Workers automation is a fiasco

[Gunter]

Every good civ player in the world knows that if you set 60 workers on auto they produce so many mistakes that it's necessary to pilot them in this way: " Hey John let's build mine,Hey Adam let's irrigate and so on...."
Can someone inprove the auto mode like alpha centauri?
Auto mine/auto irrigate or ...SURPRISE......automted with intelligence...Am I asking too much?

cheers

[Kc7mxo]

I find that when i begin to get too many workers to control, i put them on Shift-A, which means they automate but only add to things, they don't change things. so they don't build mines on your irrigation or irrigation on your forests.

i find that they do a pretty good job, though i tend to retain control up to about 40 or so.

[Gunter]

Correct. AI miss' too many key actions.

For this reason it could be a nice idea to order a worker to piss on enemy Capital city walls.........Agree?

[ACooper]

I've been ok with automation in general (a few things are annoying but it's the best I've seen so far)

One thing you need to do is the workers for the right kind oa automation. All the keystrokes are in the manual (near the back I think).

Another very helpful resource with keystrokes and a whole lot more was made by Lone Wolf and can be found at the site http://www.magnamund.org/civ3.html

[Gunter]

Hmm....surelly thanks, but after years of civ gaming I learned to study manuals....,

Which level do you usually play?
How often do you win?
Which is your middle time of an entire game?

Cheers

[Code Monkey]

What I'd kill for would be a simple, and I do mean simple, script option for workers. We've all got our own little preferences about how we want to see the land transformed and no harder than this would be to implement it's another of those "Why didn't they bother?" issues:

For instance:

1. don't take out any existing improvements (let's me control a small population of workers manually for tweaking)
2. if it doesn't have a road, build one
3. if it has road but no rail (and the tech is available) build one
4. it is plains, irrigate it
5. if it's grassland with 1 shield, mine it
6. if it's grassland with no shield, irrigate it
7. if it's desert, irrigate it
8. if it's tundra with no shield, plant a forest
9. if it's tundra with a shield, build a mine
10. if it's a hill or mountain, mine it
11. if it's jungle, clear it
12. if it's polluted, clean it up

Add some way to weight the choices (e.g. rule 12 should really be near the top) and have them go to the nearest square in need of some sort of improvement.

There, I'd be able to put workers on automate from day 1 and never care about what they do - if a city gets too many/few mines I can tweak it with a small amount of manually controlled labourers.

[Golgo13]

I attempted to automate my workers once. What I discovered was that they were running all around the map basically achieving nothing. To elaborate. I had several cities not connected with roads, the workers didn't attempt to connect these cities. I had cities that needed tile improvements to continue growing particularly irrigation. The workers didn't seem to remedy that either. Then the final straw was when the workers began undoing previous improvements. Keep in mind this was early in the game and there were relatively few improvements that were built. I just scrapped using the automate after that.

[Thomas Paine]

I just finished a game where odd worker behaviour nearly created an international incident!

There existed forty-odd workers in my Babylonian empire, all automated via the shift-A command and doing a splendid job UNTIL five workers decided to make a cross-country hike into Persian territory! Half of my empire was located on another continent, recently owned by the now-extinct Iraqois, and my workers were attempting to cross Persia on foot to work some errands on the other side of the world!

Closer inspection of the map revealed that my two seperate continents were not seperate at all, but were connected by a sinewy one-tile-wide land bridge on the other side of Persia. In fact, all of the "continents" were connected in this way, forming a giant Pangea supercontinent, but one so spread out as to appear as several isolated land masses. I had known this initially, but by the twentieth century had completely forgotten about this geographical trivia.

My workers, on the other hand, apparently knew geography like the back of their wee tiny hands, and took it upon themselves to walk 3000 miles for a little Persian site-seeing. Xerxes was not amused, and, if our relationship hand been less then cordial by that modern era, things could have gone thermonuclear.

All because a couple of workers were just "doing their jobs." But then wars have been known to blossom from less fertile motivations... .

[Wildbulldog]

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ THE FRICKIN' MANUAL, READ THE PATCH NOTES OR LISTEN TO ANY OF THE OTHER PEOPLE POSTING HERE AND USE SHIFT-A TO AUTOMATE YOUR WORKERS!!!

They will not undo any of your current improvements and will even sleep (with nothing left to do) and wake up to clean up pollution. With the last patch they will only tackle a job 2 workers at a time so you don't have to worry about 30 workers piling on one tile (but from what I understand the 2 limit wasn't intentional). I have yet to have any real problems when using shift-A. I do direct the workers in the early game to connect cities and get the needed tile improvements for each city. But late in the game I automate with no problems (including railroad building). The automation isn't the most efficient at completing tasks and it would be nice to set priorities to jobs, but they eventually get the jobs done without me having to direct 40+ workers. I know the shift-A was posted above but people continue posting that their workers undo existing tile improvements. JUST USE SHIFT-A!

[bahoo]

I'm pleased with the worker automation.

I keep them on auto for the most part the entire game except the very beginning and when I need to give specific orders such as road to a resource or to connect cities with railroad. Usually they make good decisions, although occasionally they get mine happy on grasslands.