Well, I'll try and avoid too much tick-counting but some is necessary.

In Invisible random walkers (and work camp laborers) I describe the odd feature of workcamp laborers in spawning invisibly, often on a tile other than that on which they actually appear. That discovery has shed some light on things I didn't previously understand (such as which workcamp will be assigned to get the next lot of stone, how many fields can a workcamp keep going, things like that). Some of this is known, some maybe not.

It is not the case, as many seem to think, that stonemasons (or perhaps the construction site foreman) order stone via a particular workcamp and then wait for that workcamp to oblige in its own good time. The order for stone is simply added to a queue of things that need doing around the city and workcamps themselves decide what they will do.

A workcamp has four laborers at its disposal. Like most buildings in the game, it has walker generation opportunities every 51 'ticks' or 16 times a month, but it can only generate a laborer once a week. It may do so in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th quarter of the week, but it will only generate in one quarter. Which quarter that is is related to precisely when the building first gets labor access and once a particular workcamp has thus determined its 'active' quarter it will continue to use that same quarter until something disrupts the routine - running out of laborers, losing labor access and losing road access are all things that can disrupt it.

I imagine it will be news to many players that the 'invisible' laborer I referred to in the thread linked above is generated during the camp's 'active' quarter of the week during every week (provided the camp has laborers to generate) even when he's not needed. He then walks to the building's destination tile (if he is not already standing on it). If he has nothing to do by the time he gets there he will go back inside the building, still invisible, which makes him kind of hard to spot so you'd be forgiven for not noticing. He'll be out again same time next week.

At the time this guy is generated, he has no idea what work (if any) might be required of him. Only when he reaches his destination tile does his boss assign him his duty from the top of the waiting pile. I've had stone stockpiling when the city's only work camp spawns its weekly worker, but as long as I turn it off before he becomes visible he will go and get it.

If you've read the other thread you will understand that, depending on the configuration of the road around the building and which tiles if any are road-blocked, he can become visible 2, 17, 32 or 47 'ticks' after he was first generated. So the upshot is that the decisive moment where a task is allocated can potentially be on any of 4 occasions in any of 4 quarters - 16 possible alternatives but they are determinable (with a little effort). It is this 'mixing up' of synchronizations which makes it very difficult for you to control which workcamp goes for the stone.

When a workcamp's invisible walker reaches the destination square decisions are made. The list of unstaffed floodplain farms gets looked at first. If the camp is road connected to any that are within 40 tiles (as the crow flies) the nearest one is chosen (well, sort of). That job is then taken off the list so no other camp will look at it. If the result is negative, the list of farms requiring relief workers (ie those whose current workers have been there more than three months) is checked. Again, if the camp is road connected to any within 40 tiles it chooses the (sort of) nearest. If we're still negative, the list of jobs on offer at monument sites is consulted and the one on top of the list is taken (I've probably simplified that - there are probably priorities within that list - eg stone pullers before site clearance workers, but I don't know).

So basically the job is taken by the camp which (visibly)spawns soonest after the job gets to the top of the list. So what if two (or more) workcamps spawn at the same time? The first built gets the contract. Little doubt about it - I had a nightmare trying to get three camps to spawn together (and to do so again after re-building them in a different order) to prove that. But I'll add a caveat - deletions and house-merging create holes in the Buildings Table which might mean that the camps are not stored in the table in the same order they are built. That would probably cause predictions to fail. That aside, I can now pretty much predict which workcamp will do what and when, though it is a lot of effort and sometimes it's like trying to predict the outcome of the break of the pack on a pool table.

Running Out of Laborers
As stated, a camp has only four laborers and no more can be generated until one of those becomes available for re-use. It helps, in determining how many workcamps you need, to know when that will be.

Laborers come in three flavors (I'm getting quite used to American spelling ). First, farm laborers are the guys who lead out a gang of peasants (in your imagination) who will work the farm for up to six months. The 'laborer' himself doesn't hang around that long - he dumps them and races back to camp (in about 5 'ticks') to take an ill-earned 6-day break. He won't lead anyone else out until he's rested. Here's how it works (distances are from the tile on which 'invisible' spawning occurs to the farm's access tile. Time is the number of weeks after his departure a laborer becomes available for regeneration).

No of tiles   Time (weeks)
5             1.25
10            1.5
15            2.0
20            2.25
25            2.75
30            3
40            3.75
50            4.5
60            5.25
100           8.25

As you can see, it's pretty hard to run out if you have a full crew of four laborers since each isn't really needed again for a month, so even at 40 tiles you're OK. But if you have someone on a distant monument site (or a farm across the river perhaps) you're down to three. You need those again every three weeks. A couple of absentees leaves you relying on just two, and they can only work 15 tiles away if they're to keep up the one-a-week rate.

But if you do run out, the camp will obviously not have a laborer to put out at the appointed time, so no invisible walker this time. The next generation will occur immediately one becomes available (according to the above summary table) whatever quarter of the week that falls in. That quarter then becomes the new regular generation point for that camp - the synchronization with other camps is thus altered.

The second type, construction site laborers, are the ones who do the groundwork and levelling before a monument is built. They have to walk all the way to a monument site, do their work then walk all the way back (but in a straight line) 'invisibly'. They don't really take a break, just maybe a couple of days between finishing work and starting home. How long they are gone depends how far away the site is and how long it takes them to do their (usually) 4 tiles of work (on a large monument they spend far more time walking backwards and forwards than they do working). I cover them in a little more detail in Pyramid construction - laborer supply rate (workcamps) if you're in the mood for even more reading.

Also covered in that thread are the third laborer type - stone pullers. These chaps are highly esteemed in Egyptian society and their hard labors are well-rewarded with an extra-long holiday, apparently on the Mediterranean coast (they always seem return home from off the northern map edge). They're gone a considerable time - maybe three weeks or more after finishing work plus walk-home time.

Although these last two laborer types can sometimes be away from camp a very long time, at least they get straight back to work when they do return. They head straight for the camp's normal destination tile and if there's work to be done they'll set off immediately and do it, just as if they were newly spawned men, fresh as daisies. If the camp has other laborers, it will continue to emit them as normal and its weekly routine is not disrupted by the arrival of unscheduled extras.

This has taken far longer to prepare than I planned and I'm very tired (as no doubt you are too by now) so I'm leaving it unfinished and I'll come back to it tomorrow with some tips on controlling camps. Maybe counting ticks will help me sleep

[This message has been edited by Trium3 (edited 01-12-2009 @ 04:54 AM).]