The 'size six' strategy

[La Fayette]

Dr Spike
This is a free world. Some people like to fight, others prefer to make money... IMO you are perfectly entitled to prefer other methods than the one I propose in order to churn out workers.
Nevertheless I would advise you to try it once because, for me, it gives very nice results.
solo
If the French version of civ4 comes out first, you get it from me the day it comes out .

[DrSpike]

I will indeed try it, as I said before IMO the strat has a place in the early AD (post early war) infrastructural lull. I'm past that in my game now, so I'll have to wait a few days. I similarly urge you to test my methods and comment.

[La Fayette]

DrSpike
If I were you, I wouldn't say it's too late to apply 'size 6', because when your cities grow past size 6 (and even more when they grow past size 12) the size of the food box is increased and 'natural' growth is that much slower.
Therefore 'size 6' is even more performing in the end game (just like food caravans in civ2, much more performing to grow from size 25 to 26 than from size 5 to size 6).
Up to you, ...and good civing anyway.

[solo]

I just gave this a try in an OCC game. I started on a river and when I got near size six, I built a granary. Then I pumped out about 8 workers in a row, who went around irrigating, mining, and roading like crazy. Shortly after the last worker was produced, 6 re-joined the city bringing it up to size 12, instantly. So, in 10 turns, I doubled my city's size and more than doubled its production, and continued the game by quickly building many city improvements. I doubt all of this could have been done as quickly, growing the city in the usual way. For OCC, "Size six" may very well replace the WLT_D kind of growth we were used to in CivII OCC. It's that changing food box that makes it work so well. This strat is a real find.

[DrSpike]

La Fayette


There is certainly a window for this strat, and in OCC it may be killer, but I don't think using a core city generally for churning workers in the endgame is optimal

Our methods combine quite nicely though, as i'm finding in my current game. The trick is finding the level of pop rushing that works globally (you don't want to hinder later growth). When you try deity I think you'll appreciate my ideas more.

[Aeson]

About the endgame..

This actually becomes very useful for those size 20+ cities later in the game. If you have a lot of them (as you should) there will probably be a few that have nothing better to do with their production. One option is to just turn all specialists into workers, and add them to fledgling cities. Adding 10 of your own workers to a newly captured city really cuts down on cultural reversion as well. Size 6 to 7 isn't the only range that allows for population hovering. Will have to check and see what other transitions allow for it.

[Travathian]

Aeson,

I always keep my captured workers out in the field, unless their parent civ is destroyed. Sure they only work half as fast, but then you don't have to worry about defections/unhappiness from them being in a city. I slowly reassimilate my own workers into my cities, saving other nations workers for late in the game when I can sprinkle them throughtout my core cities, which by then have plenty of happiness to spare if I do go back to war.
And I always have a size 'six' city producing workers. I specifically try and find a good location for a city to do this. I am big on infrastructure, and likewise roadbuilding to the newest "additions" to my empire.

[darthx86]

I, too, have used this approach in my current game, but I discovered it accidentally.

For me, the Babylonians, my first two cities ended up being as developed as they could for the tech level, so I had each one crank out a worked. Each produced said worker in a couple turns, then I noticed that each was ready to gain its pop point back the very next turn. Natch, I set each to produce another worker, and the cycle began. Both cities did have granaries and bordered rivers, so this may be the crux.

But for me, being in the late ancient age, it was an absolute boon for expansion.

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by solo
This strat is a real find.

Thank you solo.
Have you already won OCC in civ3 at deity level?

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by DrSpike
La Fayette

There is certainly a window for this strat

Thank you, DrSpike.
Of course I shall try your proposals. All of us (especially myself) are rookies at this game. We will learn by playing and trying.

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by Aeson
About the endgame..

This actually becomes very useful for those size 20+ cities later in the game.
Size 6 to 7 isn't the only range that allows for population hovering

Thank you, Aeson.
I agree with you that 'size6' is certainly not the one and only method. Guess what playing civ3 will be like within a few months when all rookies will have turnes veterans!

[La Fayette]

Originally posted by Travathian

And I always have a size 'six' city producing workers. I specifically try and find a good location for a city to do this.

Thank you, Travathian.
River (which spares an aqueduct) and hills (in order to get a shield production of 10 at size 6) are nice to have.

[DrSpike]

Hmm, if there are other pop levels that allow this strat as Aeson suggests it's more versatile than I thought. We may have size six for the midgame, and size (fill in appropriate number here) for the endgame. Of course, in the absence of an appropriate pop level close to 20 this strat wont work well, which is one of the reasons I advocate keeping specialist worker factories at size 1 and plonking them in those nice gaps in your empire. I think the one indisputable point that comes from this thread is that you can never have enough workers at most points in this game.

Also, spot on with the comment about adding workers to conquered cities to reduce cultural reversion. This is critical on emp/deity where the tendency for reversion is _ahem_ quite high, as I'm sure a lot of people have experienced (whilst staring in disbelief at your now not quite so burgeoning empire and muttering curses about the damn Russians not having any bloody culture anyway)

[GeorgeWang]

Wow. Nice trick.

[Aeson]

I think that size 20 21 is one of the transitions that work. I'm not sure, as I currently don't have any save games to check, but I am resonably certain that there is a low 20's point that will result in hovering. I did have a 20+ city that was building a worker every turn and not losing population in a recent game, not sure what size it was exactly. This may be an effect of a very large food surplus per turn though, rather than the change in food box size. It was a city with 20 railroaded and irrigated grassland tiles with a couple of wheat even. In the same game, a city much like it was able to produce a settler every other turn (corruption is nice sometimes), and with longevity (or whatever the +2 population per food box wonder is) it was growing by 2 population every 2 turns. This is much harder to set up, as it is dependant on having 15 shields per turn, enough food to grow in 2 turns, and the wonder.