Does anyone manage a city's workers?

[rwprice]

I'm just curious...do any of you take the time to check on the positioning of the workers in your cities? I was thinking about this, and this is something I rarely do. Maybe that's because the few times I bothered to do this, I rarely found a whole lot of difference by moving them around. Have you found that you can gain an advantage by carefully managing this aspect yourself?

[PhoenixPhlame73]

I usually only manage my city's workers if there is some reason that my attention has been brought to the city, for instance, if it was no longer growing at size two or three, if it is producing something particularly important, or if it is one of my four or five largest cities, those I check regularly.

[Playa del Carmen]

I do occasionally. But generally I let the governor take care of things. And of course, if the city's rioting and I can't make anymore entertainers without starving people, I have to let them starve. Kind of sad, kind of necessary. But that's generally the only time I mess with the little boogers.

[Ethelred]

Sometimes. Nearly every city at several times a game.

When I run out of happiness.

When I hit the aquaduct limit

When I hit the hospital limit

All those call for setting growth to zero and maximizing production. Otherwise I can be wasting a lot of time producing unused food.

Occasionally I go in to maximize growth. Sometimes wealth.

[Aeson]

I almost always manage my city's workers until about 500AD. After that there are just too many of them to keep up with, and the rewards for doing so are minimal. During the initial expansion phase, taking a couple turns off of each build (especially Settlers) can lead to an exponential increase in production. The returns double about every 15-20 turns, making a big difference throughout the rest of the game.

[Jawa Jocky]

You can do better, but why bother.

[Beren]

For example. Small (size 2) city in plains area. I build irrigation and I make sure the city immediately switches.
I sometimes check it out and every time I am in a city I just click once to make sure they spread the production nice.

[nbarclay]

I'm definitely a micromanager. I've had too many times when the game wanted to put a person in forest or on a mountain to maximize production when I wanted the person on a tile that would emphasize growth to trust the game in that regard. And keeping up with where people are working lets me focus on building tile improvements when and where they are needed; I hate working unimproved tiles (except maybe forest with game in despotism), but building tile improvements that won't be used for a long time wastes workers' time.

Nathan

[Marquis de Sodaq]

All the time! Whenever a city starts building something new, I try to optimize the shield production. As Aeson points out, doing this early on reaps rewards later. In the later stages of the game it matters less.

[rpodos]

I've been lazy lately, and have just let the city governor manage things.

It's a boon in terms of game "speed" and let's me focus on the big picture and the metagame. Also, no disorder.

That said, I think I am going to follow Aeson's example, and micro-manage until 1000-500BC.

The one thing that I do mid-game, to deal with the governor not managing food when you already have 12 pop, is to draft a Rifleman every time a city hits 12. I'm still figuring out what to do with all the conscripts... so far I've been using them for mountain fortresses (the math still works well, even with only 2 hps).

[Deathwalker]

Personally I like to manage my workers, It gives me more control over were I want roads ans so on. Just as a quick question what are to commands for workers to do specific jobs

[player1]

Sometimes when I build new Mine or Irrgration.

Always when polltion start.
Sine you need to put laborers back after pollution is cleared.

And in several other cases.

[player1]

Hey!

I became KING (Prince ==> King).

Now, 2000 more post to go (for Emperor).

[Nym]

I usually let the governor manage the worker (default management), but I intervene when the city :

• can't grow further (aqueduct, hospital...),
• produces a wonder (I try to improve shield production, even with starvation beginning if valuable),
• encounters happiness problems (I try to solve civil disorder, even with starvation).

[bigvic]

I generally find it a pain, wish they had taken a clue from the ctp series and not only gotten rid or these memory and time eating unit that invariably at some point appear in hordes of animated busyness, but also wish they had gotten rid of the entire concept of allocating city workers to specific tiles. Again, what a pain, even for the micromanager freak. As much as I hate it, if you let the AI do all the above and do not carefully moniter things, the AI will screw you yet again.

Stupid things the AI does w/ both workers and city laborers (they are inextricably related)
1. Sets workers to irrigating city squares of cities unable to grow due to lack of proper growth improvement, even to the point of tearing down mines when the city is doing just fine. Watch for this, the AI does it every time.
2. Allocates city laborers to food producing tiles even when unable to grow (same reason as above) instead of maxing out gold or production.

Am I missing something? I just do not trust these governors.

3. Does not really attempt to link empire w/ roads soon enough. If you want that somewhat removed iron or spice city linked anytime soon, you have to do it.

4. Can't understand the efficacy of "worker mobs", i.e. lumping togethrer hordes of workers around, usually, wonder producing cities and busting out production and sometimes pop growth improvements.

5. Fails to adequately re-assign laborers immediately after completion of harbors, or growth. When you simply click on the city to re-assign workers after completion of a harbor, it often completely ignores production in favor of food, and you must manually tinker w/ it till you get some growth and shields.


Again, I don't mess w/ governors much at all, so maybe I'm spouting out a bunch of ignorant garbage here.