Automated workers

[Hade]

Well at least they do something now.

However having to click every single tile and tell them what to do there is just micromanagement from hell. Then I have to click all those tiles again when I can afford higher level improvements. How exactly does this help me with automated workers. It's just replacing one chore with another.
Also how exactly am I supposed to remember what I set each and every single tile to? That's it! More clicking and clicking, wasting all my play time trying to figure out which tile is set for what.

A two hex city is 19 tiles. So that's 19 clicks initially. Improvements are 10 levels. Every time you can afford another level of improvements, you get to click more and more until you throw you computer out the window and fire bomb it.
Either you move your workers manually or you click yourself to death. At this point, moving them all manually is favorable. So in other words, nothing has changed.

Wouldn't it have been better to have left that in the workers automated menu? Auto build/upgrade to this level where ever you can for whatever building, rather than all this clicking? This way I can have a worker running around upgrading whatever buildings I want to level 2, another to some other building, etc.

This is why I hate this game, the workers just don't work right, It's too much micromanagement which makes this game tedious at best when it comes to improvements and one must improve to survive.

Until the workers work right I'll have to settle for not playing this game.

[meglobob1]

Originally posted by Tlaloc:

Hi everyone

We've released beta build 1.1.61. This beta is a little more "beta" than past versions and has some in-progress features, mainly diplomacy and engineering plans, which will be slowly completed in the next few updates, hopefully with alot of player feedback.!

Well if you want automated engineers to be improved here is your chance, give feedback Hades and tell the devs the best way to go about it!

Both diplomacy and automated engineers are a work in progrees atm.

[Hade]

I simply can't play this game with all this constant clicking going on. Worker should be as such that you don't have to constantly give them orders. Otherwise all this really is is a Tile Improvement game with some strategy aspects where you spend most of your game time telling your workers what to do.

[meglobob1]

Originally posted by Hade:

I simply can't play this game with all this constant clicking going on. Worker should be as such that you don't have to constantly give them orders. Otherwise all this really is is a Tile Improvement game with some strategy aspects where you spend most of your game time telling your workers what to do.

Only where you play with 200+ cities Hades which I know you like to do.

I think the most cities I have had before a game is finished is 40 to 50 and honestly that's a
bit more then I care to manage!

I often restrict micro by setting my games up to not to have much. Like limiting myself to 10 cities max but allow AI to have 20 cities max.

A 1 mega city challenge is fun too, 1 8 radius city limit and then allow the AI's to have more cities, cause they don't mind micro.

[Jorgas]

How do you actually get them to do anything mine just stands AFK, I've increased max road and improvement to 10 and made them automated, but I've never seen anyone of them ever move :/.

[meglobob1]

Originally posted by Tlaloc:

Hi everyone,

I want to share some info about what will be in the upcoming update regarding Engineering Plans, since they are currently considered "in-progress". The update will bring alot of additional changes to engineering. They include the following:

Pressing F6 a few times will do an overlay on the worldmap, showing the following engineering plan info for every tile:
- the priority level of the engineering plans for the tile (including the Additional River Priority, mentioned below)
- the current improvement/transform plans (this can be seen currently by pressing F6 a few times), as well as a visual indicating if the Global Plans have been overridden for this particular tile
- the max improvement/road/wall level for the current engineering plans on the tile


We've also added some engineer options to give more control over what each engineer unit can do (currently can be seen by opening unit screen, and right clicking on Automate Unit line. This will be added to more accessible button in the next update... see below):
- Stop Work Enemy Radius
- Min Work Priority Level
- Allowing Changing Work City
- Save as Default for New Engineers
- Load Default


An "Automate" button with checkbox has been added to the main World map that appears when an engineer is selected. Left-Clicking the button will toggle automating all selected engineers. Right-clicking the button will bring up the Global Engineering Plans screen (currently only accessible by pressing Q key). Control-right-clicking will bring up the Automated options screen for the selected engineers, allowing finer control over what each engineer can and cannot do.


We've added "Additional River Priority" as an additional field to engineering plans, allowing plans to give additional priority to tiles when a river is present. We've also added the field "Auto Override Mineral/Resource Terrain" to allow plans to dynamically override on tiles with resources/minerals when resources are discovered.


We've added an option to the Game Options called "Preview Tile at Mouse" which will add information to the "Preview Army at Mouse" popup (which DasTactic suggested long ago!). The tile info will show a condensed version of what of what is seen when you right-click a tile, as well as what the current engineering plans are on the tile and some engineering plans info. The info will only be seen in the popup when an engineer is selected and the tile is within range of an owned city.


As an aside, note that Diplomacy is also considered "in-progress" in the current 1.1.62 beta build, and future updates will bring further enchancements to Diplomacy.

[Jorgas]

Re-reading the patch log wont get my engineers moving, but thanks lol.

I've already set everything up, and nothing happens, that's my issue.

[meglobob1]

This help any Jorgas?

Someone pretty much asked the same question as you and got it to work from the replies but i can't find the thread.

I don't use automate myself because I set my games up, so I don't need too, I keep the mirco-management within my enjoyable limits.

Originally posted by Gandalf:

Little things I noticed:

right-clicking tiles to choose their automate settings could (the first time you open this window) clarify that by leaving the maximum improvement level at 0, engineers are not going to do anything there, that is, 0 is not a wildcard used to mean "improve this whenever possible" (in some contexts, leaving a value at 0 means no limit).

Also, it may be frustrating, specially to new players, to find the option to automate engineers, so I suggest you move that checkbox to their front page and/or put the toggle to automate along with sleep/rest in their right-click dropdown menu.

Last and least - a tip: ctrl + right-click allows you to bypass the engineer on a tile and view the tile properties as if he wasn't there.

[Jorgas]

I've spent between 1 to 2 hours to try and get them to work, ill just wait for next beta and report it as a bug if it's still broken for me then. I've literally tried -everything-, thanks for taking the time to check for that thread/reply thou :)

[meglobob1]

DasTactic has got it working and he has been streaming his games on Twitch, only problem, his videos are several hours long! Probably in there somewhere but where?

[Attyla]

@Jorgas
did You make templates/plans for engineer automation and assigned this plan for city in witch You want make engeener automate? For me it works perfectly.

[meglobob1]

Originally posted by Jorgas:

I've spent between 1 to 2 hours to try and get them to work, ill just wait for next beta and report it as a bug if it's still broken for me then. I've literally tried -everything-, thanks for taking the time to check for that thread/reply thou :)

A how to from the devs themselves! Wow! I think this question is going to keep coming up!

Originally posted by Tlaloc:

Originally posted by PK SPACE JAM:

How can we bring up the engineer plans?

Press the Q key to bring up the Global Engineering Plans screen, where you can setup as many plans as you want. Right-click a tile and click the Engineering button the make plans just for that tile, which will override any Global Plans a city will choose for that tile.


The current steps needed to get an engineer automated and working for you are as follows:

1. Press Q and setup some global engineering plans. Setting up a plan can take some time.
Some default plans that will be included in the next update are "Default Food", "Mining Town", "Wood Elf City", "Mtn Dwarf", "Mud Goblin".

2. Open the Cities screen and go to the Engineering Plans page (page 10 I believe). For each city, click on the line below the Engineering Plans column and select a plan for that city (which you would have setup in step 1).

3. Bring up the unit info screen for an engineer unit. Navigate to the last page and left-click "Automate Unit". You can right-click this line as well to choose some restrictions on what the engineer will be allowed to build.

4. If you would like to override the plans on specific tiles, for example tiles with bonus minerals/resources, you can right click (or control right click) on the tile then click on the Engineering Button to bring up the Engineering Plans window to make plans specific to that tile.

[Slooge]

also, improvements cost gold. If you're running short, then they won't do anything no matter how many plans you have prepared. Can't wait for them to be able to move between cities though. Kind of annoying each city has to produce their own engineer currently.

[Tlaloc]

Originally posted by Slooge:

also, improvements cost gold. If you're running short, then they won't do anything no matter how many plans you have prepared. Can't wait for them to be able to move between cities though. Kind of annoying each city has to produce their own engineer currently.

If you manually move them to another city area, they should work within that city area.

[Hade]

Hey how about instead of having to click every tile you guys move that to the city. Say right click on city, brings up a menu to select what building to upgrade to what level as long as the building has already been built and the automated workers ignore empty tiles.

I currently have no desire to play this game due to all the clicking on every tile to get things done. It needs to be just one location in each city's sphere of influence to reduce the sheer amount of micromanagement required by this game. The automated workers have always presented a problem, you guys are on the right track, but seriously need to cut down on all this clicking. I feel like I spend most of my play time telling workers what to do rather then focusing on the strategy part of the game.

[zgrssd]

Originally posted by Hade:

Hey how about instead of having to click every tile you guys move that to the city. Say right click on city, brings up a menu to select what building to upgrade to what level as long as the building has already been built and the automated workers ignore empty tiles.

I currently have no desire to play this game due to all the clicking on every tile to get things done. It needs to be just one location in each city's sphere of influence to reduce the sheer amount of micromanagement required by this game. The automated workers have always presented a problem, you guys are on the right track, but seriously need to cut down on all this clicking. I feel like I spend most of my play time telling workers what to do rather then focusing on the strategy part of the game.

As of 1.1.62, you can set up basic rules in the Engineer Menu (Q). And you can save and load the setups here.

So there is very little need to do this on a per-tile basis.