>60turns into Civ 5 and no workers. Fail?

You've probably done it before. You sent off your warrior scouting around and he somehow got mired in a huge jungle. He then finds a neighbouring civ for you. It has a worker but it also has 2 warriors guarding it. They don't give you the opportunity to steal and so you've wasted a bunch of turns waiting for that. So you quit that and navigate the jungle to go home and find a city state.

Your scouts have carried on scouting instead of stealing the worker from a CS, and meanwhile you didn't build any workers because you're supposed to be stealing them.

Altogether it's one huge fail of an operation because it's passed t60 and you have no workers and your scouting methods need some serious work. It got so bad you decide to build the pyramids to turn this around! A post-t100 national college is looking likely. There is also major problems with settling because now you can't grow or build cities because you have no luxes.

Would you consider this a lost cause? Abandon ship?

Usually you want to place a turn limit on getting first worker. For example if you know you can't get workers, you hard build one or even rush buy one. There are games where I don't steal workers or fail to steal, and you can still survive. I wouldn't bother with pyramids, as you will lose to AI on deity if they went liberty and you have no workers to chop. Also although it is not optimal, but you can also consider getting NC with only 2 cities if the terrain is especially bad. You can instead use the 1st expo to pump more settlers out while you build infrastructure in the capital.

I would consider it a lost cause. You need to work on placing your scouts/warriors better, so that they are in position when the time is right. I would suggest one worker per city and one floater. A tip of early expansion if you don't have workers is to settle on a new resource. Yes it eliminates the advantage of that tile, but your happyness stays flat. It allows you to progress with your expansion and buys you time to get workers stolen. As always though, it all depends on your strategy.

Your Warrior should not be exploring rough terrain. Nor should he stray too far from home.

If you don't manage to steal a worker by T20, build them yourself, and guard them with the warrior you sent home.

FWIW, I've been experimenting with a new build queue on Liberty lately that works really well.

Scout, Monument, Scout, Worker x3 (maybe with a rush-bought Archer, or an archer fitted in amongst the workers)

This way you hit Collective Rule with the worker problem sorted.

Just remember to use all available hammers.

if i haven't met a CS or AI within a reasonable timeframe i just hard build a worker. pretty much what everyone else has said too

you can always steal your second or third worker, it doesn't have to be your first. it's hammers saved either way

To be honest it's not a bad idea to put a worker in your early build order anyway. Avoids problems as such and it's likely to be a decent investment regardless of whether or not you can steal some.

These days I only skip this worker if I can steal one before T20.

I often don't steal any Workers below Deity, and so my early gold is used on a Worker. Unless I am forced to buy tiles, in which case I hard build a Worker early, and maybe buy an Archer or more tiles instead.

Acken said:

To be honest it's not a bad idea to put a worker in your early build order anyway. Avoids problems as such and it's likely to be a decent investment regardless of whether or not you can steal some.

These days I only skip this worker if I can steal one before T20.

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Interesting, I almost always build a worker these days as well unless I can get a couple extremely early steals like you said.

Do you skip a shrine in the majority if your games? Do you ever build a shrine, monument, and worker early, or is this too many hammers before settlers?

Well these days I play more Liberty so it is fine. For tradition you can chose to skip a monument if you have one ruin.

Acken said:

Well these days I play more Liberty so it is fine. For tradition you can chose to skip a monument if you have one ruin.

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Is this usually on NQ mod maps? Would liberty be worth it for 4 cities if you find there is not enough land or do you really need 5+?

Yes you kind of need the room. But really even for tradition its not a big deal to lose 7 turns making a worker if you couldn't steal one. You will almost get the turns back by chopping and making mines.

I never steal Workers, as I consider that an exploit. This really helps to understand the importance of making/buying one early.

Acken said:

To be honest it's not a bad idea to put a worker in your early build order anyway. Avoids problems as such and it's likely to be a decent investment regardless of whether or not you can steal some.

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I always build an early worker in your mod because palace gives +2 cpt, so it is not very important to get an early monument.