Scouting with Workers

[nbarclay]

One of the advantages of Expansionist civs is that they have a unit that can move through the territory of other civs without being ordered to leave or declare war. Yes, other civs ask you to withdraw, but it's not that big a deal if you don't actually do it right away.

Recently, it occurred to me that non-expansioinist civs can get a similar benefit using workers, or even spare settlers if there happen to be any left over after the REX is finished, to explore in another civ's territory. They aren't as fast as scouts, but slow exploration is better than nothing.

While I'm on the subject of unconventional means of exploring, ROP agreements can be used to get permission to look around in another civ's territory or to move through that territory to look for contacts on the other side. I don't use that trick often because I don't like the possibility of AI units wandering through my territory, but I've used it occasionally.

Nathan

[Theseus]

Hmmm, coming at this from a backwards situation:

I was screwing around with an SP game as Arabia last night (why? ), and was in a fairly dominant early game position, where I had enough excess offensive forces to just go smack around whoever of the AI civs I thought needed it, even far afield from my own territory.

Well, the Ottomans, who surely should be smacked if possible before Sipahi (and don't call me Shirley), were one of those... far off, but fer chrissakes they'd scored Pyramids, Zeus, and other sundry GWs. Smacksmacksmack. So, I sent a punitive force down in their direction, fully intending to lose such along the way. Captured/razed their top 5 cities... thus had about 8 slave Workers to play around with.

I am pretty sure I caused at least TWO AI WARS just by nose-ringing the Ottoman forces onto other AI's territory! I'd never thought of this before!

As Nathan points out, Scouts and Workers sort of get a 'bye', especially if not ever actually adjacent to an AI city... the Ottomans I had in pursuit, perhaps, were not so careful.

So, a wee bit different than Nathan's example, but similar enough: Consider Workers as part of your military deployment.

[Solomwi]

That bye only lasts so long, though. I was forced to leave or declare war earlier tonight when all I had in their territory was two explorers, and I'd imagine the trigger is A/D value. If not, I retract the addendum.

Though I've never had results quite that spectacular, employing worker-bait is a time-honored tradition of my military. Usually, I'll send one or two out when I'm not sure about holding a recently-captured city, to reduce the number of attacks available to the AI, hopefully to one less than the number of defenders.