Lazy slaves..

[Capt Dizle]

Why do captured workers work twice as slow as my own?

Is this a bug or a feature and is it in the manual or civpedia thing?

Why am I always the last to know?

Why does the AI hide all of its workers in cities during war?

[Kc7mxo]

Well, the way i hear it its normal for slaves to work less hard. And realistic.

However, it is further agravated if you'r and industrial civ, cause your workers get the bonuses and they don't. i actually tend to build up backwater cities with captured workers cause they work just as hard that way as other citizens.

Why does the AI hide all of its workers in cities during war?

so you can't capture them as easy. :-)

[solo]

I think their work speed depends on their original Civ characteristics and/or government. Somewhere around here, I remember reading that workers taken from an "Industrious" civ worked faster than the author's own, but I may be mistaken.

[sophist]

Captured workers all work at the same rate, regardless of their origin, which is half the rate of your native workers.

[cousLee]

which is fine imo, as they don't cost any support. Your built ones do. Unless you build them from a captured city, they are classed as either their nationality, or as barbarians. Both are free, and both work at half rate.

If you build a worker from a captured city, and so much as one population is your civ's nationality, that is the one that will become the worker. So if your gonna do that, do it before the population grows.

10 to clear, 9 to plant.

[Easy Rhino]

barbarian workers?

ER

[David Murray]

So, what happens if you build a barbarian worker into your city?

Does it then equate as a barbarian in terms of nationality in the city screen?

[sophist]

I think the barbarian worker may be a bug. I also get funky characters from time to time (like extended ASCII) where the nationality of the worker should be. Clearly a bug.

[Bad Ax]

Actually, in my experience workers and settlers built from a captured city arise with your nationality on them whether anyone of your nationality is in the city or not. This provides a convenient work-around for preventing reversion of conquered cities. Once you've quelled the resisters, make a settler in the city, then build it back into the city. Voila, instant conversion of citizens with another nationality into your citizens, who are less likely to revert to the civ that used to hold your city. Additionally, they don't suffer the "Stop aggression against our mother country" happiness penalty, so disorder is somewhat less likely. This is sometimes a quite useful adjunct to culture-rushing.

[Klem]

Worker Cost

Originally posted by cousLee
which is fine imo, as they don't cost any support. Your built ones do.

At least under a Democracy, all workers, including those captured from other Civs, cost 1 gold per turn. They have to eat, too. This is easily verified on the Military Overseer screen. Click the units column to get unit counts, then go to the City Overseer and check how much you are paying in maintenance. Other forms of government allow some “free” units, but unless there is NO unit maintenance cost, captured units are VERY expensive.

Captured workers perform at either 1/2 or 1/3 the rate of your own workers. Thus you are paying two or three time more for a unit of work by a captured worker . But, probably you aren’t getting even the 1/2 or 1/3 functionality, unless you are VERY careful.

For the sake of discussion suppose you are upgrading a road to a RR and one of your workers takes 4 turns, and two of your workers takes 2 turns, etc. In effect, that upgrade cost is 4 gold under a Democracy because you paid 4 gold for unit maintenance while the upgrade was being made. Now suppose you put one of your workers and a1/2 rate worker on the job. How long does it take - answer 3 turns at a cost of 6 gold because each turn only accomplishes 1-1/2 unit of work and you waste 1/2 unit of work. Suppose you put two 1/2 rate workers on the same task. It will take 4 turns and cost 8 gold for unit maintenance, double your own workers! And 1/3 rate workers are worse.

Morals aside, slaves are not cost effective. Either disband them so you don’t waste money on maintenance, or use them to build your city population. The worst that happens is they become a tax collector that adds one gold per turn instead of costing 1. Build citizen workers if you need workers.

I believe barbarians are slower yet. Get rid of them at once! All slow workers eat up your gold and screw up your project timetables.
Klem

[Capt Dizle]

I have about 30 captured workers now and under monarchy there is no support cost. It is good to be the king.

I don't know about demo, haven't gotten there yet.

[HolyWarrior]

Firaxis is finally taken its first baby steps into dealing with slavery. I would've liked to see the Emancipation wonder, whereby all slaves would automatically become naturalized citizens.

[Dis]

slaves don't cost any money

if you don't mind the micromanagement. use all foreigners and disband you native ones inside cities to increase size. but you need twice as many foreigners to do the job of a native (althought the opposite is true in the U.S. )

[cousLee]

Klem, I had done that before. And it was using democracy. Slaves don't have a support cost. At least for your civ. I read another post that suggested captured workers are still supported by the civ of nationality, but havn't confirmed it. if that is the case, poor Catherine will never be able to afford my fine gems. . And I don't let my workers get captured, so I can't verify it.