Do you automate most of your workers?

[Grumbold]

Small numbers of auto workers seem to d oa pretty good job. In trying to get a good score on MarkG's competition scenario I ended up with about 200 auto-workers running round my huge empire. Not only did they do some pretty stupid things once the top 10 tasks had a worker assigned, they also took far too long to process themselves. The whole game bogged down in a world of tedium.

[quinalla]

I don't automate any workers for about the first half of the game or so, once I get a bunch of them or I want to build a whole lot of railroads, I usually shift-A automate about half and keep the rest to do what I want to have them do. I never use the regular "A" automate, though, because the workers seem to love changing all the mines and irrigation randomly back and forth.

-quinalla

[phix]

Automate Workers... Sometimes

Automating units in Civ2 was just horrible...

Automating units in Civ3 is a lot better...

However, I never use the A or Shift A for automating workers. I always use Shift-I to only do improvements for a specific city.

I found that putting workers on Automate while building new cities always left my older cities undeveloped, while the workers pretty much just gave up what they were doing and moved to the new cities...

Now, I just have a bunch of Workers work one city to full development and then move them on to the next city... (While building more and more bands of workers)

Once I have railroads all over a continent, I just have groups of workers sitting around waiting for pollution, or planting forrests, and cutting them down. No more automation

I wish when you put workers on pollution cleanup, you could just keep them idling on pollution cleanup instead of asking for orders when it's all done... oh well...

[Blaupanzer]

Don't automate the workers, especially using the 'A' key. They behave like they are on acid, wandering about irrigating and mining almost at random. They even irrigate mined squares, then mine the square again. They build roads thru mountains and hills with available bypasses on level ground ignored, and THEN go back and build roads along the bypasses. A few of them will even wander off, although they are pretty good about borders in the later game. On their own, they don't IFE or join cities, two good uses for workers at various times.

[waasabi]

One point everyone a agrees on: never just "A"utomate your workers. It sucks. Nobody does it - at least, nobody does it a 2nd time.

Shift-A is great. I *rarely* automate any workers before industrialization or thereabouts. Just works out that way. I start automating workers when they become a PITA. I'm happily playing my game and I start hating figuring out which city squares still need roads and/or railroads. Screw that - it's not fun for me. Shift-A, goodbye.

However, I *always* keep a solid number under my direct control to handle any immediate needs that might come up.

It's playstyle. Like micromanagement? Does absolutely needing to have 1 extra food in city 22 2 turns earlier then automating your workers would have gotten it for you float your boat? Good, don't automate. Are you sick of zooming in on all 25 cities looking for possible land-upgrade improvements and changes every damned turn make you sick? Good, automate.

[Sabre2th]

I control them until late in the game, then I automate for pollution and specific cities only.

[Boney]

I never automate. It takes longer to manage but then they are doing what I want them to do.

[spiky82]

i personally never automate cuz the AI is excellent except: they mine all my strategic resources, making them disappear faster....

so i only automate the far-flung cities on other continents than my main one...if i ever automate, it's clearing pollution and jungles.....

[Wulfram]

I automate when everything is mostly done as they some times find unirrigated squares which I've missed

[bahoo]

With a hundred plus captured workers, I can't imagine individually ordering them.

I automate them all, except the occasional couple I will give the "railroad to" command to when I get a new city.

Of course they're not very bright.... I have a section of mountains in my cultural influence, that aren't within any towns radius, that are crisscrossed with railroads and mines, but...if that's what makes them happy, so be it, a happy worker is a good worker.

[Boracks]

In ancient times, I don't automate workers. After that, I will automate 10-20% of them and usually have jobs for the rest.

[Sevorak]

As yet there is no evidence that mining a strategic resource makes it go away faster.

I never automate - I happen to not mind lots of micro and it's better than having workers misprioritizing - like going off and planting a forest in the single tundra square instead of dealing with the grasslands and hills first.

-Sev

[star mouse]

I automate the majority of my workers, using SHIFT-A. It got pretty funny last night when over a dozen workers suddenly decided that those squares within my empire but not within a city radius needed roads, so they all moved to occupy these squares, one worker each.

At least they go back home when they've got no more trouble to make....

[Deathray]

I find automating quite useful if you use the pollution clean up, build road network and in this city's radius commands. Also, because I raize most of the cities that I capture, which generally leaves me with several hundred workers by the end of the game. This is all fine and great (although it does take up to 20 seconds to move them all), except that when they run out of stuff to do they all run back home and I either have to get rid of them or press space several hundred times (actually, holding it down works well, but be careful not to skip other units' turns) every turn until I have something for them to do. I would like it so that they went to sleep when they had nothing to do until I manually went and woke them up.

A side question: do captured workers get the double speed bonus if you are an industrious civilization? If not then its probably not worth my while considering my workforce usually consists soley of captured workers. Its just I have this bad habbit of cleansing whatever continent I'm on of all the other civs, and if their city doesn't fit into my grid, well, I can't have that, so I have to raize it...

[Pythagoras]

Automation would be cool if it was more predictable and under your control.

For instance you could develop some 'script' or some file that prioritized which terrain types should get improved first. Or similarly prioritize which jobs should get done first. Then for each terrain type you could specify what improvements to place if at all posible. Like say for plains put road and irrigation. When you automated a worker you could decide which of these scripts to run. So perhaps you had a script that prioritized building roads to strategic resources, you could execute that script as opposed to another.