Workers on automated just very inefficient

[joncnunn]

oops

[xenophile58]

I have noticed that forests don't seem ever to grow on tiles which are improved at all, even with a road. The rate of new growth does seem to tail off as the game goes on but I have seen forests grow fairly late in the game. So it's the roads that automated workers buid everywhere that annoy me most. I like forests. Forests are good.

[Shaka II]

Forests are great in real life. In civ I cut them for settlers, libraries, and the occasional early wonder. But I feel a pang of guilt when I do.

But I feel better when I have some lumber mills going in the renaissance era on my remaining forests. Sustainable harvesting.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Originally posted by gdgrimm


LOL.

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

Each is promoted to their individual level of incompetence.

You're referring to the Peter Principle, and it's not restricted to managers.. it's for all employees. After all, how do you think the managers first came about?

[johnmcd]

I think lumbermills should encourage forest spread.

[Martin the Dane]

Well the AI's workers arn't that bright either. I had just concured a city, causing the Mongoleans borders to expand, he imediately sent aworker to build a farm on a town right next to my city, and 2 tiles outside the fat cross of his nearest city. At first I thought it was becaus he needed the irrigation, but no he already had access to fresh warter through several routes.

[Shaka II]

There are some benefits to having inefficient workers. In the recent game I noticed them making farms and other improvements where there were no city squares. When the enemy came, they stomped on these useless improvements, giving me time to get some troops to the area before they got to the good improvements. Great decoys, whether intentional or not.

[Badtz Maru]

I've almost completely stopped automating workers, after slowly coming to accept that they were always going to be at odds with me. I told them to leave existing improvements alone and not chop my forests, and when I automate them they would go build improvements on squares outside any cities radius while there were unimproved squares near some of my newer cities. Arrgh!

What I do if I have a lot of workers and can't think of what to do with one of them is to turn on the Create Trade Network (the icon looks like a white map with red and green lines on it). That way all the worker will build is roads connecting the cities, special resources, and eventually all improved tiles. It will also build special improvements on special resources, but that's all.

This works great for me. I micromanage a good portion of my workers while the others go around hooking up special resources and making sure my cities have roads between them. If a new resource opens up and I forget to exploit it, one of my trade network workers will get on it soon enough. It allows me to concentrate on building up my various cities infrastructure with the priority I want and my favored odd mix of improvements (very heavy on windmills, woodmills, and watermills) and not worry about my workers wasting time improving tiles I'll never use, while having the advantage of making sure that special resources are not overlooked.

[fed1943]

My trouble with automating is the another:I always turn automation off,but the cities'manager keeps allocating the civil workers.Is there a way to stop that?
Best regards,

[Crankiest]

It will only do that when the population increases, when the city governor is turned off.

Just watch for population increases.

There might even be an option to ping you to the city when there is a population increase but it never bothered me enough to check.