Why did my worker die?

[couerdelion]

OK, I know I’ve seen it happen before but most of the time, I find the situation relatively straightforward – you land on a worker and it is captured. But why do workers taken by the AI get killed rather than captured? This just happened to me in my latest game and I was happy to leave the worker there because I knew I could recapture it next turn. More annoying is the fact that I am playing at a higher level than I am used to so it is all the more annoying that these “surprises” occur.

I reminds me of a time when I once ventured into Deity level. There I was DoWed early in the game and had an English chariot move right next to my capital and burn something (can’t remember what it was). At the previous turn, the chariot was inside my capital’s borders so the DoW should have moved it outside leaving it two moves to reach the pillage site – hence not enough to pillage in the same turn.

So what is actually happening in both of these situations.

[Nacht]

They just had enough workers and deleted it, you can do that yourself too.

[Quillan]

That happens to me all the time. Technically, you kill the enemy worker and get one of your own; the game doesn't distinguish between your workers and captured enemy workers like it did in Civ 3. I've never figured out if the AI is just killing them off because they have enough, if the AI is killing them because its calculations make it know that you're going to take it right back and it doesn't want that, or if the AI doesn't follow the same rules you do and is able to move the worker immediately. Once or twice I've actually seen the animation of the worker keeling over as they disband it, but not that many times.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Nacht
They just had enough workers and deleted it, you can do that yourself too.

I guess it's possible. Even without movement, it should be possible to delete a unit. So when you end up with an exposed unit, after a kill, you can always choose to delete it and deny the AI the chance of gaining XP from an easy kill.

But the chariot pillage is still a mystery

[Flhaus]

I have noticed a similar AI difference regarding City flipping. I had a Frigate bombarding a city's defenses to zero. I then went in and captured the city and began building a temple. I made a mistake by moving my defenders out of the city. The AI came back and recaptured the city. With my frigate still being in place, I began my bombardment campaign and the defenses began at 100%. How can the defenses be built to 100% in less than 1 turn?

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but it seems related.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Flhaus
I have noticed a similar AI difference regarding City flipping. I had a Frigate bombarding a city's defenses to zero. I then went in and captured the city and began building a temple. I made a mistake by moving my defenders out of the city. The AI came back and recaptured the city. With my frigate still being in place, I began my bombardment campaign and the defenses began at 100%. How can the defenses be built to 100% in less than 1 turn?

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but it seems related.

I think this just happens when a civ recaptures one of its former cities. It gets all its culture back but the damage might be reset.

[Solver]

The AI will disband Workers it captures when it either thinks it has too many already, or thinks it can't get the Worker safely to its own lands. So it really favors disbanding.

[ben04]

If you quickly take a city without the AI having the time to move their workers around the city into a safe place it will disband them some times. It often occurs if they are trapped in the now enemy land.

So it just depends on if the AI thinks it can keep them or not. Whenever they were captured or not doesn't play a role.