What will your free worker do?

[Father Beast]

With resources about, the location of your first city will be crucial, so your settler and your worker will be scouting about, hopefully uncovering a unit or 2 (there were huts last I looked).

Of course, you may not know what resources there are until the techs... plop your city without knowledge, fix it later. If you start with horseback riding (is there a civ which does?), then you can make sure to plop your city within one square. 2 squares away can be a long wait for something you need. In such case, I think I would keep my worker improving the land, until a needed resource appears too far away to utilize in reasonable time. Then my worker becomes a colony.

In either case, my worker is to precious to risk losing to barbs or enemies scouting around.

BTW, I hope the start with 1 settler, 1 worker happens on all difficulty levels and isn't just an extra cheat for deity level

[Grumbold]

It really depends on where I start and what terrain improvements are of value before a new government form is discovered. If I'm next to special resources that provide trade arrows automatically (like whales did) I'd immediately scout for a second city site. I don't think I'd risk popping any goody huts even if they are defenceless unless I'm in cheat/save/load mood. If I need to build roads just to get my first trade arrow then it would be top priority unless making improvements costs cash in Civ III.

[Provost Harrison]

I think that infrastructure is probably of paramount importance so all your cities are connected to one another. But you want a good source of minerals and food to start with. With colony pods costing 2 population points to build, you'll need to grow quickly. And if you want to get your culture up quickly, you will need a good source of shields to be able to build a temple quickly. I will have to say when I have more experience of the game.

[Sarxis]

Colony.. Pods.. Provost?

You sound like you play SMAC.

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, I have been a SMAC player for the past couple of years, so it is force of habit for me to call them colony pods and formers and bases. I usually switch between the two concepts well, but every so often, I get tripped up

[Green Giant]

It depends on what empire i wil be. If an early starting one like the aztecs then I will use it to improve my first city so i can pump out jaguar warriors as fast as possible. While if i were the americans I would scout to get a better sense of where everything is and build for the future.

[cyril25376]

It depend where I start, when I am on a coast near a bonus tile (wal), I will use the worker to scout, otherwise I will first build a road before I start scouting

[Tventano]

Roads are always useful, for extra income and for faster movement. Scouting is probably better done by scouts or military units.