Thoughts on early workers @ deity

I'm playing BNW on deity, experimenting a lot of different civs and different starting strategies.

I have found the biggest issue about starting 'well' is if you do get early workers, or if you do not.

Improving the luxuries can take a while, so you need to get that started very early, because otherwise you will dip right into unhappiness while you try to expand.
And as you usually have to expand as early as possible, you need those luxuries ASAP.

You are always playing catch up with the AI on deity, so I feel you also need the extra production from a mine/horses/sheep when you are building your first settler; chopping a forest will help loads too.

So the problem is you cannot always guarantee you get any early workers to improve those resources.

*If you hard build your workers, it will greatly hinder your early city development/ building your settlers early

*If you try to steal early workers, you will know too late if this is going to be difficult/impossible (you should have already been building your first worker when you realize you can't get any from the AI)

*If you go for Liberty, your free worker will be way too late unless you open with it (in which case your free settler will be WAY too late

*If you go for Tradition, building a worker before the first settler will often mean the settler is too late; if you build two settlers in a row at pop 2-3, you will absolutely need to steal two workers right away

*If you settle on a luxury that you can use by mining, that will help a lot, but sometimes such a starting location will be quite unfavorable in all other respects

*If you scout just a little too much too early to make sure your target AI or CS you plan to steal from has a favorable stealing location available for you, you will soon trigger two other AIs and there go your hopes of DoWing anyone early without a diplomatic hit

So, usually no matter if I'm going for Tradition or Liberty, I feel I must succeed in stealing a minimum of three workers within the first 35 turns. And that usually means you have to take two from a single AI (so they better not have archers!) and one from a city state (so the CS better not be on a hill behind forest or jungle!).

If I don't succeed in stealing the early workers, I usually just restart.

Maybe I'm missing something here, though? I wonder if there is an approach that might salvage the situation. I'm wondering maybe you should always build a worker first, and then try to steal the rest while you have more scouts/warriors/archers. Or maybe you should just let your people be unhappy for the first 50 turns while you aggressively settle 4 cities early.

What is your approach, how have you managed to overcome the odds?

One way is set focus to production and build a worker on turn 1. It should be done by turn 12 or 14.

budweiser said:

One way is set focus to production and build a worker on turn 1. It should be done by turn 12 or 14.

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But sacrificing the early scout - OUCH. Yeah, you could do scout -> worker, but building these guys just takes so long...

I use to steal one worker. Sometimes two. It's enough, IMHO. When you expand, settle on lux.
My main issue on deity is room to settle.

Memoryjar said:

I use to steal one worker. Sometimes two. It's enough, IMHO. When you expand, settle on lux.
My main issue on deity is room to settle.

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I get your point, however, when I play Tradition, I often get the feeling I really need more workers. If you can get close to a situation where your citizens never work an unimproved tile it's just such a huge boost early on.
And with Tradition, you grow more early on while your workers are slower.
So I guess one of my arguments is also, that on Tradition, you need to steal more workers, since 1. you need them. 2. you don't get a free one from SP and 3. you also don't get a free settler which means you have to build it -> less time to build workers.

Of course, you could sometimes do a very quick settler spam and then climb back out of unhappiness by spamming workers right after that, but that is very risky as you might not ever catch up, or the AI might steamroll you on turn 45 while your army was one scout, one warrior...

I think you can be missing a thing or two.

Don't restart. Play it out even if takes nukes to win.

Try scout scout monument (skip if ruin found) worker granary 3x archers settlers. Skip the shrine. It's not going to help at that point anyway. Save cash for worker. Steal 1-2 more from CS. Build two more workers at some point. This start is slower by your standards, but it worked for me most of the times. Still get NC in the 80'ies

I agree with OP -- I find that the difference between stealing early workers and not is humungous. When I can conduct a good sequence of muggings so that I have 2-3 workers early and don't have to build one in the cap at all, I'm destined to have a strong game. But if my starting warrior wanders about and doesn't go in the "right" direction the first 20 turns and finds nada (or finds one of those civs that keep 3 warriors right next to the cap/next to their workers), slooooow start. On Deity, I'll often just throw up my hands right there.

I have only posted 2 games on deity and 1 on immortal on this site but I've beaten deity many times with only 1 worker. Alot of times I don't even worry about improving my hexes. You have many many ways of catching up and taking over the AI on Deity and I don't think you should quit the game just because you couldn't get some free workers. You can get into warmonger mode or just ally up with the AI for easy RAs to overtake the science route. BNW is very easy to get friendly with the AI with trade routes. So many ways to play this game really, yes if you have more workers early you will have a stronger empire but it really isn't neccessary. Many times I start with scout,scout on a pangea map and never worry about the workers. You can also get workers from barb camps. I like to scout the map find all the civs, settle my capital on a lux and trade for fast gold and buy a worker sometimes. So many options that you really don't need to quit the game early unless your just trying to work on your early game and your gonna quit that usually around turn 75 anyway and restart. I don't work on my games like that though I play almost all of them out unless it is very clear that Im going to lose.

TurboJ said:

So, usually no matter if I'm going for Tradition or Liberty, I feel I must succeed in stealing a minimum of three workers within the first 35 turns. And that usually means you have to take two from a single AI (so they better not have archers!) and one from a city state (so the CS better not be on a hill behind forest or jungle!).

If I don't succeed in stealing the early workers, I usually just restart.

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Have you ever watched the Deity LPs on youtube? Stealing 3 workers **MINIMUM** by turn 35?? I don't ever recall anyone doing that in an LP, I may be wrong but I really don't remember seeing that. I swear you do not need that many workers that early, yes as a rule of thumb 1 worker per city but as I said before it is not neccessary to beat Deity Stand, Stand settings consistently.

I like Budweiser's plan, but try it with Pocatello. You start with a pathfinder and can get pop from ruins. Also get a culture ruin in between and go Liberty to worker first. Build workers and buy pathfinders. You may miss out on a couple of ruins by having less Pathfinders at the start, but I am going to give it a go. Then if your production is good maybe go for Pyramids if. Just check to see if anyone else has gone Liberty.


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TurboJ said:

and one from a city state (so the CS better not be on a hill behind forest or jungle!).

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If you know you are only taking one worker from the CS, you can declare war, take the worker, and immediately declare peace - so whatever terrain the CS has doesn't matter too much as you can just walk away from them after. Terrain can make it a little difficult to take a second worker, though.

Thanks for the input. I can see all your points. And yes, I've seen many LPs, and yes, I've beaten deity with a poor start.
I'm also not trying to argue here, I'm making a point and I'm also welcoming all of your suggestions (thank you).

However, my goal is not just winning the game, it is winning the game in a specific way, not just the 'right' VC. I strive for flexibility and an empire that also 'feels' right for the civ I'm playing. I understand this is taking the hard route, but I do believe I'm also learning a lot by doing this. The 'right feel' can be a handicap at times, for sure.

As for restarting, if I seem to have to do 200 turns of catching up, I don't bother. I've played this game so much I've seen all those late game shenanigans.

Research agreements come so late. I need lots of food and production asap, to have a strong and balanced early game. Also, sometimes my specific way of playing requires a certain city location that will actually be better suited for mid game pursuits. Then I need to work all of the few good tiles I have as early as possible.

I do settle on lux, but then for money+happiness, I need more luxes and very importantly food + hammers. If you get a strong starting location that has good natural food supplies without workers, then that's fine. If not, you need workers asap. You can also get good science using early caravans, but for that you need lots of hammers (build the caravans and also troops to protect them from barbs). And hammers really do benefit from early workers.

There are many ways to play, and I am also studying the game all the time, to learn more.

Yes, you can win deity even if you have to hard build all your workers. But early workers are a HUGE asset. One without which I don't want to play really, unless there's some spectacular prospect opening up right away, and not just in the industrial era. For example, on my current game I was able to get two workers per city when those cities were at just 3-4 pop. Wow. You really should try more workers sometime Usually it is not mentioned, but your worker/city ratio needs to be higher on Tradition than it need to be on Liberty.

Oh, and I play Epic for immersion, so that may affect things a bit.

Hmm, about this:

ravenmagus said:

If you know you are only taking one worker from the CS, you can declare war, take the worker, and immediately declare peace - so whatever terrain the CS has doesn't matter too much as you can just walk away from them after. Terrain can make it a little difficult to take a second worker, though.

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This is something I don't know enough about. I know of course that you can (nearly) always get one worker like this, but what I do not know, is how do CS diplomacy modifiers work. If I plan on going to war before Steel, I always set up a boot camp to train my early troops, a City State you see. So, if I steal one worker as described, but then soon afterwards, DoW the same or an another CS again, how will that affect my relation with other city states? Presuming the AI civs don't know what I'm doing.

Yes Epic will change things and since I have never played a game on that speed I might be out of line. I know that it can make things a bit harder. The thing I don't understand is that you can't always get this perfect start with lots of food, production and workers. Im curious what you think the average of getting this start the way you want it. Let's say its 65% of the time. That is 35% of the time your saying this game isn't how I want it so I need to restart? That is 1 out of 3 games. Im not sure if that is helping your game, I could be wrong here but I have this belief that all SP games on Deity are a win from any starting location. So when you can't have this awesome start it just means you have to play a different way right? I mean that's part of the variety no? I do believe MP games are a differnt story though, not all MP games can be won from any start. Human players are 10 times more difficult than Deity AI. ( By the way, Im not arguing either Im just trying to understand what the point is and Im not sure I get it. It seemed like your question was that if you don't get 3 workers stolen by turn 35 it is time to restart. I guess Im just saying that I don't agree with that. I've been up all night and getting a little loopy anyway so Ill just leave it at that and try to stop posting, sorry if it seemed like Im arguing, Im really just putting in my 2 cents which doesn't mean much.

The thing about deity is you can't have everything you want. That's the nature of a high difficulty level. I usually steal one worker from a CS if there is one nearby, and try to keep my eyes open for barb camps that have captured workers. This seems to happen fairly often and can save you from having to hard build any workers. However, if there are no CS or barb-captives around, I just build them. Focus on getting trade routes up fast after the workers are out, skip any temptations with early wonders, and you can get yourself on track pretty quickly in my limited deity experience.

Never DoW a CS more than once in a game unless you want permanent negative modifiers. However, there is a "radius". Let's say you DoW the same CS twice, or two CS's near each other. All nearby CS will have a permanently lower resting point. Also, your rate of faction loss goes to 2/turn I think. In previous patches, you could eventually land yourself in perma-war with all CS, however I think that was turned off at some point. I can't recall.

AIs make better training grounds, but favorable terrain is the most important factor. Yes, it makes a huge difference if you don't get the early worker, but you also know by t20 whether you've gotten one or not. If you don't have one by then, build it. Plant cities on luxes if you're short on workers to improve them. Immediate DoW of CS is situational. Yes it avoids faction hit with AIs, but only do it when you have a "good feeling" about your chances of farming it for multiple workers, and if you don't think you'll need that CS.

Also, early archers can get you just as many workers. If you go for AH->Archery, and you purchase an archer on t17, or finish building it on t23, that archer can go assist the warrior to pull off a worker steal on an AI/CS which would *otherwise fail*. Yes, you're getting the worker on t28, but it's not the end of the world.

And Moriarte is right. I restart to practice my early game efficiency. But it's important to play through bad luck and learn how to make the best of it. (Like I'm doing on that other England thread)

Unless you're going for 1st place in an HOF gauntlet. In that case, restart. ;-)

I find the opener is as much determined by luck, speed, and quality of the worker steal as it is about the capital's terrain. I rarely have an easy game when I have to hard build more than one worker in the early game, whatever the reason. My fastest times had super fast steals - one, a double worker steal on a proximal AI & I was farming on turn 9, another, where I snatched up 3 in the first DOW then bleed the AI for 6 more workers over the first 40 turns (he kept sending a settler to the same ambush site with 0-1 unit escort).

Although I have a worker addiction. I enjoy having 2 workers per city improving all of the things. In the early game you want improvements for the tiles your cities are working, improvements for the luxuries, roads, and if you can spare the time, forts on the border of the most aggressive neighbor(s). With fast growing cities, I find you sometimes need 2 just to keep all the worked tiles improved in time, though you'll just disband most/all of them when every tile is improved in the industrial era if you run too many. You get such good uptime on "working improved tiles" and urban options like all mines for settlers or a key wonder or congress project, heavy growth options, gold options. Skinning a cat I guess.

In Deity, stealing workers could speed up production. If you steal 1 worker from a city state and you make 2 or 3 scouts to steal other civilizations' workers, you can get started on your land quick. That will also allow production for other buildings.

other things give better benefits as a early worker - best example is the granny giving 4 food with 2 wheats nearby - DIRECTLY - meaning faster growth meaning more tile to work meaning even bigger benefits.

Worker irigating/working tiles will never catch up to that.

Same with a scout generating gold and ruins and quests - much bigger early and rolling benefit.
Same with a shrine and so on.

You need a worker to work res tiles but therefore u need the techs comming at about turn 30 anyway - till then there is enough time to steal workes/buy one or have it being your 3rd/5th build

I had an interesting experience in my current deity game with the ottomans. I decided I wanted to rush Stonehenge so I could snag an early GE. I figured on deity, this meant playing very focused and having a worker for forest chopping, so I started with a worker as my first production. I skipped making a scout and just relied on my warrior to find a couple of nearby ruins. I also, naturally, skipped building a shrine. I got my second worker through liberty, then had to postpone finishing liberty so I could get the free GS from the finisher after my GE spawned around turn 130 and built Sistine chapel.

This was unusual because I have gotten into the habit of worker stealing from a CS. By the time I could have taken one, I didn't need it badly enough to make the warmonger hate worth it. Many turns later, this all paid off. Everyone went to war with Venice while I was trying to get my caravels and frigates over to steal the capital myself (which had the great lighthouse and even a fully furnished great library as a prize). I was sadly a few turns away and was just hoping the AI would fumble on taking the cap. With Wu and Hiawatha closing in, neighboring Vancouver stepped in and took the capital! In one of the best case scenarios, I stepped in, DoWed Vancouver, took Venice, and instantly made peace the same turn. I got a free capital with only minor warmonger hate. Had I used up my CS war earlier, who knows what the political ramifications would have been.