Does anyone manage a city's workers?

[rwprice]

Laborers, not workers

I guess I need to clarify this a little. I'm not talking about the units that you can see on the map and which build roads and improvements. What I mean are the ones within the city--actually I should have used the term "laborers" rather than "workers". I'm asking about the placement of the laborers to maximize food, shield and wealth production. Thanks for all the replies so far.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by bigvic
I
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.

Try Shift-A automation. Then they won't replace anything.

Late in the game I set most of my workers to SHIFT-A and keep some to do the things I can't trust the automation to take care of. Like mining the grasslands.

[twistedx]

I usually just let the AI do it itself, with three exceptions:

- If city is at zero growth because it picked out piss-poor places get get food from.

- If city is in revolt, and I need some entertainers.

- When I conquer a city, and I need to use it more as a strategic base rather than a city. I usually set all the people to entertainers and let the discontents starve.

Other than that, I find it EXTREMELY boring to manage them.

-- twistedx

[Felch]

I generally avoid micromanagement.

[Adm.Naismith]

Micromanaging is the most relevant difference between mediocre and great game results.
I usually am so lazy to check labourer only every some game turn or after special events, and I use specialist very scarcely, if not for raising happiness, but often my games end with a ranking not worth to mention.

Great players usually micromanage in excess, carefully reallocating labourers and specialists almost every turn. It's a very bad and heavy task for me, as I hate this kind of time loss.

I want to be a strategist, a general ruler, not a tactical player, but the game governors aren't good enough to relieve me from the task, as bigvic already mentioned before.

Civ III introduce some enhancement to reduce micromgmt, as get rid of Caravans and Spies units but the horrible and well hidden - they confused covert operation with covert interface - espionage mission panel and the unbalanced mix of costs vs results ruined the improvement.

Nothing good happened with labourer rules, I'm afraid, and that is one of the missed Civ III opportunity to evolve into a new game. But that's another story no one wants to mention again, I suppose.

[Rasputin]

i only tend to adjust my labourers when i need to rush production of a wonder of city improvemnt . Apart from then i allow the game to manage without me. Except of course to occasionaly re-assign entertainers that are no longer needed.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Ethelred


Try Shift-A automation. Then they won't replace anything.

Late in the game I set most of my workers to SHIFT-A and keep some to do the things I can't trust the automation to take care of. Like mining the grasslands.

Thanks for the tip. Still, one must keep an eye out. I kind of fear I might overlook something in that case, though keeping a couple of worker mobs undder my control would plug the gaps when i do want to replace an improvement. Have you noticed the harbor thing? I hate that. Makes building harbors a pain. Even if the ai could allocate workers to get, say growth in 10 instead of 6 turns and still have enough production to build that temple in 20 instead of 40 turns, it will invariable choose the food deal, then allocate the growth laborer to more food. Ick.

[PerpetualNewbie]

I didn't quite follow you, bigvic. What is the harbor problem? The +1 food from water tiles making for more rapid growth? I usually account for the harbor effect before I begin irrigating any tiles, so the net result in most of my coastal cities is that while before they were capped at 6-8 due to lack of food, they now grow to 10-12.

Usually, managing tile improvements (irrigation or mine) is much more important than managing the actual city laborers, at least in my games.

Incidentally, I wish there was a set of checkboxes for worker automation. I personally would set workers to never irrigate unless told otherwise. That would involve a lot more intervention for the desert communities, but drastically reduce the mistakes it makes in improving terrain in grassland and plains...

[bigvic]

The problem is that when the ai could balance growth and production in these situations (city w/ harbor) it almost always completely ignores production. This can be a real pain in terms of micromanagement in the case of running a civ stuck on an iceberg continent, or any that depends on a lot of coastal cities located on less than fertile plains. Oh well, guess that's just a part of the game. Micromanagement can be fun sometimes, unless its 3 in the morning, in which case I should be sleeping anyway.