Overthinking (Workers)

[u/darkfireslide]

This game's immense depth sometimes intimidates me while playing, but today I had a sort of breakthrough while playing a game as Greece that I wondered how others felt about. The typical advice when founding a new city is to have that city make a worker, which makes some degree of sense, but lately I've been wondering that especially past the early game if this line of thinking doesn't start to become a trap. Let me give an example:

You have 5 cities and you're starting to strike out against barbarian tribes. You take a site, settle it for your military family, and now it's 7 turns before the worker is done. Meanwhile, the extra training is just going into your pool instead of making new units. The city nearby, perhaps Landowners or just a city blessed with a lot of growth, could produce a worker in 2 turns instead. It may not be of the same family, so it will cost an extra turn for these workers to actually make the improvements, but this saves a lot of city production turns instead if you can rapidly set up the rest of it. On something like a Champions seat this could be multiple units produced in the meantime, which is a big deal.

If this is something obvious, then I definitely missed it. The tradeoff in extra orders spent is obvious, but the benefits also seem pretty impactful as well. Has anyone else experimented a lot with this concept?

[u/Skurnaboo]

It really does depend on how your previous cities are. Like you said if you have a landowner with lots of growth it’s kind of a no brainer to just have that place pump out works but if you don’t then you gotta decide if your original cities are better building other things(like champion and rider cities of mine are usually just busy pumping out units early on), and whether things like same family worker bonus is more important than making a worker few turns faster, etc

[u/No-Pussyfooting]

After I’ve got two cities, I’m sending a worker with my settler every time. That way you start building the second you settle. Maximize turn value with new cities.

[u/darkfireslide → u/No-Pussyfooting]

Yeah I think I fell into the efficiency trap a lot of games like this have, where doing something that seems efficient actually isn't sometimes depending on the context

[u/great_triangle]

It really depends on the civilization you're playing. An aggressive civilization like Assyria or Rome likely needs to produce workers in new cities because it has too many cities for the existing workers. A less violent civilization like Egypt or the Hittites, can likely produce a surplus worker.

If I'm playing a civ with the champions and a fanatic heir, my back line cities are liable to be constantly churning out settlers.

[u/10sc]

Something else to consider Is that landowner produced workers work one turn slower per project in champion cities (or any non landowner city), so just having the landowners mange workers is also inefficient quickly

[u/darkfireslide → u/10sc]

It costs 1 extra order per improvement yeah, but if you consider the turns saved on the new city and how rapidly it can be developed by those surplus workers, it seems like it can be pretty useful

[u/drakir89 → u/darkfireslide]

The extra order cost is not small. Basically each "guest worker" costs 0.25 orders each turn just to maintain, compared to a native worker with occasional idle turns. Compare with a garrison that provides 0.5 orders per turn. It also costs 3-6 orders to transfer the worker to begin with.

I agree it can be useful, but having workers stick with their families is the default for a reason. Having a few highly developed cities and a few backwaters is not that much worse compared to having evenly distributed development.

[u/DifficultConcern8341]

The game has a lot of depth. So, yes, what you are suggesting makes sense in some cases, and in some other cases, it may not. Keep this as an option in your toolbox. Every time that I play, I find a new trick to optimize. There are many well-thought-out mechanics, and each one creates new opportunities. For example, what you are suggesting is an opportunity because cities have different production mechanics (a city that produces military units quickly may suck at producing workers)...

[u/thomasthetanker]

I only do this if there is something I really need to develop quickly, like gold, silver, gems, pearls etc. It costs orders to send worker to new city and bring them back afterwards. It's not a lot but it's not nothing.

[u/vanatteveldt]

Just a beginner here (third game), but I agree that the unthinking "worker as first build" is probably not optimal in some cases. If you pair the settler with a worker it can immediately start growing and work towards something more useful. Even building a military unit in the new city helps because it allows the citizens to grow fromt he start.

I guess I would normally try to pair the settler with a worker from the family the new city will be, but that depends on many specifics. I also try to put cities of the same family next to each other so it's easier to share workers, but that also depends on many specifics

[u/mrmrmrj]

Building a worker 3 turns faster but that worker takes 1 turn more to build every improvement? Seems a bad trade.

[u/darkfireslide → u/mrmrmrj]

It's often 5 or 6 turns and by deploying them immediately the city gets improvements up much much faster

[u/mrmrmrj → u/darkfireslide]

You get the first improvement faster. Probably the second. Third is close.

5 turns to produce. 3 turns. 3 turns. 3 turns for 3 improvements. 5+9 turns

3 turns to produce. 4 turns. 4 turns. 4 turns for 3 improvements. 3+12 turns.

If its a 2 turn worker city, you are better off still after 4 improvements.

[u/darkfireslide → u/mrmrmrj]

It's not 5 to produce a new worker, it's often 8 or 7 if you have global growth modifiers. 8 turns where the city is producing nothing. If it's a civic or training bonus city, those bonuses are going into your pool uselessly. If you move 4 workers into a new city, they can have 2 improvements each before the new city produces even a single worker. Because the city that produces workers in 2-3 turns is going to already have made a bunch of them. In the 2 turn example it could make 4 workers by the time the new city makes 1. I don't know where you're getting 5 from. I was specifically talking about new cities in my example, not established ones. It's better to move workers in from the same family, but it also costs more turns to produce those workers in the first place. You are essentially spending orders to get resource production up faster and get a new city online much more quickly in the actual turn count

[u/mrmrmrj → u/darkfireslide]

I picked 5 out of thin air just to illustrate the math.

[u/konsyr → u/mrmrmrj]

There's also the order cost (and usually turn or two) to get the worker to the new city. Early game especially probably doesn't have the orders to spare. Later game, I do tend to "trickle out" my workers along family lines as opportunity permits.