Noob thread

[Unimatrix11]

Duke of york: Not exactly sure what you mean by ´preload´, i am guessing you mean ´give a stack of orders at once´. In which case, the answer is: ´Yes, we can´ . Hold *shift* while you give your worker orders and it will execute them in succession after you release the key again.

[Willem]

Automating the workers is a dumb idea, as you are basically admitting the AI is doing an alright job, which it isn't.

There's nothing wrong with Build Trade Network. All they'll do is hook up your resources and build roads, and later build Railroads. It's pretty hard for them to screw things up with those tasks, though I have seen them do it. Once one of them had built a Mine on a Marble resource just before I had researched Masonry. I certainly wouldn't recommend any other type of automation though.

[Unimatrix11]

Well, Willem, as much as i also tend to automate them, out of sheer lazyness, i never automate them that early, that i wouldnt even have masonry by then. Usually i do it like this:
I dont have as many workers as people suggest here. In my inital expansion, say for the first 5 cities or so, i build a worker for each city (and even that, only when i am not too hard pressed to occupy land quickly, in which case, i might end up building no workers at all, except the first, until i got what i want landwise - which had proven to be a debatable tactic, since surely winding up with too few workers sucks). They will usually suffice to improve my cities up to their pop-cap (and i am strict about that, dis-according to the ´snoopy-doctrine´ of ´let them grow´ - for purely aesthetical reasons, i just dont want unhappy/healthy people, i know its suboptimal - i dont whip either), by the time, when the second expansion, either by further settling or by conquest, comes along. Then, if those new cities are not properly improved already, my workers will go at them.

Now, with each improvement you make, each new one benefits you less than the prior ones, or at least, it should in general be like that. When it seems to make very little difference if i farm here first or cottage there rather, i start to automate. Or, if my empire just got too big for me too bother and i can afford sub-optimal worker allocation. But i usually keep one or two on manual, for urgent stuff. BTW: Is there a key that resembles CivIII´s shift+A, de-automatizing all workers?

[wodan11]

There's nothing wrong with Build Trade Network.

Although I agree in principle, in general they do things that aren't exactly what I would want. e.g., connect 2nd instances of a resource which is outside any city's BFC. Also I tend to prefer roading through forests and hills rather than clear unimproved tiles, because roads ****** or eliminate (I forget which, but either is undesirable) forest growth.

Roads in history are as much a military as a mercantile benefit. Just ask the Romans. This is also true in CIV. I make it a prioirity to build roads and railroads to facilitate military access to likely points of attack.

Anyway these are nitpicks. But, they're enough of a reason for me to not want to use Build Trade Networks, which otherwise is a good feature. I sometimes do use it after the above priorities are accomplished and I have no more improvements to make (after railroads).

[duke o' york]

Duke of york: Not exactly sure what you mean by ´preload´, i am guessing you mean ´give a stack of orders at once´. In which case, the answer is: ´Yes, we can´ . Hold *shift* while you give your worker orders and it will execute them in succession after you release the key again.

No, in Civ 2 you could set your engineer to build a mine on a hill. After a couple of turns you could select the engineer, move him to another square and he'd produce a road (for example) in a single turn because you'd already stored up two turns worth of work from the mine.

[Krill]

Nah, can't do that; what you can do is, say, store two turns of a road on a tile, move teh worker away, and a few turns later complete the road with another worker in however many turns still have left to complete. So you may call it preloading, but you are preloading a tile, not a worker.

[Krill]

There's nothing wrong with Build Trade Network. All they'll do is hook up your resources and build roads, and later build Railroads. It's pretty hard for them to screw things up with those tasks, though I have seen them do it. Once one of them had built a Mine on a Marble resource just before I had researched Masonry. I certainly wouldn't recommend any other type of automation though.

If you are dedicating certain workers to building a trade network and other workers to building tile improvements, then you are not optimising your worker moves.

[Willem]

e.g., connect 2nd instances of a resource which is outside any city's BFC.

There's nothing wrong with having a trade commodity.

Also I tend to prefer roading through forests and hills rather than clear unimproved tiles, because roads ****** or eliminate (I forget which, but either is undesirable) forest growth.

It's ****** and yes that is a valid point. I find early on though, with just a few Workers on Build Trade Route, that they're busy enough just connecting everything that they're not putting roads where I might want to regrow a Forest.

Roads in history are as much a military as a mercantile benefit. Just ask the Romans. This is also true in CIV. I make it a prioirity to build roads and railroads to facilitate military access to likely points of attack.

That's why I like to build roads everywhere in my empire, so it doesn't really bother me if my automated Workers get a bit over-zealous.

[Willem]

If you are dedicating certain workers to building a trade network and other workers to building tile improvements, then you are not optimising your worker moves.

Maybe not but it saves me a bunch of micro-management. And they get their jobs done quite well that way. When one Worker is focusing on mines and cottages, the other one is off hooking up resources.

[wodan11]

There's nothing wrong with having a trade commodity.

There is when a 3rd, 4th, etc. instance is prioritized as high as a 1st instance. Or against military strategy which may be at a premium. Or maybe you're running Mercantilism. Point is, the feature isn't always a good idea.

That's why I like to build roads everywhere in my empire, so it doesn't really bother me if my automated Workers get a bit over-zealous.

But the point is that you only have so many workers and they can only do so much. So prioritization is necessary.

Would you rather have a road to some nowhere tile or something that will
-- provide additional commerce over X turns which could be a huge cumulative amount lost or
-- an additional forest you can chop or
-- an improvement in a tile which will be worked by citizens
etc.

Anyway as I said I use build trade networks when I have railroads and have connected all tactically significant tiles with railroads, and nothing else to do. That's about it, for me.

[Unimatrix11]

Just did it that way last game as well, but that´s because tectonics, in its unpredictibility, that i like so much about it, presented me with a map of very little land masses with many civs on them at the start (and about as much land ´out there´ for colonization later), allowing only five cities (and i had already knocked a neighbor out) before astronomy. If i only have 5 workers active, i can as well manage them myself, even upto that late in the game. If i have like 20 cities with an equal amount of workers, its a totally different story. The bigger the task gets, the less i feel inclined to deal with it myself. A little ´workering´ is fun, but too much of it is a drag, that can sour up the whole game for me. Especially when i am in a situation (which tectonics often provides), where i have to irrigate through 10 tiles of steppes before i can get water to that city, and those tiles are covered with forest, that my workers are not allowed to chop automatically, i get the feeling of ´working´ - and i hate that . It´s then, when i start to wish for a CTP-like worker-system.

EDIT: That´s merely a symptome of a principle problem all 4X-games share: Success means expansion (in most instances) and that means more ´work´. Sometimes i get so sick of it, i fire up a submarine-simulation (objectively boring as hell) or something, anything, where success does not mean expansion and additional micro-management.

[wodan11]

So why not simply group a bunch of workers, then load up a worker queue (if you hold shift down you can tell a worder or group of workers to do multiple things... e.g., chop one tile, then chop tile #2, then chop tile #3.

[BeBMan]

Just installed my game, Civ4 plus the two XPs, then briefly looked into it. I'm wondering - I get three separate desktop icons for Civ4, Warlords and BtS. When I start the game via BtS I only seem to get access to the BTS scenarios. When I leave and click the Warlords or vanilla Civ4 icon (for example to play scns from Warlords), it wants me to change discs.

Is there some easy way to avoid that and to get access to the stuff from all three installments without changing discs and launch these several versions seperately? IIRC in Civ3 you started the main game, then selected whatever you wanted from there, incl. content from the various XPs. Can I do that here too somehow?

[Jaybe]

Automated workers are for the lazy, the inefficient, those who might as well have FEWER workers and get more important things FASTER by doing it themselves. Micromanagement is KING!

OTOH, if you have lots of time-consuming RL considerations (e.g., job, family obligations, friends), or just HAVE to finish a game within a few hours or days, I understand.

[ColdPhoenix]

I prefer to play a level lower than I could and not bother with workers. I control them manually at the start but slowly start automating them as the game progresses. By the industrial and modern eras I only control one worker and occassionally pull others off automation if I see something I want changed quickly.

Maybe I am just lazy but I find too much micromanagement boring.