Many Workers

[Sheik]

I don't know if this has been discussed before or not, if it has then sorry to bring it up again.

In my current game with my mod on a fairly generous map I have built about 52 workers (none are captured) and it is the year 210 B.C. I have a lot of cities and my workers are transforming land at very fast rates. For me this is working great. Having so many workers allows me to irrigate, mine, and clear forest/jungle very fast which in turn allows me to build more and more. How many workers do you have on average? Do you find having a lot of workers helps? Is building so many a bad idea?

[Catt]

Holy labor unions, Batman! I read the first part of your post and thought "52 workers - bah! look at some of the late game, huge maps people play - we're talking hundreds of workers," and then I saw that you had 52 workers in 210 BC without any captured slaves? That's an awful lot of shields and pop points going to workers (unless your mod affects this radically) - can you empire possibly work all of the improved tiles (you must have a bunch by now!) and do you intend to melt your workers back into your cities?

Catt

[Sheik]

I do intend to melt them back into my cities after I have railroaded everything and have hospitals. Almost everything around me is improved and my mod doesn't change the way workers act. It seemed to balance out because all those pop units are easily made up faster then ever because everything is improved. After I am done testing my mod I might try this strategy in a completely random game and see how it works.

[Catt]

It's hard to say whether this is a bad idea or not (as you ask in your first post) without knowing the details of your mod. But in a standard, un-modded game it's hard to imagine producing 52 workers by 210 BC, let alone putting all those workers to good use that early. I may have 12 towns on a larger map by 210 BC (total guess, can't recall how many I would "typically" have) - not one of them will be larger than 12 pop (many below 12!) -- that means not possibly more than 144 tiles worked by my citizens. I reckon that 52 workers could improve every single tile in a little over 20 turns on average, starting from scratch (which of course they haven't had to do) -- clearing jungle / mining mountains takes a little longer. Finally, assuming that you're still a despot, you really can't generate more than 2 food from the vast majority of terrain regardless of tile improvements (flood plains and bonus resources being the exceptions), so all that improvement won't necessarily speed the replacement of the population loss due to worker generation.

Within the context of a standard game, I would venture a guess that you have far too many workers for your own good.

Catt

[Spaced Cowboy]

I don't know about that....52 workers would sure be a help if I were backed up against a swamp.

[Anglophile]

I am playing the DyP mod (.84). In my 250 BC save, I had 46 cities and 45 workers. In the DyP mod, mining and irrigation come late (early middle ages). I am just about to get mining and will then research towards irrigation. Now in 10 AD with 58 cities and 92 workers and am mining/irrigating/road building at a high rate. By the way, all cities founded, none captured. Obviously I am playing a very big map (240x226, 60% land, continents, 4B years, wet, warm, 10 civs, Deity). On this size of map, lots of workers are pretty well mandatory, my goal is between 1.25 and 1.5 workers per city during the long expansion period this map size forces, down to 1 or less per city as workers get faster and tasks get fewer. So depending on era, map size, play style, etc, I would definitely agree with Sheik re lots of workers.

By the way, I also used to have this many workers in Civ 1, 2, and unmodded 3. Lots of workers is a great investment, paying back many times in increased growth rates and production capacity plus the gold/research/luxury/movement benefits from roads.

[Sheik]

I have around 35 cities in my game and am running a republic.

[Deathwalker]

52 workers what the....

I normally have around 12-15 running arround

[Moonsinger]

Re: Many Workers

Originally posted by Sheik
Do you find having a lot of workers helps? Is building so many a bad idea?

Having a lot of workers is a good idea. I usually have at least 300 of them in all my games. Since all of my workers are slave, I paid no upkeep. Did you know that if you build a worker in a city full of foreign citizens, you don't have to pay upkeep for them. Most people think that I raze alot of cities to get 300+ workers, but actually, I built most of them from scratch.

[Thrawn05]

As a rule of thumb, 3 workers per city for me.

[JohnM2433]

Why don't you have to pay upkeep for foreign workers, anyway? Do you still have to pay upkeep for your workers if they are captured by other civs? That would be silly, but if not, 2 civs could trade workers and not have to pay upkeep on them, which would be silly too. That sounds like an exploit, particularly in MP.

When you raze a city, does its population get turned into workers? I never raze cities, so I wouldn't know.