Help me beat Demigod

[punkbass2000]

I don't believe your numbers at all. Any proof? There are no bonuses, it just gets rounded up. The only thing I can think is that you were trying to irrigate with a Slave (8 turns) and then added a Worker (as good as two Slaves), dropping it to 3 turns (8/3).

[vmxa1]

Well of course you have to intelligently stack workers to fit the task at hand. This can mean using a slave to save a worker turn here and there.

Later you have enough to not sweat the details, but in the ancient times it can be useful to be frugal using workers.

Anyway that was not my main purpose. I was trying to point how the concept of getting a tile in action asap as opposed to having a few done at the same time, but later.

[gunkulator]

Adding successively more workers to a stack produces diminishing returns.

If it takes 24 turns to clear jungle, then 1 worker will do it in 24 turns.

2 workers in 12 turns
3 workers in 8 turns
4 workers in 6 turns
5 workers in 5 turns
6-7 workers in 4 turns
8-11 workers in 3 turns
12-23 workers in 2 turns
24 workers in 1 turn (yeah, right!)

The good news is that the extra workers' turns are not lost. If you really did command 23 workers to clear a jungle, it would still take 2 turns to finish, but on the second turn 22 of the workers would be available to move or do something else.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by gunkulator
The good news is that the extra workers' turns are not lost. If you really did command 23 workers to clear a jungle, it would still take 2 turns to finish, but on the second turn 22 of the workers would be available to move or do something else.

No, as you describe it, the entire 23-Worker crew would take 2 whole turns to complete the job. The game will happily waste Worker-turns for you if you do not use a number of Workers that evenly divides the number of Worker-turns required to complete a particular job.

It works as you describe only if you order an additional (24th) Worker to finish the job on the second turn. This "forcing through" the remaining Worker-turns causes the Workers that were already working from previous turns to "wake up" and be ready to do something else.

[Cort Haus]

If you're clearing jungle when the city is smaller than the available food tiles, it can be better not to stack workers too high. Moving 24 workers onto a tile means 24 worker turns are lost to movement to clear 1 tile. Moving 3 stacks of 8 workers onto 3 jungle tiles only loses 8 worker turns to movement per tile.

Another consideration with worker stacks is what you want to do when it's finished. As traits, tech, government and worker type affect worker speed, you need to know your build times.

Assuming 3 wt (worker turns) are needed for a road on grass, if I'm in no hurry I'll use gangs of 3 workers on a jungle (8 turns) so they can do a road the turn after they finish. If in more of a hurry I may use 2 pairs of 6 on adjacent tiles. They each road on completion, and the spare 6 do a mine that turn on one of the tiles. The second is mined next turn.

With RR, the 'finishing off' that Dom mentioned comes heavily into play. If I've only got 5 slaves left, and need 6 for a RR, I'll do the 5 and finish with a spare slave from somewhere next turn, allowing the 5 to move on with no loss of efficiency.

As others have stated above, worker management becomes more important as the difficulty level increases.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by gunkulator
Adding successively more workers to a stack produces diminishing returns.

The thing is, what is the need at this point? Am I only clearing the jungle to get rid of the jungle and maybe prevent sickness?

Am I clearing the jungle because I cannot get enough food to grow the city? Are there better things that could be done with these workers and if so how far away is that task?

It may well be that the best use of the workers at this time is to use them all on the jungle, but it is surely not useful to have 4 clearings going on with 1 or 2 workers on each. All right near each other.

IOW 10 bucks for a bottle of water is normally excessive, but not is you are dying of thrist and have the 10 bucks. So diminishing returns is a consideration not the answer. Same when clearing pollution in a metro that needs that tile to feed itself or finish that build. Slap on enough workers to get it done now, if you can.

[Modo44]

Dominae, I think you might be wrong about Workers finishing the job. I've often had some expensive one done, and only part of the Worker-gang woken up, while the rest was out of moves for the turn.

As to clearing any square, the most efficient way is, of course, to have one Worker do the job. But this is only assuming, that there is enough time, and the tile won't be needed before 1 Worker is done with clearing+roading (so a gang can come in and finish the job). If it's to be used now, it might be worth stacking the guys to do it quickly. It depends very much on the number of available Workers - the more you have, the less you will feel a couple lost Worker-turns. Darned Civ, made the answer "it depends" again.

[vmxa1]

Modo44 that probably because you did not put enough workers on the job to actually finish it that turn. The way to know is to send another worker over to the task and see it is not able to work on the task as it is done.

If you have rails this is easy to do, otherwise you will probably not do that. Granted at this stage you are not going to crash and burn because of a bit of inefficency.

[gunkulator]

I'm pretty sure that each worker is cycled through individually. When a worker completes a job, any other identically ordered workers that have not been cycled through in the stack wake up.

Try it with building rails. It typically takes 6 worker-turns to build rails on grass before Replaceable Parts (non-Industrious). Put 5 workers on the task. On the second turn 4 will be available to move.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by gunkulator
I'm pretty sure that each worker is cycled through individually. When a worker completes a job, any other identically ordered workers that have not been cycled through in the stack wake up.

Try it with building rails. It typically takes 6 worker-turns to build rails on grass before Replaceable Parts (non-Industrious). Put 5 workers on the task. On the second turn 4 will be available to move.

Can you post a save to show this?

I just tried a simple test: 2 non-Industrious Workers ordered to Road a tile, 3 Worker-turns, time required 2 turns. Both Workers were busy for both turns.

There must be some difference between our games. Are you using the "Railroad To..." command? Are you playing MP or PBEM? Are you adding Workers to the stack on subsequent turns? Are you using a combination of slave/native Workers?

[Modo44]

Ok, it isn't as clear as I thought. It works one way, and then it works the other. No clue why.

Sometimes, waiting for all units to move will make use of the Workers, that have jobs assigned this turn. This can for example finish you a Road, that had 1 turn left when the turn started. BUT, on other occasions, you can wait all you want, and the Worker (even a solitary one) will stay with the green light on (not moved, so no work done), instead of finishing the job. To see this, it's best to load an advanced save (many Workers finishing things every turn), and watch the results. Have fun

What I mean is: if the Worker finishes a job this turn, his buddies could still be moved; but if he doesn't, the whole group will be busy until next turn.

[Aqualung71]

There is a known bug in PBEM whereby unfortified "greened" Workers will just sit there unnoticed for the whole turn and not put their hand up for work. If you don't check all your Workers you can easily have some going for several turns without doing anything, particularly when in stacks covered by other Workers or military units.

I didn't think this carried over into SP, but judging by Modo's observations, perhaps it does. Otherwise I would agree with Dom's comments - and the 2 workers building a road is the prime example.....you definitely waste a worker turn doing this.

[Dominae]

Modo, gunkulator: do automate any Workers? Please post a save confirming your observations if you can.

[punkbass2000]

I can only comment for PBEM, but I definitely do not lose Worker turns in the manner described. I've been building a road of about 5 tiles for the past few turns in one game with two non-Industrious Workers. It goes like this:

Turn 1: They both start a road
Turn 2: The road is finished, one Worker moves to the next tile.
Turn 3: One Worker starts the new road, the next moves to that tile.
Turn 4: The second Worker completes the road, neither can move.
Turn 5: They both move to the next tile.

Repeat.

I have noticed pecularities with Worker turns in PBEMs, however. For example, improvements seem to finish one turn earlier than the way they normally do, but the Worker cannot move at that juncture. By the same token, if a Worker is working and I want him to stop, he cannot move until the following turn. This can be very annoying, as you thus need two turns warning in order to save a Worker from barbs or other enemies.

[gunkulator]

I'd post a save if I could but I'm at work. I typically only fire up civ on the weekends as I have very little free time during the week. If nobody posts until then, I'll dig up a save.

I know it works this way for me because I just lost a worker to the AI because of this. My stack of what I thought was 12 workers was building rails on forest in newly captured land. Turns out there were 13 workers. One woke up and I thought they were all ready to move so I moved the first worker to the next square and told it to build rails. Unfortunately, only one other was able to move that turn. Having only 1 spare Infantry, I left him on the stack of 12 and sure enough, an AI cavalry grabbed the lone guy.