City Council: Most effective use of workers, esp non-industrial

[UnOrthOdOx]

Since we are going to be the Vikings, I thought I would start this up.

There may well be this information out there already, please link to relevent threads, or post the info here.

First of all, if someone has a list of base turn required for a non-industrial worker to improve the various types of land, please post it here or link to it.

We all know the value of stacking worker to speed improvements, however, stacks have a diminishing return in terms of # of turns they take off a job. This situation is more prominent with non-industrial workers.

For example: say a non-industrial worker takes 5 turns to road a hill. A second worker would reduce that to 3 turns, a third to 2 turns, and a fourth would still remain 2 turns. It would take a 5th to make the road in one turn. (this is only an example, real times may vary)

In this case, it would be more of a benefit for the 4th worker to start a different improvement instead.

However, the cases can be more complicated:

A road on plains takes 3 turns for a single worker, 2 turns for 2 workers. However, those same two workers seperate could road two seperate tiles in three turns where it would take them 4 together. There are times when this may be beneficial than the single tile in 2 turns.

For discussion:

What is the most beneficial use of workers and stacks?

When is it better to split a stack?

What are the breaking points for the various improvements? (ie, when do adding more workers stop to reduce # of turns on an improvement?)

[Kuciwalker]

Mine - 12 turns
Irrigation - 8 turns
Fortress - 16 turns
Road - 6 turns
Railroad - 12 turns
Plant Forest - 18 turns
Clear Forest - 10 turns
Clear Jungle - 16 turns
Clear Pollution - 24 turns

[UnOrthOdOx]

skywalker,

roads and mines have different #'s on the different terrains, so does claering pollution and fortresses.

If someone can get me the list Ill make an Excel sheet of them.

[Inverse Icarus]

i'm glad i'm not the PW / DM guy, i usually just build main roads first, and drop a mine or two at key cities early on

[Kuciwalker]

Unorthodox, the different numbers are I believe just the base time multiplied by the move cost. I couldn't find a "terraform modifier" or some such field in the editor.

[UnOrthOdOx]

?

This is odd, then.

Road on a Grassland is 3 turns, mine 6, and irrigate 4...

You have 6, 12, 8 listed...

6 and 12 match up with hills, cant irrigat those, though.

Roading a forest is also 6, clearing 10.

Mountain is 9 to road, 18 to mine.

Fields, flood plains and desert match with Grassland.

Now to figure how stacking works...

[UnOrthOdOx]

I think your list is for slaves, double it for normal workers...

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
I think your list is for slaves, double it for normal workers...

those numbers are base., as you asked for.

despotism has +50% worker rate.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

This is why I made stacks job specific when I was DM, each stack was maximized to complete jobs in one or two turns with no worker contribution overlap.

[GeneralTacticus]

Regarding that list - the values listed in the Editor are all twice what normal workers take, so it probably is the list for slaves.

[Octavian X]

I've always found stacking workers gets things like roads done faster. In that fashion, one tile of usuable road will get done in one turn, rather than waiting a longer amount of time to complete a longer road at once, without the ability to use it partially completed.

[Jon Shafer]

It depends on when you need certain things to be done. For example, you can go a long time with 1 industrious Worker, simply because it's hard to run out of unworked tiles early on in the game.

It comes down to what you need and when. If you're working unimproved tiles, you need to get tiles cranked out ASAP to avoid losing too much efficiency. If that means stacking Workers, then that's how it has to be.

[UnOrthOdOx]

GF, Octavian, I normally agree.

What I am looking for, though is the break points. Times when we don't have enough workers to stack up to a job for it to complete on one turn. Take a Hill, 3 workers will road it in 2-3 turns, but it takes another 3 to make it complete in one turn. If we only have 5 workers, then there is a point where the extra workers in that stack would have NO EFFECT reducing the time. I THINK it would work that the first 3 workers would bring us to a 2 turn completion, but workers 4 and 5 would make no change to that since it would take 6 to complete in one turn and they could be used elsewhere. Ill look into it a bit later. Basically, what is the optimum stack for non-industrial workers, I want to chart each job with how many turns it would for X number of workers.

I don't think we will have the needed numbers to make stacks specifically for mines for some time.

[Octavian X]

If I recall correctly, adding another worker cuts time for completion in half. Yes, there is a point were adding workers provides no immeadiate effect until enough are added to complete it.

To be honest, I've always used the guess-and-check method, just trying to put one, than another, than another and seeing when work'll be done. Then again, that's only effective when you have roads already...

Someone want to ask this in the strategy forum?

[rush]

UnOrthOdOx,

I think you are referring to this chart from E_T. Thanks.