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I've been experimenting with the idea of getting multiple engineers/settlers to work as a team. I got inspired by this Xin Yu's excellent idea (quoted below).
First a little background information (in case you didn't know): normally you can put max two settlers/engineers do the same work on a single square. The third assigned to the same job doesn't help anymore. However you can put multiple pairs of engineers on a same square doing different things; ie a couple building (rail)road, another couple working on irrigation/farmland, the third cleaning pollution etc.
But what if you want those engineers do the same job as a team? You don't want to wait 15 turns to transform a mountain to hills, right? That's what it takes by using a couple of engineers. Or you have OCC game going and have bribed a nice lot of engineers and want to start changing those rivered grassland tiles into hills..
Then it's the time when Xin's advice kicks in:
This works just fine. However, I tried to find a more 'user-friendly' approach to the problem. If you insist to have everything done in a single turn I'm afraid this 'homing/calling home' is the only alternative. But it's so easy to miss the proper order of the engineers and thus blowing up the whole effort.
There is another way. You can handle max 9 engineers without using rehoming city trick so I suggest you use any number of engineers between 1-9 on a given tile. Do exactly as Xin has suggested. Move #1 engineer to a tile and give the order. You can give any order you want (o,i,r,e...) Do the same with #2 engineer Move #3 engineer to the tile, then click the top engineer in the list to remove the order and give the order to the #3. Repeat with the #4. Note that the engineer who's order you have to remove is always the highest one with that order in his shield.
After doing this to the last engineer, leave them there (the last two in the engineer list should have their order written in their shield). When next turn comes, move all engineers away from the tile leaving just the two with their orders. Then start moving them back one by one and again the engineer who's order must be removed is the highest on the list. Repeat this as many turns as necessary until the job gets done! The reason why I suggest you moving your engineers out and in is simply because it's easier to keep track of the proper order of removing/giving orders.
One more trick: you can 'charge' your engineers before committing them to do a hard, time-consuming job. You see, the job done by engineer is accumulated to the engineer himself, not to the terrain. Just make them do something (like 'o') and immediately click on them to remove that order. After that they have 'job count' of two. You can go further and repeat this as many times you want. Let's say you have 'charged' you engineers to the job count of five. If you have say 2 of them you can put them making a 2x5=10 turn job in a single turn, for example transforming a plain to a grassland.
You can even mix charged and non-charged engineers if you like using Xin's method. No job done will ever be wasted.
Don't forget Ribannah's clue, it's very useful in OCC games!
Just do this with your settler and two engineers using Xin's method and you get one-turn farmland!
Read also the thread The Lone Engineer at Work (started by Gastrifidis, stolen by SlowThinker). There is a lot of useful information, for example the turn counts an engineer needs to do the various jobs.
First a little background information (in case you didn't know): normally you can put max two settlers/engineers do the same work on a single square. The third assigned to the same job doesn't help anymore. However you can put multiple pairs of engineers on a same square doing different things; ie a couple building (rail)road, another couple working on irrigation/farmland, the third cleaning pollution etc.
But what if you want those engineers do the same job as a team? You don't want to wait 15 turns to transform a mountain to hills, right? That's what it takes by using a couple of engineers. Or you have OCC game going and have bribed a nice lot of engineers and want to start changing those rivered grassland tiles into hills..
Then it's the time when Xin's advice kicks in:
quote: Originally posted by Xin Yu on 05-18-2000 07:28 PM1 turn transformation of terrian: engineer #1 starts transforming the land, then engineer #2. Before engineer #3 begins, click on the square then click on engineer #1 so the "O" on its shield disappears. Now #3 can start transforming. Similarly, dismiss #2 from the job before #4 start working, and so on. When you have too many engineers on the same square, it is not possible to activate, say the 10th, unit. You can first move an engineer to a city and assign it the home city (the city must supports less than 8 units), then go to work. When you try to dismiss him from the job, open the city window and call him "back to home city", that will do the trick. The sequence is very important. If you dismiss #2 instead of #1 it won't work. |
This works just fine. However, I tried to find a more 'user-friendly' approach to the problem. If you insist to have everything done in a single turn I'm afraid this 'homing/calling home' is the only alternative. But it's so easy to miss the proper order of the engineers and thus blowing up the whole effort.
There is another way. You can handle max 9 engineers without using rehoming city trick so I suggest you use any number of engineers between 1-9 on a given tile. Do exactly as Xin has suggested. Move #1 engineer to a tile and give the order. You can give any order you want (o,i,r,e...) Do the same with #2 engineer Move #3 engineer to the tile, then click the top engineer in the list to remove the order and give the order to the #3. Repeat with the #4. Note that the engineer who's order you have to remove is always the highest one with that order in his shield.
After doing this to the last engineer, leave them there (the last two in the engineer list should have their order written in their shield). When next turn comes, move all engineers away from the tile leaving just the two with their orders. Then start moving them back one by one and again the engineer who's order must be removed is the highest on the list. Repeat this as many turns as necessary until the job gets done! The reason why I suggest you moving your engineers out and in is simply because it's easier to keep track of the proper order of removing/giving orders.
One more trick: you can 'charge' your engineers before committing them to do a hard, time-consuming job. You see, the job done by engineer is accumulated to the engineer himself, not to the terrain. Just make them do something (like 'o') and immediately click on them to remove that order. After that they have 'job count' of two. You can go further and repeat this as many times you want. Let's say you have 'charged' you engineers to the job count of five. If you have say 2 of them you can put them making a 2x5=10 turn job in a single turn, for example transforming a plain to a grassland.
You can even mix charged and non-charged engineers if you like using Xin's method. No job done will ever be wasted.
Don't forget Ribannah's clue, it's very useful in OCC games!
| quote: Originally posted by Ribannah on 02-10-2001 07:38 AM Farmland is 5 turns for Settlers, and therefore 2½ for Engineers. If you still have your original NON-Settlers plus two Engineers, you can be very efficient by having the Settlers aid first one Engineers unit, then the other. |
Just do this with your settler and two engineers using Xin's method and you get one-turn farmland!
Read also the thread The Lone Engineer at Work (started by Gastrifidis, stolen by SlowThinker). There is a lot of useful information, for example the turn counts an engineer needs to do the various jobs.
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