10-10-2003 21:35									#1
	Worker Policy Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I've always stacked workers in threes for a non-ind civ to get improvements done quickly.

Then I read a piece somewhere on the strat forum arguing that this was ultimately inefficient, as you lost three worker-turns moving onto the tile each time you moved them instead of one.

In reality, this has to balanced with needs. If an unimproved tile is being used by a city, it needs developing asap. If, however, improvements match pop, and growth is not quick, then a single worker is clearly best.

With micromanagement being so important in PBEM, do we need to determine a policy for this - perhaps a set of guidelines or just rules-of-thumb which might speed up decisions later in the game?

	10-10-2003 22:11									#2
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Ideally, we want our tile development to outpace our city growth. We're not there yet, obviously.

Groups of 3 are ideal for roading and mining. Irrigation, however, is different (4 worker turns to irrigate, but then 3 to road... inefficient just about any way you do it, over 1 worker). This is why, by the way, that I've essentially designated Action Transvestite as "City of Snakes' worker." He will just stay up there, irrigating and roading plains tiles until all of those in CoS's radius are done. Then he may go chop the forest (1,4 from CoS, I believe) or he may go south to assist the city we're building in the desert (Burundy?).

Right now I'm just trying to make sure that no worker turns are wasted, since we have so few. As Izz continues to pump out workers (especially after our main expansion is complete and Izz switches exclusively to workers for a while), we will end up combining them more. We will definitely want teams of 3 eventually to work on the hills in our territory.

The one worker job I don't know off the top of my head is cutting down jungle. I know it's a lot of turns, but I don't remember exactly how many. That's going to use up a lot of worker turns. Therefore, I intend to ignore it as long as we can (in favor of mining/roading grassland tiles until we run out of those), so that we will have lots of workers by the time we tackle the jungle.

The level of MM we have now probably cannot last. I cannot/willnot match what nbarclay did for the Gathering Storm in PTWDemo1 (which is part of the reason he burned out and is now largely inactive). But, in general, try not to start a job that takes 3 worker turns with 2 workers. Do it with 3 or with 1. If it takes 4 turns, don't use 3 guys to do it... stuff like that.

-Arrian

	10-10-2003 22:49									#3
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I've played the English quite a bit lately, and found that 3 workers can irrigate efficiently using tile pairs:

t1: Road tile 1
t2: Move to tile 2
t3: Road tile 2
t4: 2 workers irrigate tile 2, the other uses the road back to 1 and irrigates
t5 : 2 worker-turns done on tile 2, 1 w-t on tile 1
t6: tile 2 irrigated, 2 w-t done on tile 1. The 2 workers use the road to tile 1 and irrigate
t7 : tile 1 irrigated

Its a shocking 24 turns for a jungle chop, so it makes good sense to use our trait advantage (tech lead) to trade for Monkey's trait advantage (quick workers).

OT: (off topic or other trait?) I'm fascinated at the prospect of what 3 commercial civs can research together. Off hand I don't know how many river sites we're aiming at, but the if worker/growth policy can launch a few cities above size 6, we'll get our commecial gold bonus too. Throw in RCP and the dash for Republic looks good.

	11-10-2003 04:40									#4
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Hmm, you may get your wish, Cort.

Our three workers are now all together on the floodplains tile next to CoS. Next turn they will all road.

I have to re-work our worker actions, and now that they're all together and synched up, I think I will keep them that way. Those three will form a team. They will road their way down to Swindon, and road & mine around it (and where Silesia is going to be).

Our next worker will have to be sent back up to CoS to pick up the irrigation/roading of the plains up there.

-Arrian

	12-10-2003 16:50									#5
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Jungle chops with a slave and a non-ind civ in anarchy is a spectacular 96 turns, ISTR

I'm not sure, but I suspect that worker turns stay at the quoted rate at the start, and don't speed up when the new govt arrives. I'll have to check that.