Question on workers

[jordie]

Do captured workers perform at a lesser rate than normal workers? Because it always seems it takes longer for my captured, celtic, chinese and mongolian workers to perform a fucntion....

[Tiberius]

Yes, they work at half speed.

[marcuspeddle]

I think they work at 50% efficiency. Trade them for something with other civs.

[marcuspeddle]

Oh, bugger; I was a little too slow on the trigger.

[Tiberius]

[jordie]

AH ok thanks. I never knew that... that kinda sucks, most are my workers are captured. lol

[jordie]

i'm guessing there isn't a way to make them work at 100% ?

[Tiberius]

Note: they work at 50% efficiency compared to your workers, regardless of their original status (industrious or non-ind workers)

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by jordie
AH ok thanks. I never knew that... that kinda sucks, most are my workers are captured. lol

They indeed are slower, but free of maintenance. So don't count them as "lazy" workers, but free, extra workers. It's a question of perspective
Seriously now, use them in pairs and Bingo!, you have full-speed, upkeep-free worker-pairs (assuming that you micromanage them). At the point where there are too many workers to micromanage the pairs, it doesn't really matters anymore, does it ?
Also, use your own workers for important, urgent tasks and the slaves for the rest of the jobs.

i'm guessing there isn't a way to make them work at 100% ?

Honestly I've never tried this and I have no idea whether this is possible or not. Look in the editor. If it is possible, you should find the option there.

Edit: using (keeping) slaves worsens the relations with their civ of origin. If you don't like them (the slaves) at all, sell/gift them to a third civ; thus both of them will look more favorable at you and in the same time you will ruin the diplomatic relations between two of your rivals.

[jordie]

ah alright. Ive got 116 workers with probably about 50-70 of them being from other countries (I've defeated 9 others and on the way of another 2). So a lot of my workers are running at 50% hmm.. interesting. I guess I'll continue to use them, but I'll also make some more of my own.

Thanks for the help!

[Solomwi]

Definitely worth keeping. I usually try to get an obscene number of captured workers up through the Industrial Age, then once I've got everything railroaded, my native workers start looking for cities to optimize (which in the case of captured metros usually results in building even more workers to get pop down as I mine what was irrigated). Once I have it all railroaded, I keep all my natives fortified together in a central spot. When I notice that I'm consistently having some left over, I add them to cities, a process that really starts once my hospitals get built, but only in a trickle for a while. Get rid of them as fast as you can without sacrificing jobs that need to get done. In my current game I had 150+ native workers at the height of railroad fury. I'm down to 35 now and have about 100 captured workers automated for pollution control, and more in reserve. So I'm thinking this will be a game I can get an entirely non-native workforce at some point.

[Jaybe]

Edit: using (keeping) slaves worsens the relations with their civ of origin. If you don't like them (the slaves) at all, sell/gift them to a third civ; thus both of them will look more favorable at you and in the same time you will ruin the diplomatic relations between two of your rivals.

Selling "guest" workers (of any nationality) supposedly worsens relations also, though perhaps not on such a sustained basis as keeping them. The worst thing you can do with guest workers is disband (kill) them. Best to add them to your cities, relations-wise, but then those cities may become more corrupt; and if you get into a war with the same civ again -- instant war weariness!

Personally, I keep using them usually. I might establish radar towers, airfields, etc. with them.

EDIT: Per Bamspeedy's AI Attitude article at CFC and the associated forum discussion, using guest workers does NOT affect relations.

[Willem]

Originally posted by jordie
i'm guessing there isn't a way to make them work at 100% ?

Yes there is, play an Industrious Civ. They get double the Worker speed of other civ types.

[Rasputin]

but still oonly 50% of your own native workers....

the captured ones never are as good as your own.

I personally keep them as they usually amoun to a large workforce eventually and i usually stick the foriengers on auto and allow them to do the non urgetn stuff, keeping my natives to do the stuff i need immediatly .

[jordie]

Originally posted by Jaybe
[q]The worst thing you can do with guest workers is disband (kill) them.

ohhh... damn. lol

Originally posted by Jaybe
[q]Personally, I keep using them usually. I might establish radar towers, airfields, etc. with them.

Hmm not a bad idea, i never considered that before.

Originally posted by Rasputin
[q]but still oonly 50% of your own native workers....

the captured ones never are as good as your own.

Ah ok. Thanks for the answer. Would be good if there was someway to turn foreign wokrers into your own, or perhaps over time would be good.