Workers on automated just very inefficient

[couerdelion]

I think everyone has workers on manual control for the early stage in the game but after a while this just becomes tedious so you hand over control to the machine.

My experience is that was not at all good and almost all my workers headed south to my new ice bound fishing village to build some roads in the ice-bound region along with a silver mine, three fur camps and two windmills.

This just struck me as hopelessly inefficient since it would be unlikely that I would work many of those tiles and probably wouldn't even be able to do so. Does the machine even realise how long it takes to build those things?!! All I got were a few trade resources in about half the time that it took my armies to sail into Mongol lands and capture twice as many resources.

Am I the only one that has noticed this irrational behaviour?

Another example was to see a worker start building a cottage in the same tile that I was already building a workshop. I'm glad I spotted that.

Now I can see that with excess worker resources this is less of an issue but I am also wondering if I really want to allow the machine to build my railways when I know for certain that it will not do this by reference to any strategic logic to build the central route first starting close to the main destination point of troops.

[Adagio]

I believe everybody has discovered the ineffiency of workers on auto, the simple solution: Manually give them orders

In the beginning you don't have that many workers for it to be annoying, while later on it's mostly just railroads I need, so here I can switch to auto

[Blake]

The worker automation is flawed, both inherently (it can't "mind read") and in implementation (it's "stoopid").

Some of the most glaring flaws is being unable to effectively chain irrigation and always getting the food balance wrong, either way too many farms (ie floodplains) or none at all (dry plains city).

Partly in the mind-reading department is stupidity like cottaging around the heroic epic city. In short, it always gets it wrong.

[MoonWolf]

I only use them on auto when I can build railroad. I then "tell" most of them to build trade network as they will lay rails automatically. In the options, you can select them to leave forrests and old improvments. This helps a bit, but otherwise, I don't use automated workers at all.

I've even tried to make them do auto-work for a single city (like building railroads for a hammer-city), but the worker only sleeps in the city without doing anything! Hope this will be improved later on... The auto-workers also build railroads in tiles that can't be worked on even though there are tiles beloning to cities without railroads.

[johnmcd]

It's funny this, because if I build a cottage on a floodplain and a farm on a flood plain the governer will work the cottage. He doesn't want farms either.

It's like the governer code and the worker code are at odds with one another. Maybe the really good workers get promoted to governer.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

if you want to make the most of it, you have to micromanage, but otherwise, if you want to just play and focus more on some other details of the game, you can let them do it, ignore it, have a "penalty", finish a bit later, but enjoy the game more.

[couerdelion]

When to micro-manage

I would certainly micro-manage in the early game because to not do so will lose you several turns if you are careless. It's one big reason to bee-line bronzeworking if your first build is a worker.

Later game micro-management may come into play if you are in a wonder race and are not sure of the state in other nations. With any luck you'll be first to the tech but still don't want a Great Engineer to come along and spoil your day.

[axisworks]

Having them on auto for building a trade network is golden, especially when you're converting to railroads, or if you're at war in the modern (or beyond) age. Workers will re-build destroyed trade goods infrastructure (mines on gold, pastures on sheep, etc) that are destroyed by enemy bombing while they're in "build trade network" mode.

[Yosho]

Re: Workers on automated just very inefficient

Another example was to see a worker start building a cottage in the same tile that I was already building a workshop. I'm glad I spotted that.

There is an option where you can tell automoted workers to never replace anything you have already built.

But yeah, I never use automated workers.

[SandMonkey]

I found using "shift" to chain worker actions together to be a great time saver, especially in the late game. While it may seem like micro-managing to some, i found by simply chaining 3-4 improvements + roads together i would only have to deal with each worker every 10+ turns. The other benefit is that you get EXACTLY what you want, no bonehead ai to boggle your mind.

[Crankiest]

AI?

It has to be a deliberate disadvantage.

Automated workers are serious problems.

Mind reading? They seem to know exactly what you wouldn't want them to do and they will do exactly that.

I finally clued in when they insisted on building improments on squares on a culturally threatened border. I would move them to the far side of the continent and hope they would find things there to do and they would race back and build improvements that were likely to end up in enemy territory within a few turns of completion.

I also noticed the tendency to sabotage your planned and chosen improvements. I've never bothered finding out about the option to prevent them from doing that, since I just stopped using automatic workers.

I'm sure that worker AI must have higher skill levels available, but they are probably only used:

1: When playing at the lowest difficulty levels.
2: For your computer opponents workers.

Tips to making worker automation less painful. I want more if you have some to share but these are the ones I have.

Group your workers together. This has several benefits. What one worker takes 25 turns to do, three workers banded will finish in 8 or 9 turns. You can get work done faster and focus on fewer improvements at any given time. Giving orders to a band of three or four takes less management than trying to plan three separate projects.
You are always better off to finish the most needed improvement quickly and start using it than you are to have three or four projects underway that will all finish much later, especially when some of them are of little to no importance. The fact that it might be hard to choose a fifth priority project is a big time waster.

Worker related - don't cut down all of the trees. The bonus hammers from a chop always seem so useful but slavery and a population sacrifice might be a better way to rush production. Leave a few forests with some undeveloped terrain for them to SPREAD to. This is especially helpful in Tundra terrains. If you leave those seed trees you can end up chopping more in the long run. A few seed trees should more than pay for themselves but your mileage might vary.

Pretty simple but build farms or pastures first around any new city location At the same time as other workers might be chopping wood to build the settler. This only works if you are settling within or at the edge of your current cultural boundary. Nothing is as good for a new city as a new farm or high food value square to start them growing fast.

Rarely you can steal a developed square from the enemy. The AI seems to try the same tactics and Improves at their cultural edge before it settles a new city. Settle on their border (RISKY) and you might get the farm or other resource that their workers built. You might be better off letting the computer settle and then attacking their city with military or culture.

Nothing to with workers but - Best of all is to settle on the coast and send a workboat or workboats with the settler to harvest fish, clam, crabs, or later on whales. As soon as the settler creates the new city you can develop the water resource and the city will grow like crazy. It's the fastest way to settle and grow in neutral territories especially since roads are less important with coastal cities.

[joncnunn]

Well; at least the city manager governor is semi-decent.

In all previous versions, both the governor and auto workers were hopelessly flawed. Now it's only the auto workers.

[CerberusIV]

Automatic workers has its place. First thing is to call up the options screen and check the boxes to make automated workers leave forests and leave existing improvements. Make sure you build all the early improvements within the working radius of your cities manually. Once that is done set the workers on automatic around the mid game and they will happily build roads everywhere within your empire, lumbermill any remaining forests and upgrade the roads to railroads.

But they are useless at getting the farm/cottage balance right so you have to do that manually.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
if you want to make the most of it, you have to micromanage, but otherwise, if you want to just play and focus more on some other details of the game, you can let them do it, ignore it, have a "penalty", finish a bit later, but enjoy the game more.

This is the way I play. In my core, I micromanage workers until I have about 10 cities. Then I tend to let them automate, while I take care of more important things like what to do about Alexander or Julius.

I do rotate through the city screens frequently, checking on growth, happiness, health, commerce, etc., so I'll bring a few workers out of automation to make changes. I play with the options set that workers don't change my improvements and they don't cut forests, unless I tell them to.

[gdgrimm]

Maybe the really good workers get promoted to governer.

LOL.

It's like that manager promotion quote....

Each is promoted to their individual level of incompetence.