In SP almost always go "Worker First"

[jobe]

From my experience so far I think that "worker first" is the way to go almost every time in a SP game. In MP it might be that if you´ve got only one opponent, fast aggression with 2 or 3 units could be rewarding. When playing against several AI it seems like the slowing down one of them is not worth sacrificing buildup speed.
That seems especially to be true due to the fact that cities now grow when training workers.

[pdxsean]

I've gone worker second both games so far, opting for the scout first. I love going out and getting those goodie huts. I wonder if I'm overlooking the super high relative value of the ten turns or so lost from the first worker... getting a farm in turn 20 instead of turn 30 can make a really big difference in the long run.

Now that I think about it, even if the scout discovered tech in the first hut, most likely the tech will be pointless without a worker... I need to change my vote.

[Sir Og]

Worker second is better IMO too. Exploration gives a lot of benefits (ruins, natural wonders, city states contacts) and also a scout helps take out early barb camps with no issues what so ever.

Also in the early game quests to kill barbs from CS give you a huge boost. You can't take advantege of that if you have not scouted enough and if you don't have enough units to safely take out barbarians.

[Dale]

Worker first is useless since you have no techs to do anything useful with it.

[jobe]

On what speed do you play Dale? Even on normal you can research AH, Mining etc..

Since I´ve won every game I played on Deity so far going worker first every time (hence the tip here), it can´t be completely useless seing that civ is a game of exponential mechanics.

[pdxsean]

I made the switch and I'm glad I did.

Diety, huh? I don't feel so bad losing to you after all.

[Kinseek]

I disagree.

I like always getting a scout out first - it's a rather quick build and you can hunt all those ancient ruins faster and hopefully get more of them before someone else takes them. The freebies they offer tend to be very good. You are also more likely to be first to meet a city-state which doubles the gold you get.

Worker first means delayed scout and less likelyhood of those neat things. As mentioned you also need techs for the worker to do things and possibly culture/pay gold to get the tiles that would make the biggest improvement, meaning it might just be OK to delay the worker.

[jobe]

If you play with ruins and on settings where you get a decent amount of them, that might be true on average (average being the average bonus from ruins).

I´m not sure whether the bonuses from the ruins decrease in value with game difficulty like in civ4 though. You´d have to get stuff like bonus pop in cities or technologies to make it mathematically (in relation to buildup) sound to build a scout before a worker and not the other way round in games with ruins.

[pdxsean]

I've been using this since you brought it up jobe, and it really is working for me. Especially if you have forests near your city, I build the worker, switch to scout, then a second worker. Usually I get the second worker with the first deforestation. Then I'll go for a warrior and send him out with the scout... they might miss out on some ruins, but as a team they can take out barbarians early on.

Meanwhile I have a worker ready to go for my second city and can cut forests to get that settler out quick.

[Robert]

I always go worker first, works in civ4 and now in civ5 as well. Most important is to develop your city! My warrior scouts the ruins and immediately takes care of the barbarians.

[rah]

I do scout first. With a hex that provides one production, it's only 5 turns. All it takes is a couple of ruins to offset what that worker could have done. And I hate losing a ruin that's only a couple of hexs from my cap because I couldn't get a unit there fast enough. And if you get AH early, your worker can have a better hex to work. Or mining. Or an extra pop that get's you the tech you're researching faster. Getting some of those early wonders can be determined by a couple of turns.
If you're rushing to calendar, unless you get mining from a hut, all your worker can do is farm. If you sidetrack to mining, you can lose the wonder.