Illustrating the Power of Buying Workers

[ducki]

I know, I know. We've all heard it before. "Buy the AI workers to cripple them early." In the "olden days", you could nab a slave for around 30gold. The going price in Conquests seems to be around 120g, give or take.

Is it still worth it?

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a couple thousand worth.

The year is 1830BC, the level is Monarch, and I was wondering why these two AIs were so sluggish.
Then I checked my Military Advisor and realized I'd de-workered them out of habit.

[ducki]

And victim number two.

[vmxa1]

You brute you

One shield, not going to get much done at that rate. No roads either.

[Donegeal]

Something else must have happened to them. The AI starts tile improvement right away. The Iriquios are either in a war or they are having Barb troubles

[Krill]

Ducki: When did you by the workers? If you can buy them early enough, then early growth would be alot easier for with the extra worker/s, and the AI would have no chance of expansion
My REXing (I hope) will improve noend (Not that it needs it)

[ducki]

Oh, I bought them a while back.
It's just become habit to buy them if I can afford them, and early on, I check diplo every turn(bleh, painful, but worth it), so I have no idea how long ago, but it was "fairly early".

[vmxa1]

When you say you check every turn do you mean you click on each leader in the F4 screen and selcet make a deal? If so what do you offer?

[ducki]

Yeah, I try to trade with everyone I know every turn in the early game. After a certain point, this becomes tedious to the tenth power, but early on, I'm trying to keep tabs on who knows what, who's making money, who has workers for sale, etc. It's not as good as an embassy, but it still keeps my finger on the pulse, so to speak.

For workers, I'll try to roll them into a tech deal, since that costs me nothing and will be traded around anyways, and if I've already sold it to someone else, a straight worker-for-tech deal may sound awfully cheap, but at ~120g in C3C, that's not bad for something I've already traded.

If I have "lots" of cash and am either having trouble keeping workers produced or just feeling mean, I'll spend actual money, but prefer to try to use tech/RoP/resources instead of gobbling cash.

[Mountain Sage]

Ducki,

Yesss, the diplomatic screen is the most effective way to win.

[Dr. A. Cula]

All I can say is you're lucky. I also used to check diplomacy every turn until around 1AD, and I only found AI workers in the capitol about once or twice per game. Buying those didn't make much of a difference.

[ducki]

Buying those didn't make much of a difference.

This is a very exaggerated pair of examples and as noted, there is probably something else giving the Iroquois fits.

It may not seemed to make much difference, but the effects are normally fairly subtle. Additionally, the earlier you can buy a worker, the more effect it will have, simply due to the importance of the early game.

You're not likely to "cripple" an AI the way you could with a little trimming war, but when you buy a worker, the AI stops improving (as many) tiles until he works another worker into his queue and spends the time and shields to build it, often with growth being the constraining factor instead of shields, freezing a town for several extra turns as opposed to building a warrior then a worker as we would.

Additionally, you get half a worker out of the deal with no upkeep(aside from bad feelings from the civ) - this part, however, is just the icing on the cake - it's forcing the AI to change tracks that is the true goal here. Disruption is the main benefit, and it is normally far more subtle than these two screenshots.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by ducki
Additionally, you get half a worker out of the deal with no upkeep(aside from bad feelings from the civ) - this part, however, is just the icing on the cake - it's forcing the AI to change tracks that is the true goal here. Disruption is the main benefit, and it is normally far more subtle than these two screenshots.

Maybe on Monarch, but on the higher difficulties I disagree with this. The best part about Worker-buying is having an extra half-Worker to help you along. On Emperor or above, you have very little control over the AI's economy for quite a while, so yours is the most important. You'll rarely have enough Gold to seriously disrupt them. Like others have said, there's something else going on the the examples provided than just Worker-buying.

A good idea for a thread, though.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Mmm, worker buying.

Better yet, worker stealing.

I like that even better.

I've been playing around with the Lean Green Machine (though I'm still trying to have my cake and eat it too, which is causing me problems, but it's been interesting nonetheless).

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Lean Green Machine?

[ducki]

Aztecs, man. A good old treatment of them in one of the must read threads, titled something like "The Joys of Being a Bloodthirsty Barbarian".