Capture settlers and Workers

[Robert]

I thought it was quiet annoying to have all those settlers tresspassing my territory to build a brand new city behind my borders. I changed my tactics. Everytime another settler crosses my borders, guarded with a warrior or something, I attack the guard and take the settler.

In my current game I've already caught about 12 workers that way. It works great. Of course you need to be well defended to survive when they attack you

1. they can't expand that quickly.
2. you don't have to build workers
3. You gain much workers thus you can work the land quickly.
4. they'll attack you thus you only need to defend at strategical positions (hills, mountains)

works great

[Cian McGuire]

True, but if you don't wish to go to war that often a tactic I enjoy using is establishing a line of units at bottlenecks or at the border if I have to comprised of otherwise outdated or 'extra' units.

[Eli]

But your captured workers work two times slower.

[RedWhiteArcher]

So what? You get at least 4 times the workers you had before.

[Robert]

they do ??
that explains a lot

[Eli]

Originally posted by RedWhiteArcher
So what? You get at least 4 times the workers you had before.

Correct. But the game becomes very tedious.

[Akka]

Re: Capture settlers and Workers

But your captured workers work two times slower.

Yes, but they cost nothing to produce nor to support
A 100 % free worker. Definitaly worth the deal.

[mtgillespie]

You can even just send them back to your capital and trade them straight away.

[Dev]

I generally let them do whatever they want to do, which usually means going off to found some city on my border that will culture defect in less than 30 turns anyway.

IMO This has several advantages over your approach.

#1 No war required.
#2 You can get about as many free workers/settlers as you want when you starve the city/build workers to kill it.
#3 Free defensive military unit when the city defects.
#4 The AI Civ will spend resources on the doomed city.

But of course there's a time for everything and just killing/capturing them is never completely wrong


/dev

[PMLF]

When I am at war, I usually get a lot of workers. But I usually settle them in some cities (not in border cities).