Worker first!

Worker stealing is situational though. All City States typically know you declared war on one of them and may dislike you for it. If you met any civ by this time, they may consider you a warmongering menace. At least I think they may, not sure if one-turn-wars still raise your warmongering status, as I don't steal Workers like that (I may steal from bigger Civs, though, but I mean stealing Settlers).

Besides as Venice there's no point in doing that. After getting Optics send your MoV to puppet a city state. Yeah, you maybe would've gotten that Worker a bit earlier, but being considered a warmongering menace so early is a much worse thing.

Never stole a worker, never will, same as never did the Four Horseman of Apocalypse rush back in the early days of Civ5.

But I find it hard to go without Scout first, it annoys me to think that all those lovely goodie huts are being taken by the AI. So I compromise and tend to settle on hills for the early production boost ^^

Kidnap those workers! Read my recent thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502703

I play Emperor and Immortal, and what I build first depends on game conditions too much to make a hard rule:

1) Shoshone, and to a lesser extent, the Inca, the Aztecs, Americans, and Polynesians, can get by without a scout due to UU or UA buffs letting them scout easier than normal. In these cases, I may go worker first, or even monument first.

2) On starts where most luxes are out in the ocean, there may not be enough tiles that can be immediately improved to warrant building a worker first, especially if enough jungle is present on the land tiles. In these cases, I often build a scout first regardless of what civ I am.

3) Scout is absolutely vital, however, to Venice, Arabia, Portugal, and Morocco, as trade-routes are more of a priority for these civs and they want to know right away where other cities are, as well as what type of route can access each city, letting them build the ideal trade-units without guesswork on what will be in range or on a coast.

As for this:

El Caballerion said:

Kidnap those workers! Read my recent thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502703

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This is good advice, but again quite dependent on specifics. After all, you can only really steal one if you plan on playing CS-oriented, as otherwise CSes will grow wary if you attack more than this. Further, if the only CS nearby is one you want to ally quickly, this means either having to explore enough to find other CSes, or choosing the worker over an early alliance.

Good advice if you aren't concerned with CS relations (or, at least, early relations with that specific CS), and often useful advice, but not always.

RealHuhn said:

Yeah but they don't do that. So it's a moot point.

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That's like saying the AI doesn't always protect it's great generals so it's an exploit to kill them when offered the opportunity, or to take advantage of other things the AI does stupidly despite clearly being able to make the smarter choice upon occasion.

This should be about worker first or not. ^^

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Clearly not... because you can steal them. Although, if it's absolutely necessary to build your start early for whatever reason, then waiting for a CS to spawn a worker (assuming it does and doesn't spawn an archer first) might not be ideal given that you can probably build the worker and set it in play before you can grab the CS worker and escort it back to your cap.

I would love to skip the scout and get straight to building my empire, but there is no good reason to as the scout pays for itself and then some. Just discovering the CS's alone is worth it, then throw any ruins on top of that.

An average scout for me ends up being 200+ gold, 20 culture, a free tech, and often ends up as an archer.

That fog of war you've got... ouch.

Elric445 said:

That fog of war you've got... ouch.

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It just happens to be a total eclipse.

Never build workers at the start.. ever.
I play diety, all I get is a settler and a warrior. Warrior goes looking for ruins, and most importantly a Civ..
While i'm looking for a new "friend", I'm making a scout.
When my warrior finds a new "friend" I steal his workers. (diety AI gets 2 at start).

Then I'm set for my main city, if I have several neighbors nearby, i'll steal their workers too. This has 2 main benefits:
#1, free workers in under 1/3rd the time to build 1
#2 cripples the AI civ for a while. They have to make more workers, can't work tiles, and they have to delay making the uber diety army that they will send at you.

This doesn't seem to really hurt your standing with them either if done early enough. My last game, I was parked about 6 tiles from Shaka.. 6!!! I stole his workers on turn 4, double shot, 2 in 1 turn. Killed one of his archers with my city, and we made peace. My war vs him at turn 4 has never registered as a negative against me. He died later though, because I like his land and it was easy to get to.. and I liked his pyramids, great wall, himji castle, and macchu pichu.