn't take much time or effort to manage my workers.

On the other hand if you're the type who is willing to put a lot of thought into managing your workers then you can definitely reap huge benefits. The game presents you with lots of different options and strategies in how to use your workers and develop your cities, such as chopping forests to boost production, emphasizing food to get more specialists, using State Property/Mills/Workshops, etc.

I think it is a nice balance, and a good example of the way Civ IV has reduced or eliminated the un-fun stuff from earlier versions while keeping the parts people really enjoy. Another thing I really appreciate is not having to remove pollution anymore!

[opaque]

Meh? Jungles don't get the chopped down bonus of forests.

Whoops!

They also don't give a health bonus. They actually increase unhealthiness.

Whoops again!

I thought they worked like forests. Haven't been paying enough attention to the tooltips!

[Willem]

Originally posted by opaque

I thought they worked like forests. Haven't been paying enough attention to the tooltips!

If you roll over the health/unhealthy icons in a Jungle city, you'll see a certain amount of unhealthy points coming from the terrain around it. It will clearly say unhealthy because of Jungle.

[opaque]

So in that case is there any real advantage to leaving jungles around or not?

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by opaque
So in that case is there any real advantage to leaving jungles around or not?

No, not really. Jugles are just a pain in the butt. (except of course for the fact that they sometimes contain bananas! )

Though I do believe that if you adopt Environmentalism, THEN jungles give a health benefit. But that's hardly worth keeping them, OR adopting environmentalism.