Worker first, then Settler strategy

[Alexfrog]

Originally posted by Trip
I always go Worker-first. Simply getting a single bonus resource (which is very likely for your capital) up and running makes a huge difference to growth and productivity.

I believe this is correct.

The only time I could see it as wrong is if you are in flood plains area AND you are going for early religions and thus dont have anything for the worker to do.

[MasterDave]

I have not tried building a worker first, but it seems very powerful if you have some forsests nearby to chop.

One variation on this theme that was worked VERY well in my last two Prince games has been to steal a worker from my neighbors as soon as the opportunity arises. On Prince level, the AI starts the game with a worker, and if you can run across their Civ early on, when they only have one or two cities that free worker can become an excellent target of opportunity for your warrior explorers. In both of my last two games, I decided to steal the worker from my closest neighbor as soon as I saw him on their border. After declaring war and stealing the worker (which then had to run the gauntlet of lions and bears on the way back to my civ), my warrior would hang around and do some pillaging until the local defenses took him out.

In both of these games, taking the AI's only worker and then pillaging most of his early projects had the result of crippling that AI. My victim was in last place for most of both games. Also, having that extra worker in the very early game made a huge impace on my empire, and I found myself in first place in both games. The AI in both cases never mounted any kind of a counterattack (they only had one or two cities themself) and I was able to get peace with them both around ten turns later.

This early slave grab seems to work great on Prince level, it is probably far riskier on higher levels. I used to try this often in Civ 3 on Emperor, and it often sealed my doom

[CWatkins]

I've tried a variation of this on Monarch level. On a small terran map with 5 AI opponents. I established 3 quick cities and got a 4th through culture. I bowed to the Spanish demand that I switch to their religion (even though I founded confucianism), since I was still mostly defenseless. This made a very good friend.

As Japanese I picked up bronze and archery as quickly as possible (much slower on Monarch) and pushed my way to Samurai. By pushing deep into the tech tree, even though my research was behind overall, I was able to trade a few techs for several I had missed and gold to make up for my hungry cities. I also got Astronomy first and am well on my way to dominating the new world.

The persians are my monkey wrench. They have cavalry and I have archers in most of my cities. They want me dead and may have their way.

[aeturneus]

Originally posted by MasterDave
In both of these games, taking the AI's only worker and then pillaging most of his early projects had the result of crippling that AI. My victim was in last place for most of both games. Also, having that extra worker in the very early game made a huge impace on my empire, and I found myself in first place in both games. The AI in both cases never mounted any kind of a counterattack (they only had one or two cities themself) and I was able to get peace with them both around ten turns later.

This early slave grab seems to work great on Prince level, it is probably far riskier on higher levels. I used to try this often in Civ 3 on Emperor, and it often sealed my doom

I just tried this in a monarch game with a worker first strategy, and it worked well, the AI was still willing to peace out. Victoria now hates me, but went from first to last in points after some turns

...and my warrior even survived, to explore the rest of the continent. Quite lucky

[jones]

I just played 3 games online from the internet lobby using a modified worker first build.

city 1:
worker
chop (x2) warriorx2
chop (x3) settler
warrior
settlerxN (chop here or at #2, depending on forest availability)

city 2:
settlerxN

city 3+:
worker
warrior/wonder/situational (usually 1-2 chops)

Playing as Qin my research went
bronze working
wheel
masonry (all 3 starts had marble or stone)
husbandry
(did fishing here one game)
myst-poly-priesthood

I chopped the first two cities nearly bare, using the trees to get four more. After that I selectively chopped to get Stonehenge and Oracle, and after that i had forges coming online. I researched Casting and used oracle to found Confucianism in all games.

The first two cities being deforested worked out pretty well as pop farms with cottages everywhere. The cottages being worked was critical to keep me out of the red (though in two games my research dropped below 50% before the economy bounced back).

Granted the level of skill there isn't what one would expect from people around here, but in each game at 1 AD I had multi hundred point leads and was #1 in every important category.

[LzPrst]

it seems that this is a strategy based somewhat on... luck. an early barb or hostile AI (that never happens though) will mess things up rather badly...

[Jcg316]

If you are trying to expand with chops you can always you use one chop which at 30 would make you two warriors in two turns for defense. You could build a settler for four turns and then when the first chop is done switch to warrior for one and 15 hammers towards settler or two warriors.

By moving a worker towards the second city location you could time a chop to finish the turn the city founds, letting you build to quick warriors there, or an archer and most of the way to another.

That being if you want to expand before anything else and have a second city location to be worth doing it quickly.

[Theseus]

Hmmm, that brings to mind another reason to be careful about denuding strats... your forests can be thought of as "rapid withdrawal hammer banks", perhaps critical in an emergency defensive build-up.

[Jcg316]

If your worker has nothing to do you can always chop forests, almost, leaving one turn left on them (mousing over the icon shows how many turns are left) and have it ready if you need. Building resources would certainly prioritize the workers time but once you have tiles for city pop, or city pop +1, there isn't anything for the worker to do. Unless you started with The Wheel too, Mali I think in which case you could connect cities, resources as well.

Then you would have some one use ATMs, two turns to move to and chop. Once you have roads on the tiles you could move and chop in one turn getting a defender to help against that exact opponents turn.

[Dactyl]

I don't know about this as a pure strategy. As a way to get three or four quick cities it is great, but it's risky beyond that. I started two games to test it out. I played on the standard map, Prince level, Indians for fast workers.

In the first game, I got to five cities and then some barbarian warriors discovered the fifth city, which they destroyed. They then went on to another city and destroyed it. End of game right there because I didn't have any military units guarding my cities and they were all size one or two so I couldn't hurry up and build any.

I moderated the strategy a bit in the second test game, building military units after hitting four cities. I ended up with six cities at about 400 BC, at which point I was hemmed in by the other civs. Not a bad start though, except for the lack of forests around my capital city. It was the largest and I had built the Oracle there so I wanted to build more wonders. However, there was only one square on which I could build a mine and I had cut down all of the forests but for one. I could see where that was going. I felt that I ended up in a weaker position than I would have waiting for the capital city to grow to three before building a settler.

[cal_01]

I'd have to agree with the previous poster. This strategy is just asking for you to get hammered by barbarians/aggressive civs, since military unit production is lower than usual. Plus, this strategy just gets you a bunch of cities with low output capabilities, whereas a slower approach gets you cities that are capable of a meaning level of production.

Besides, chopping forests isn't that great of an idea or feasible in most cases. Forests are great later on in the game for health bonuses and production in an otherwise production-less city (excluding specialists, but production tiles are still siginificant in terms out production output). However, towns get +1 production with Universal Suffrage, but the use of towns is another topic altogether.

My strategy is this:

Found city, get warrior, wait until pop 2 (usually this has already happened while building the warrior) and get a worker (who will make farms in any tile possible), then a settler. The city should be producing max food at all times to stimulate growth.

[aeturneus]

totally denuding the land to produce only settlers is one thing, going worker first and bronzeworking first or shortly thereafter to get an early production kickstart is another. You don't necessarily have to build only settlers, or clear every last forest tile. However, it can often be very powerful to go worker first. This can allow for faster, not slower, population growth, as it reduces the amount of time it takes to build the first settler, and you could settler chain out from there while growing your capital, or just sit at 2 cities and grow at twice the rate of one.

[cal_01]

That's very true, too. I pretty much get to two cities and grow from there.

[Dactyl]

There are certain squares that you can safely chop early because you are going to chop them later anyway. For example, if you have certain resources next to your city, they will often be in forests and you can go ahead a chop them.