The "automate worker actions" option seems to work well (most of the time), but is there a way to see what the automation is planning for my workers?
I prefer to keep the number of workers as low as possible to save on unit maintenance costs. My economic advisor still keeps suggesting that I keep making more workers, even though half of the ones I already have seem to be milling aimlessly around with nothing to do.
Is there a way to tell what the automation has in mind for each worker, so I can tell when I have too many workers?
There is the map icon ("I suggest you make a … here"), but when you have several cities in a large empire, one small icon among the hundreds spread all over the world becomes a needle in a haystack. (And the "this unit is out of moves" message seems to be the same whether a worker is just in transit or has run out of improvements to make.)
Is there a simpler alternative?
Best Answer
You can click on an automated worker to see what his current orders are (it's highlighted), although if that worker is being moved across the continent to build something over there, you'll see only "Move", not "Moving to [x,y] to build [z]", which is unfortunate.
That is, to the best of my knowledge, the closest you can come to finding out what an automated worker is "planned" to do, and it's not really all that great.
FWIW, I, too, have noticed that automated workers often bunch up in one area, and then seemingly stop doing anything because there's nothing else to do in that area, ignoring other areas (especially those I've recently expanded into) that could still benefit greatly from improvements.
I use a couple of different techniques for addressing these situations: