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

[UnOrthOdOx]

Yep, that's what I am looking for.

The other thing that occurred to me last night is when stacking can be detrimental to overall effectiveness. It's obvious when you think of it, I just hadn't put this much focus on workers before...

Let's take a simple road for non-industrious on a plain. You have 2 workers, put both on road. Now, it only takes 3 worker/turns to finish that road, so on turn two, you may as well inerrupt one of those workers to either start a mine or move on to the next project. The road will still be completed in 2 turns, and you will be moving on quicker than leaving the stack together.

[badams52]

That chart is very nice. We might want to brush up on worker management and cracker's site over on civ fanatics is a great place to start. His basic recomendation is 2 workers for clearing forests, and 3 for clearing jungle (non industrial) and looking at your chart, I would suggest 2 for mining hills and 3 for mining mountains.

One thing I want to point out about worker teams, while I do use them especially for forest and jungle clearing, is that they are more efficient if a road is already put in place. If you are moving both of them to an unimproved tile, you've wasted a worker turn in movement. Let's take an example of using two workers building 2 roads and 2 mines (on grassland in despotism). Each one working separately, it looks like this:

worker 1: worker movement, road, road, road, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine
worker 2: worker movement, road, road, road, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine

Sum: 10 turns, 2 roads (after 4 turns) 2 mines (after 10 turns).

Now if they're together:

worker 1: worker movement, road, road, mine, mine, mine, worker movement, road, mine, mine, mine
worker 2: worker movement, road, mine, mine, mine, worker movment, road, road, mine, mine, mine

Sum: 11 worker turns, 2 roads (1st after 3, 2nd after 8) , 2 mines (1st after 6, 2nd after 11)

So we essentially lose 2 worker turns per team, but gain 1 road 1 turn early and 1 mine 4 turns early while the 2nd road comes 4 turns later, and the second mine comes 1 turn later.

So what I'm saying is that pre-roading, using teams is a trade-off. You get the first road and first mine earlier, but the second ones come later and you lose worker turns moving the stack to unimproved terrain. In this case the question becomes, it is more important to get that 1 extra trade and 4 extra shields, or will the loss of worker turns end up hurting more than we gain.

And we also need to take into account what the city needs.

I'm not sure which way to jump.

Also wanted to point out a little worker management advantage that T-hawk pointed out in this thread.

By building roads using the "build road to" command (ctrl-r) the road being build will be finished during our turn when all the unit movement orders are completed rather than after the end of the turn. So it would be benefecial for us to always use 'ctrl-r' rather than 'r' even when just roading 1 tile.

But there is a question whether this type of use is an exploit or not.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Excellent post. Summed up what I was trying to get at better. Also some great links!

You could also have them road the seperate tiles then help each other on the mines to get the first one up at turn 7, second at 10, but then the first road is not done as fast.

I did not know the road-to order finished it before our turn was over, either.

[Kuciwalker]

Unorthodox - I got all of those numbers directly from the editor. Maybe it doesn something with them.

[joncnunn]

When considering the movement costs, there are three stages:

1. Desired tiles are unroaded: Usually it's most efficent to have each worker roading a seperate tile. (It costs 1 worker turn for each worker sent into each such tile.)

2. Desired tiles are all railroaded: Usally most efficent to send enough workers to finish the job in 1 turn.

3. Desired tiles are all roaded, but not railroaded: Break points in charts should be followed. Which break point to use depends upon the number of nearby workers within the break points of 2 tiles, 5 tiles, 8 tiles, etc.

[GhengisFarb™]

The only time there is a trade off with stacks is when you are building roads, which is why I tend to use Road stacks for harder terrain types like roads and mountains. And simply use individual workers for the grassland/plains tiles.

[Panag]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
The only time there is a trade off with stacks is when you are building roads, which is why I tend to use Road stacks for harder terrain types like roads and mountains. And simply use individual workers for the grassland/plains tiles.

hi ,

, or put two on grass/plains , one for the road , the other for the mine , ...

have a nice day

[badams52]

You'd still be wasting a worker turn for the one who mines.

[E_T]

For flatland, it's more efficient to use 2 workers in separate tiles than to stack them up

Example:
Non-industrious worker takes 3 turns to road a flatland tile. Also 1 turn to move to that unroaded tile, so 4 turns total. If you use 2 workers, it will take 2 turns to road that same tile, plus the 1 turn to move, so that's 3 turns total.

Over 12 turns:
With 2 workers working separately - 6 tiles are roaded.

With 2 workers working together - 4 tiles are roaded.

You should only double up when roading Hills and Forrest, Mining Flat & Hills, Irrigating Flat and Cutting forrest.

You should try to triple up when roading or clearing Jungle and roading and Mining Mountains.

One thing that I have done in the past is to have the 2 workers both road the separate tiles, then both double up and Improve the already roaded tiles.

Another thing that I also do, is to either mine or irrigate a tile that is next to a river before I road it, as it already has the trade bonus available for use.

E_T

[Panag]

Originally posted by badams52
You'd still be wasting a worker turn for the one who mines.

hi ,

nope , the worker who does the road can move to the next tile and start a road there , ....

have a nice day