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There's another reason not to group workers, if you can avoid it and still preserve your sanity. Movement and roads. If you group your workers and they move onto a square that has a forest or a hill, they cannot do anything else on their turn. However, if you move one worker there to build a road, then other workers can join that worker and build an improvement without having to stop just after moving to the square.
Perhaps a tedious example will help?
You have 3 workers all on the same square. Above them are 3 squares you want to improve, one NW, one straight N and one NE. The NW one is currently a forested grassland you want to turn into a farm. The N one is currently a forested hill you want to turn into a mine. The NE one is currently a forested grassland you want to cottage. A road takes 6 turns to build at the speed you've selected, and chopping some forest takes 6 turns too. A farm takes 6 as well, a cottage 9 and a mine 12. I'm just making those numbers up, and I'd prefer the real ones but I'm at work. Anyway, they help because they remove all fractions.
Lets say you group your workers.
Turn 1, all workers move NW.
T2-3 all workers chop.
T4-5 all workers build a road.
T6-7: all workers build the farm.
T8: All workers move one square East to the hill.
T9-10: all workers chop.
T11-13: All workers build a cottage.
T14-15: All workers build a road.
T16: All workers move one square East.
T17-18: All workers chop down forest.
T19-20: All workers build road.
T21-24: All workers build mine.
Compare that to workers who operate individually.
T1: Worker1 moves NW to start farm square. Worker2 moves N to start Mine square. Worker3 moves NE to start cottage square.
T2-7: All workers chop down their forests individually.
T8-13: All workers build roads.
Now let's continue on a worker by worker basis.
Worker 1: Builds farm from turns 14-19, then moves one square east to help finish the mine*.
Worker 2: Build cottage from turns 14-22.
Worker 3: Builds mine from turns 14-19 alone. From then on he gets help from worker one, and the pair complete the mine on turn 22.
So what happened? These workers operating alone complete these 3 squares of work 2 turns earlier. Why? Because they each only lost one turn due to movement (turn 1) instead of each losing the turn to movement for all 3 movements. Granted this layout really highlights the movement benefits of keeping workers seperate. If your workers could move and start building all in one turn even if there isn't a road there's no gain at all. So if all the ground was hillless and forestless, then you could clump your workers at almost no loss. My method also presumes you'll actually road every square your workers improve, but I routinely do that.
There is some other loss to this method however. If you have your workers move in clumps, in this example, the farm would be done at turn 7, instead of turn 19, when they move seperate. So your city would be able to use that farm for 12 extra turns, and that's an advantage that is worth considering. However, the numbers in my example don't consider the loss of worker time spent on fractions of turns discussed already (when a worker in the group twiddles his thumbs because only some of the workers in the group are needed to finish an improvement), since we used three workers and improvements all taking multiples of 3 in turns to complete. So that is a loss not considered here. Furthermore, when you've got workers in sufficient numbers that your just moving clumps around you might be building improvements faster than the population grows. If your improving squares that aren't being worked yet, getting that farm on turn 19 instead of earlier isn't a big deal at all. Getting that farm earlier only matters if your city has the population to work that farm.
Basically, clumping gives you earlier improvements and less micromanagement. However, it decreases worker efficiency (both from a movement perspective, and from a perspective of partial turns, as discussed above.
*I would actually keep my workers sepearte and send worker 1 to a completely different square, but for the purpose of this example I wanted to only discuss 3 total squares.
Perhaps a tedious example will help?
You have 3 workers all on the same square. Above them are 3 squares you want to improve, one NW, one straight N and one NE. The NW one is currently a forested grassland you want to turn into a farm. The N one is currently a forested hill you want to turn into a mine. The NE one is currently a forested grassland you want to cottage. A road takes 6 turns to build at the speed you've selected, and chopping some forest takes 6 turns too. A farm takes 6 as well, a cottage 9 and a mine 12. I'm just making those numbers up, and I'd prefer the real ones but I'm at work. Anyway, they help because they remove all fractions.
Lets say you group your workers.
Turn 1, all workers move NW.
T2-3 all workers chop.
T4-5 all workers build a road.
T6-7: all workers build the farm.
T8: All workers move one square East to the hill.
T9-10: all workers chop.
T11-13: All workers build a cottage.
T14-15: All workers build a road.
T16: All workers move one square East.
T17-18: All workers chop down forest.
T19-20: All workers build road.
T21-24: All workers build mine.
Compare that to workers who operate individually.
T1: Worker1 moves NW to start farm square. Worker2 moves N to start Mine square. Worker3 moves NE to start cottage square.
T2-7: All workers chop down their forests individually.
T8-13: All workers build roads.
Now let's continue on a worker by worker basis.
Worker 1: Builds farm from turns 14-19, then moves one square east to help finish the mine*.
Worker 2: Build cottage from turns 14-22.
Worker 3: Builds mine from turns 14-19 alone. From then on he gets help from worker one, and the pair complete the mine on turn 22.
So what happened? These workers operating alone complete these 3 squares of work 2 turns earlier. Why? Because they each only lost one turn due to movement (turn 1) instead of each losing the turn to movement for all 3 movements. Granted this layout really highlights the movement benefits of keeping workers seperate. If your workers could move and start building all in one turn even if there isn't a road there's no gain at all. So if all the ground was hillless and forestless, then you could clump your workers at almost no loss. My method also presumes you'll actually road every square your workers improve, but I routinely do that.
There is some other loss to this method however. If you have your workers move in clumps, in this example, the farm would be done at turn 7, instead of turn 19, when they move seperate. So your city would be able to use that farm for 12 extra turns, and that's an advantage that is worth considering. However, the numbers in my example don't consider the loss of worker time spent on fractions of turns discussed already (when a worker in the group twiddles his thumbs because only some of the workers in the group are needed to finish an improvement), since we used three workers and improvements all taking multiples of 3 in turns to complete. So that is a loss not considered here. Furthermore, when you've got workers in sufficient numbers that your just moving clumps around you might be building improvements faster than the population grows. If your improving squares that aren't being worked yet, getting that farm on turn 19 instead of earlier isn't a big deal at all. Getting that farm earlier only matters if your city has the population to work that farm.
Basically, clumping gives you earlier improvements and less micromanagement. However, it decreases worker efficiency (both from a movement perspective, and from a perspective of partial turns, as discussed above.
*I would actually keep my workers sepearte and send worker 1 to a completely different square, but for the purpose of this example I wanted to only discuss 3 total squares.
, ) so I'm still doing multiple projects per turn often, even with increased finish times.)
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