Industrious Civs - Use workers in battle campaigns!

[Libertarian]

It's a bit tedious, but boy does it ever pay off! Bring workers along with your military when you're fighting. Industrial workers build roads and railroads fast. You can literally lay down roads and railroads for your military units right under their feet as they advance!

This works only if you're in your own or neutral territory. As you approach your battle target, let your workers pave the way all the way as far as you can. This often enables you to stage artillery close to the scene, and advance and remobilize your units with the highest possible efficiency. Once you've taken your objective, your workers can get to work on improvements right away.

Be sure to keep them protected, though. The AI loves snatching unprotected workers.

[challenge]

When approaching the border of another civ, I've been bringing one or two workers along as sort of an engineer corps. The build the roads for the follow-up units and the defensive fortifications to hold the terrain with. Two of them can build a road really fast -- advanced movement, no waiting.

[Monoriu]

-I 100% agree with using workers to build infrastructure as my army advances. I have been doing that since civ2 and this is one of the few civ 2 strategies that still work.

-However I disagree with being industrious just for this reason. I am not industrious but I can still instantly build roads and railroads by using 2x workers for the job. I have 60+ workers sitting around doing nothing because every tile has been improved to max and there is a maginot line of forts at my borders already. Workers is not a rare commodity in civ 3.

[Kc7mxo]

I too often wonder what to do with the hordes of workers that I end up accumilating. I'ven oticed that I can trade for workers with enemy civs, why can't I sell mine? I ussually just stack them up on a mountain in a fort with a defensive unit and forget about them.

[Monoriu]

You need to park them in your capital before you can sell them.

What to do with useless workers:

- join cities to increase population
- pollution cleaners.
- build railroads in tiles out of city range so that you won't accidentlly move units into those tiles and lose a turn
- use them as combat engineers as described earlier in this thread
- infinite forest exploitation (IFE, copyrighted by soulassassin).

[Zurai001]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
I too often wonder what to do with the hordes of workers that I end up accumilating. I'ven oticed that I can trade for workers with enemy civs, why can't I sell mine? I ussually just stack them up on a mountain in a fort with a defensive unit and forget about them.

You can sell your workers, if you have them in your capital.

[IronSpam]

message deleted

[Sava]

Originally posted by Monoriu
- infinite forest exploitation (IFE, copyrighted by soulassassin).

LOL, thats RIGHT!!!

I'll post a post various save games that show the evolution of the game when IFEing from the beginning. I don't think you guys understand how much IFEing can be exploited. There is no way Firaxis intended for it to be used in that way.

[challenge]

Or maybe they did consider it and figure it was just a way to help us win?

Actually, it's pretty limited to harvest at the beginning. Until you have the ability to replant trees (which my early Civ seems unable to do) IFE replaces a steady 2 shields/turn with one quick 10 shield hit on production. Six turns afterward you are losing ground since the effective gain of removing the trees (10) is offset by the cost of removing them (2*6=12).

Without the ability to replant the trees you are giving up long-term production for a short-term gain. Okay, if that's what you want, but I don't think IFE(tm) is the grand solution you portray it to be. It takes time to harvest, time to replant (with the right tech) and I'm not sure you gain all that much in the end. As a way to kick start a building project, or to put the finishing touches on it when nearly complete, I can see it. As a "game winning" strategy, it has a short coming (but don't they all).

[IronSpam]

Planting trees comes with the Engineering advance, so recycling forests doesn't come until the Middle Ages.

[ranald]

Originally posted by Monoriu
-I 100% agree with using workers to build infrastructure as my army advances. I have been doing that since civ2 and this is one of the few civ 2 strategies that still work.

-However I disagree with being industrious just for this reason. I am not industrious but I can still instantly build roads and railroads by using 2x workers for the job. I have 60+ workers sitting around doing nothing because every tile has been improved to max and there is a maginot line of forts at my borders already. Workers is not a rare commodity in civ 3.

The time I took 15 cities in one turn from someone who didn't
have railroads, I was *very* glad to be Industrious. I didn't
think it was possible, but I had to build so many damn railroads
I was starting to run out of workers.

Anything that gives you the same results for 1/2 the initial
investment (and reduces the micromanagement burden) is
good in my book.

[Venger]

Some notes -

First - I've previously suggested the creation of a Combat Engineer unit, 6/6/1, which can build roads, railroads, and forts. This unit should also introduce minefields in a hex (okay, that was off the top of my head - could work with some thinking though...)

Second - I usually conquer my enemies after they have roads and such, take a city, and use the new city radius to advance units to the next one, take it, use that city radius to advance units, etc. This way you avoid the cant use incompatible city roads (!?!?!) of enemy Civs...

Venger

[Provost Harrison]

Pollution cleaning in the industrial era becomes an important task for my workers. Before mass transit, that population-based pollution is a real pain, so you need a lot of workers around to tackle any problems that may occur.

But yeah, I had a right of passage with one nation so I built a railway right across their territory so I could get my grubby hands on beavers by capturing a city. Did the trick

[Ineffablebob]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin


LOL, thats RIGHT!!!

I'll post a post various save games that show the evolution of the game when IFEing from the beginning. I don't think you guys understand how much IFEing can be exploited. There is no way Firaxis intended for it to be used in that way.

Note that they fixed this in the patch. It says that you can now gain the shield bonus for woodcutting only once per square per game.

[rah]

Originally posted by challenge
Or maybe they did consider it and figure it was just a way to help us win?

Actually, it's pretty limited to harvest at the beginning. Until you have the ability to replant trees (which my early Civ seems unable to do) IFE replaces a steady 2 shields/turn with one quick 10 shield hit on production. Six turns afterward you are losing ground since the effective gain of removing the trees (10) is offset by the cost of removing them (2*6=12).

Without the ability to replant the trees you are giving up long-term production for a short-term gain. Okay, if that's what you want, but I don't think IFE(tm) is the grand solution you portray it to be. It takes time to harvest, time to replant (with the right tech) and I'm not sure you gain all that much in the end. As a way to kick start a building project, or to put the finishing touches on it when nearly complete, I can see it. As a "game winning" strategy, it has a short coming (but don't they all).

Your math doesn't work when you include corruption. There is no long term production loss when the city will never produce more than one shield whatever you do. And sometimes you can't afford to put the city person on the forest because you just aren't generating any surplus food.