Finished workers have turns left...

[guermantes]

An anomaly I notice often is that even though an improvement is finished in a tile, when I hover over the worker it shows he's got X turns left to finish the improvement in question. Even if he is marked as green and ready for orders.

Why is that?

[Petrus2]

Well the answer is clear! In the picture, you can see the worker is building a road. Have you EVER seen road crews finish on time? More than one working at a time? I think we've solved it

Ok sorry, I'll shut up now...

[snoopy369]

That's because you have them grouped together. If you have 2 or more workers grouped together and assign them all to work in tandem to do something (as opposed to giving them individual orders), the game assumes you want them to stick together and doesn't bother you when they're done unless both have move points left.

The solution to this is never group your workers together, or else to be aware of how long things take and check your workers when you know one will be extra.

[guermantes]

No, I do not have them grouped together. Since I realised that I lose worker turns that way I never group them. I brought them to the tile in question individually and gave them orders individually.

[wodan11]

It happens even if they aren't grouped together.

What you're looking at IMO is the active worker (the one listed first) says 2 move left, no pending action.

The other worker, the one that says 2 move left, build road (2), has not yet become "active" and thus the program has not processed yet that worker's action The program has, nevertheless, recognized that the road is completed, and thus when it calculates how many turns left for the 2nd worker to build the road, there is NO partial work that has been done, and thus it thinks it will take the full 2 turns (as if it were building a brand new road).

Wodan

[snoopy369]

Ah yes, I should've caught that from both workers being green. Wodan has it basically. More precisely, it is that worker 1 had 2 turns left last turn, and hasn't been processed yet; it's not so much that the worker thinks there's a road there, but it's that the worker had 2 turns last turn and hasn't been used yet. Remember that Civ processes the units individually and when doing one unit it is never controlling other units (it might be aware of their actions, such as to see about the available power in an area to attack, but it will never send the other unit an update).

The order is:

WORKER 1: Road, 2 turns left
WORKER 2: Finishes road
----
WORKER 2: Active.
WORKER 1: Still shows 2 turns left as WORKER 1 is not aware of WORKER 2's actions. Will update to Done once WORKER 1 is active.

It is the same as if a worker by itself were roading; last turn he'd have shown 2 turns left, at the start of this turn before being processed he'd show 2 turns left until he was processed (and still be green!), but once he was selected or otherwise processed by the computer he will show 1 turn left (and finish it).

[wodan11]

Yes, Snoopy's description is better / more detailed than mine. The bottom line is that it's not like you're losing anything... both workers still have their full "move" left and the game will ask you what you want to do with each of them. It's a minor programming inconsistency but doesn't cause any harm.

Wodan

[Welnic]

The way it seems to work to me is whenever a group of workers has just finished something one of them will be sitting there saying that he is working on it with the full time it would take him to do it. This starts on the turn the improvement is actually finished and it still shows this at the start of the next turn until that worker comes up in the rotation.

[snoopy369]

Is it always the full time? I hadn't noticed that (but I don't group my workers and don't really pay attention to that so much, so I might have missed it). It's possible the game resets counters at the start of the turn, though I don't think that matches my past experiences...

[wodan11]

The way I understand it is that there is a queue in which units are processed during your turn. As you give orders to units and move around, you process through this queue.

If you look on screen at a worker who has not yet come up in the queue (which is what is happening here), then that worker still thinks he is making the road (or whatever). The display algorithm shows that he is making a road (he does not think he is done yet, because the OTHER worker is the guy who actually completed the road), and it displays the amount of partial completion / turns left to complete. The way it does this is that it subtracts the amount of partial completion from the full time to complete. In this case, there is NO / ZERO partial completion (because the road is completed!) and thus the worker still thinks he has to work the full time to get it done.

Anyway, as said earlier, as soon as you select / activate that worker, this all goes away.

Wodan