How do you trade workers?

[Arrian]

realpolitic,

I never actually considered that, but theoretically, yes!

alexman,

I only add purchased workers to my core cities, primarily my capitol. In my last game, I was able to buy 6 workers (2 Zulu, 2 Indian, 1 Chinese, 1 Babylonian). I actually used the Bab worker for a bit, since the city I had building the Colossus really needed help with terrain development. As it turned out, I lost the Colossus in 1125BC (!) to France, but managed to build the Pyramids instead. Though I had long since added the Bab worker to that city, the Babs were the first civ to pick a fight with me. Hammurabi is almost as bad as Bismarck in the ancient age... and he's got better archers. He died, though. Then again, so did all of my neighbors.

-Arrian

[cracker]

Arrian,

Adding your slaves (captured and purchased workers) into your cities is not your wisest move.

In the earlier parts of the game, the slaves carry their nationality with them and can increase the risk of culture flipping, disorder, and war weariness.

Slaves are free from unit support costs and therefore save you 1/2 gpt for each slave that your keep. Two slaves replace one of your normal workers.

Slaves normally work at 1/2 speed for you, but when you are an industrious civ, your slaves will work at half of your normal speed which is standard speed for most other civs.

If you need the extra pop points in cities it is better to join workers of your nationality into the towns so that you will reduce the per turn costs of supporting your active units. If you are doing a minimally competent job of managing your empire, this worker joining technique will not normally be required until after hospitals+mass transit.

Four stacks of eight to ten slaves per stack should be able to clear almost any reasonanble pollution events in a single turn. If your pollution is worse than this your doing it wrong.

If you are in a game timeframe that is prior to completion of Railroads, I would definately discourage anyone from following the advice you posted about joining slaves back into cities. They have much more value to you on the hoof compared to converted into citizens. The exception to this analysis is if you are rushing specific wonders in newly founded cities, but this is rarely the case.

If you would like some details on making better use of your workers here's two links to articles that cover a number of worker tasking issues:

Forestry Operations on CFC

and

Improving Your Opening Play Sequences

[vondrack]

Respectfully, cracker, I do not think I can fully agree with your analysis. Adding slaves to my cities does not seem to be that bad idea to me and I do it quite often, too. While it is true that they need no gold support, they are slow in getting things done... having lots of them stacked might help, but...

...although they work at half the speed of your own workers, they will match your own citizens' productivity if joined to your cities.

Adding them to your capital makes sense, as that is usually the city building many wonders... unless you are lucky and get a fine starting location, it may take quite a while to grow your capital from, say, 7 to 12 - and you need to focus on food/growth, instead of shields/production, hindering your building activities...

OTOH, adding a slave gives you +1 pop instantly. And it makes as much food, money, and shields as your own citizens do. You are correct about the higher risk of war weariness, but unless you add too many of them, that will not be a problem, especially under monarchy, which is the government favoured by warmongers (that are most affected by WW).

Adding slaves to your slowly growing cities also makes sense. If the city food surplus is just +1, it takes quite some while to fill the food box... even if there is grassland enough to feed extra population... you add a slave and you immediately get one more tile worked, which is especially useful in areas with shielded grasslands (2 food, potentially 2 shields).

And even better... ex-slave citizens get assimilated, so this unwanted side effect fades off with time... ex-slave citizens will not piss your enemies off, either...

I do not think it is possible to say "it is better to keep your slaves as slaves" or "it is better to change your slaves into citizens". It depends on lots of factors... and I will often value two more shields and some gold (which I can spend supporting my own, twice as fast worker) that their free-of-charge, not-very-fast slave labour. Basically, the cost is 1/2 gold for twice the worker speed. Speed is more important than gold for me. I would have to have huge armies of slave workers to actually feel any real difference in my treasury...

[Theseus]

In the early game, you are typically in despotism, gold income is not an issue, your need for city growth is high, your need for worker productivity is high, culture is trivial for all, and your cities are not particularly close to another civ's Palace.

Your reputation and the AI civs' attitudes, however, can be important from initial contact on.

Thus, warweariness is a non-issue, cost is a minimal issue, city growth is enhanced, productivity is enhanced, and the danger of CF is absolutely minimal to none. BUT, you maintain good relations.

[Note: I'm not sure if Arrian made it clear, but this is primarily to be used in your core cities, not any of the newly-founded, and certainly not at the front. And also, obviously, you spread the joined slaves around.]

I think it's a brilliant strat early in the game (thus also providing for assimilation)... your thoughts, however, cracker, are right on target as the game goes on. I'd probably stop using this strat, in this particular way, before the end of the Ancient era.

[vmxa1]

I agree with vondrack. Cracker, glad to see you posting have you updated you thread about the terran on CFC? I guess I will jump over and see.

[nationalist]

I tried to trade workers that were in my capital, but the trade workers option didn't appear on the diplomatic scene. We were at peace and were connected with viable trade routes. Anyone have any guess as to why?

[cracker]

Vondrack, Arrian, and Vmxa1,

You'll have to do the math to show me that there is a net adavantage to joining the slaves into cities in the early game. All my tests so far show that this is a bad idea in most cases.

In my games, I am usually happiness limited more than pop point limited in my core cities. Emperor with three or four luxuries and a temple in Monarchy does not usually push my cities high enough on the happy scale to warrant external pop delivery.

I am usually trying to balance things and pull out pop points right at the 6 level because these citizens are the cheapest in terms of food growth and this maximizes the net population of the empire. I know you guys have been chatting up the early use of the luxury slider as well, but I still don't see mathematical support for what you are doing versus other strategies that expand the luxury support structure more quickly and more effectively.

I am not saying that doing this slave insertion in one particular city to pursue a specific strategy may not be a good idea. That all depends on the wonder, the difficulty, the map, and the civ.

Most players should not take your slave conversion to citizens as a good idea until they get their worker tasking bumped up to a higher level by at least two notches.

And Yes, the stratgy articles have been updated to include forestry from the dawn of time.

[vmxa1]

Cracker, I must have missed it (that is quite possible), but I do not advocate adding workers early in the game (to cities). I add them in on rare cases. I tend to use them until RR is done, then disband them in frontier cities for the small amount of shields. None of this is for any advantage, just to get them out of my way. That presumes I have enough of my own workers to handle pollution as it ocurrs and any RR for newly aquired cities. Last game I haf a huge island fully developed and about 10 workers to handle any pollution. On anther land mass I was at war with USA and raze a few cities and have about 40 workers. I did not need all of them so I disband some. I had no captued workers on the island as I had eliminate the only civ at turn about 20.
I read the new stuff and it is super a very fine job.

[Zero]

heres a biggie... can humans trade workers in PTW? I dont see whynot unless programmers specifically forbids this. And I think it either should be balanced or banned because of all sorts of problem.

1. There is no down side. Human player will not get mad because he sold you his worker. Maybe if you stole some during war, but generally the attitude effect of having slaves does not work agst humans.

2. This is part reason 1 + 3. You can swap workers. This creates "support free" workers. Say build me fifty workers and I'll trade you my fifty kinda thing.

3. The already god like industrious factor will be even more godly. think about what happens when 2 is applied. SUPPORT FREE REGULAR SPEED WORKERS!

[bbaws]

To trade workers with another Civ you have to fulfill two conditions
1 you need to have workers in your capital
2 you and the civ you are trying to trade with have to both have a city on the same continent.
Anyone ekse notice that cracker didn't have the answer to the question and just started spewing nonsense? As has been pointed out before: ignorance is only a position of strength when it is combined with humility.

[cracker]

vmxa1,

Sorry if I misunderstood you. Era timing changes the interpretation of what you do.

One thing you might do in the future on the assualts way off on a thrid continent is use the worker teleportation device instead of just disbanding teh workers. You can capture another city on that foreign continent and then move all the workers into the town before contacting one of your vassal states and gifting the town to your vassal. ANy of your units in the town will automatically be transported directly back to you capital for free. If you have forty capture workers from the first severla cities that you razed then they all get a free ride home via "transported room number 3". They you can do something more useful with them. 8 to 10 slaves stacked on standby is all that you need to clear a pollutedsquare in one turn in the late industrial age.

[vmxa1]

No problem. I did not use that for two reason
1- did not want the units as I had my standby crew for pollution on the homeland
2- did not want not give them any towns
But that is a device that can be used.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by cracker
Vondrack, Arrian, and Vmxa1,

You'll have to do the math to show me that there is a net advantage to joining the slaves into cities in the early game. All my tests so far show that this is a bad idea in most cases.

OK, I will try it... never did before, so I might end up being surprised myself, but anyway...

Let's distinguish between these two issues (they are basically about two different things):

EDIT: to clarify the terminology used... a "worker" is a worker of your nationality, while a "slave" is a worker of a different nationality. EDIT #2: A "citizen" is an inhabitant of a city assigned to work a certain tile in the city radius.

a) is it better to use slaves or workers? - we have a slave and a worker and we want to keep just one of them, joining the other to a city.

b) is it better to let slaves work or join cities? - we have a slave and we try to find out whether it is better to let him do some terrain improvements or join him to a city of ours.

As for a): I have already mentioned that in my previous post... this is a very simple equation. For 1 gpt (it's 1 gpt, not 1/2 gpt as mentioned earlier in this thread), you get a worker working twice as fast (and not pissing your enemies off). Considering the timing (ancient, medieval) and the fact that people are seldom running into cash related problems under despotism and monarchy, the savings are IMHO not worth the dramatic decrease in the worker productivity, unless you have, say, 20+ slaves.

Roads that are built faster (by the workers) bring in extra gold earlier, compensating (even if a very) small fraction of the extra cost. Also, you may very well have less than maximum free units - 4 per town/city under despotism, 2(per town)/4(per city) under monarchy - in which case your worker costs you nothing either.

As for b): this is what I consider tricky and mostly a case-by-case issue (but definitely nothing that could be generally considered bad or good strategy). If you add a slave to a city that has no unhappiness problem (yes, that is an important prerequisite - the lower the difficulty level, the more viable this approach is) and you are able to assign it to a tile in such a way that you get at least one more uncorrupted shield of production, it will take only 10 turns before you "save" the shields needed to build your own worker. Within the next 10 turns, your worker will be able to do as much as the slave would in 20 turns. So, after 20 turns, you end up with a worker (instead of a slave) and exactly the same job done. From that moment on, "a)" applies in full.

Your other option is to set the slave on mining a tile that will get a production bonus with a mine. It will take him 24 turns to build the mine. But that's more than the 20 turns you needed to join the slave into a city, build your own worker and then the mine (see in the previous paragraph)! Not mentioning the fact that you ended up with a worker, while here, you end up with a slave...

For industrious civs, the math is a bit different, since it will take the slave only 12 turns to build the mine. But unless you mine a hill under monarchy (mine a hill = +2 shields), you will still not do as well as in the "join" scenario, neglecting the fact that you will also need none of the extra shields to be wasted.

As with everything, the key word is balance. Of course, it is not possible to use this approach on every single slave, especially if you get loads of them. If you do, then by all means, let them do some slow work and be happy. But if you get just a couple of them (or, for the first few of them), you should look for a city that could benefit from an instant +1 pop boost.

Reading this after myself, I realize that there is an "ideal situation" for this convert-a-slave-into-a-worker approach. You need a city with a "happiness reserve" and an unworked tile generating at least two food (to minimize the effect on the population growth) and one unwasted shield (to meet the conditions I used in my "maths"). These are shielded grasslands, anything with a cattle, forests with game, and plains with wheat. Applies fully for early stages of the game only (later on, who cares... ).

I have to admit that I am not 100% sure, if you can "build a slave", that is, what happens if you join the slave to a city and immediately build a worker... can someone tell me? I believe the worker will not retain the nationality of the slave, but... does anyone know for sure?

[cracker]

I definately agree that we need to reinforce the terminology issues whenever possible to help foster a cleare understanding of the issues and to avoid confusion. Workers, Slaves, Citizens, and if the Industrious trait is considered all seem to be improtant terms.

I have experimented with the "ethnic cleansing" by joining slaves to towns and then trying to extract cleansed workers or cleansed settlers and this process is not clear cut.

The slave joined to a town creates a citizen of the foreign nationality. When a worker of settler is produced that consumes this citizen then the new worker or settler inherits the nationality and could be considered a slave.

I have not tested ever possible permutation but the join and build out cycle of events definately does not make a slave instantly into a highly productive worker.

I have not tested how the Civ3 engine determines what citizen of what nationality gets turned into the next worker. I also have not tested a number of examples where a settler gets created from one citizen that is your nationality plus one foreign citizen.

There is a bug that we have detected and discussed on CFC and we think it is realted to any time you build a worker from a city that contains a population of mixed nationalities. In the case you get the "floating worker nationality" bug where some of the workers of your nationality get their identity partially swapped with slaves and can be hard to locate using the military advisor units listing.

I also do not have the "pissed off" factor accurately quantified. I have a test game currently going on Deity level where I have two greek slaves that I purchased directly and two greek slaves liberated from Aztecs and yet Alexander is still alive and blissfully polite to me. I have an embassy and ROP with Alex but not military alliance history and we were not at war with Monty at the same time.

For captured slaves, the other civ always hates me for ever anyway because because I killed their military and captured towns, so a little extra anger for keeping their citizens alive as slaves doesn't seem to hold a great risk.