Worker Worries

[Mazarin]

even after your territory is completely railroadeed, you can make great use of your workers: irrigate cities that are at size 12 and have a hospital to max out population quickly...then re-mine them to maximize production...another great use of workers is micro-management of cities: e.g. your citiy is producing 75shields when maxed out in population: mine some tiles to get ober 80 while the city is running deficit food, so it can produce an artillery unit per turn...then irrigate it to 50 spt to get one tank in two turns and to recover your food box.

[badams52]

Mazarin,

too much MM for my tastes, but yes, you could do it.

[pedrojedi]

I agree, that's a lot of work. Hey, a city conquered by me produces barbarian workers like MPatton said? I don't recall that.

[Don Giovanni]

I usually rely very much on slaves, and I love to add slaves from extinct tribes to my cities. They seem to be quite as happy as native citizens, and will be assimilated by the passage of time. I don't know if the probability of culture flips increases, but the cities can't flip back to the extinct tribe, of course

[minke19104]

they can flip to some other civ next to u though..

[Mazarin]

Originally posted by badams52
Mazarin,

too much MM for my tastes, but yes, you could do it.

thaths why I love small maps...I can do that with 10 cities...but with 100?

What I wanted to point out is that workers are extremely powerfull -and that having many workers can provide an enourmous advantage: I usually try to have at least three workers per city as a non-ind. civ, two as Ind. -combine that with early granaries and a bit of micromanagement and your population and therefore production and commerce will beat any opponent.

[MPatton]

One great way to get slaves is to raze enemy large cities. Enemy cities won't give you much at all if they are far away. So raze it and gain like 10 workers if it is a huge city. Has anyone figured how many workers you get for a certain city size. I know it is not 1 for one. Plus by razing you don't have worry about revolts and squellching resistors. I razed a 22 before. Basicaly you get a barbarian worker if you create a worker before city grows after being conquered

[BigDork]

MPatton...

That works to get a lot of slaves but only if you don't care about your reputation.

Question, do you take more of a rep for razing a size 25 city then for a size 2 city?

BigD

[badams52]

BigD, as I understand AI attitude, it's the same whether you auto-raze, raze a small city, or a large city. Check out Bamspeedy's thread at CFC for more details.

[MPatton]

Now I am making barbarian settlers to fill those places that I razed. Anytime you use a conquered citizen for a worker or settler it is a barbarian worker or citizen and get the effectiveness of a nonind civ

[AzTecA GoD]

I always used this worker/expansion system for my games in Monarch-diety games.

Capital: settler, warrior, worker, worker
All cities after that would make a warrior, worker, settler, worker
Various cities would then specialize in making workers and settlers for either filling slow growth cities or expanding farther out.

This system shines if you are trying to expand as fast as the AI on monarch-diety difficulty. For the main reason that the first worker your cities after the capital produce are making a road to connect it to another city or potential city site. You end up getting a framework empire that is very large and all that needs to be done is fill in the infostructure.

And as for worker/settler factories, I make about 5 of them in a huge game. Mainly because it lets me expand twice as fast as the AI. And it gives me a fast economic boost as well as more defence because it will become a city soon.

As for the number of workers, I ussualy have 15-20 as I enter the Middle Age. I will make 30-50 for the industrial age just so I can rapidly make railroads for my aggression campaigns against my allies and enemies.

As for an early attak against enemies, you will need 4 -6 workers to make the road for an industrial civ, and 6-8 for an nonindustrial civ. Why so many? Because you're gonna wanna make a straight line from your cities to the enemy civ, and it might not be grasslands or plains the whole way.

-Ronald