Turn 1 Worker build and related questions

By the sound of it more advanced players like building a Worker as the first thing on turn 1 ancient era rather than something like a Warrior or a Scout (seen this in let's plays, anyway). I was hoping somebody could explain the reasoning behind this opening move. While getting out a Worker as early as possible is obviously an important goal, won't the fact that your capital won't be able to grow and will remain size 1 curtail any advantage from this? A size 1 city takes a considerable number of turns to produce the Worker while growth is on the other hand is very fast for small cities, meaning size 2 or 3 would happen quickly if one simply let the city grow. Thus, I would have thought the extra food or production would have been better acquired by simply waiting ~5-7 turns for the capital to grow to size 2 rather than waiting some ~15 turns to produce the Worker who must then spend further turns moving to, then improving the terrain... but I guess not?

On what I suppose is a related note I read that Hunting is considered one of the weakest starting technologies and that a leader like Brennus (Hunting, Mysticism) is disfavoured for that reason. Again, I found this surprising since I would have thought the early Scout advantage (map knowledge, goodie huts) as well as easy access to early religion would precisely be a big advantage, but apparently not.

Does anybody care to shed some light on the theory of the very early game for a casual IV player? Thanks in advance!

keywords: tile improvement, chopping

First, the worker. The worker is usually first, except for seafood w/ fishing tech starts and other infrequent things.
Simplified answer: This is because unimproved tiles are bad, and "growing" the city so it can use more unimproved tiles is thus also bad. Getting the worker first means you can start using improved tiles sooner.
More complex answer: The best tile you can have at the start for growing is a 3 food tile (corn or similar on a grass tile). Since you say it takes a long time to produce a worker in the early game, I assume you are playing marathon or at least epic. Assuming marathon, that means a warrior costs 30 and a worker costs 120.
But the worker can be built with food or hammers, so if you pick a 3 food tile or some combo producing 3 food and hammers, you have the base hammer from the city tile and 3 more food or hammers from a 3/0 tile or a 2/1 plains (preferably a 2/1/1 river plainis for the extra commerce) or a 0/3/0 from a forested plain hill tile. So it takes 40 turns to make the worker. Then 15 turns later, the worker can upgrade your corn tile to a 6/0/0 tile. So after 55 turns you are producing 6 food and probably a second unimproved tile, and have spent 15 turns on a warrior, half-building the warrior (with the city tile hammer). 15 turns later, the worker has improved a second tile, and because you were using a 6 food tile for the next 15 turns, you can now expect to have a 3 pop city, 1 worker and 1 warrior and 2 improved tiles at 70 turns.
If you went warrior first, after 30 turns, you have built a warrior and have grown to a 2 pop city with your 3 food tile. You then go worker. You have now blocked growth so you're stuck at 2 pop while building the worker. Because nothing is improved, your best scenario is to use your 3 food tile and some other 3 tile for producing the worker. But since you have 2 popl, it takes 4 food to feed your 2 citizens. So 2 food from city, 2 food from the 3 food tile nets 1 extra food for building the worker, and then 3 from whatever second unimproved tile you're using (another 3 food resource grass tile or a plains tile or a forested grass tile or a forested plains hill tile) for 4 things to help build the worker. Adding the base hammer from the city tile, you have 5 things for building the worker. So the worker takes 4 turns to build. At turn 54, you have a worker and a warrior. At turn 70 you have a worker and a warrior and 1 improved tile (finished on turn 69) and a size 3 city. Same units, same pop, but only 1 improved tile. So you lose out on 1 improved tile. Which is why worker first is better. The growth of the city onto unimproved tiles only very minimally reduces worker build times, while improving your best tiles could greatly reduce pop-increase times or worker or settler build times.
Now, you think that gains made from huts could counter this. But first of all, if your prince title is correct, huts are about as likely to be bad as good. So huts are a risky gamble (if you spawned 3 barbs, you might kill yourself this early). As you move up in difficulty, huts are MORE likely to be bad for you, but MORE likely to be good for the AI. Huts make easy games easier and harder games harder! So most players do not use huts. And thus hunting sucks (also, it only allows you to improve bad food tiles like deer which usually only appear in tundra, unlike hunting or fishing). So there is no scouting advantage because huts don't exist for most players (and without huts, scouts are terrible and will die more easily to everything that spawns, like animals or barbs, yet cost the same as warriors).

My reasoning: I guess the goal is to produce as much as possible as fast as possible so growing 1 size can only add 1 relevant production, food or hammers while the city at size 1 produce 3 already (or even more if settled on plainhills, marcble,stone) so each pop is a very small increase. Building a worker delays growth but makes the tiles (especialy with resources) so much stronger that a small improved city will swiftly catch up with an larger unimproved city in terms of production.

Its very hard to compare this with an early scout or warrior as it depends on goodhuts and difficulty (greater goodhuts on low level). Hunting is considered bad because the resources it improves is often bad to start working because of low food and are quite rare.

Brennus can (depending of difficulty) found an early religion wich is great. But he will likely not be able to improve any good resources early with those techs so it cost a lot of growth wich is crucial at this point in game. If he does not start with many deers he is screwed if founding early religion.

I think the worker thing has been addressed already. It has long been proven that worker first is far more optimal than not in most cases, with the exception of "some" coastal starts. Growth doesn't matter in the city if you are growing on crap. (On lower levels, there is the option of building warriors to capture workers and take cities, which can and will work)

As for Hunting and scouts, keep in mind that many advanced players here do not like huts and events anyway. Even so, going hut grabbing pales in comparison to getting your empire up and running faster. With that said, Hunting is not exactly a terrible tech simply for the reason it leads to a fast AH which can be good for some starts. However, Hunting paired with something like Myst is pretty bad. Hunting/AG or Hunting/Mining is not too bad.

I never build scouts.

Oh man, so many responses while I did my worker test and wrote this... Oh well, I'll post this anyway.

The reason why worker first is best is that growing onto unimproved tiles doesn't really give you any boost in production. Each population eats 2 food and unimproved tiles give a max total yield of 3 food/hammers. That's a net gain of one hammer when producing a worker. If worker at size one is 15 turns, then worker at size 2 is 12 turns, so the worker would be out much later if you grow first. And when it is out you will still be working unimproved tiles a lot of turns until the worker has had time to improve your lands.

Going worker first and improving food resources first will speed up the early game a lot as you will reap the benefits of your farms/pastures earlier. I just did a quick test on a standard wet corn+sheep start. Growing to pop 2 before worker the city reach pop 3 on turn 25 and pop 4 on T29, worker finished the second improvement, pasture on sheep, that same turn. Going worker first the city reached pop 3 on T25, like in the first test, and pop 4 on T28, one turn earlier. Also the worker had already put several turns into a 3rd improvement by that time. So as you can see, worker first caught up already by pop 3 and from there on it was running away with more improvements in place. And note that in the first test I didn't finish any other build before worker, only put hammers into warrior until city grew to pop 2, then switched to worker. Finishing the warrior build would have slowed it down even further.

Starting with a scout is not that much of a big deal. You don't need that much map knowledge early on. All that matters is scouting your immediate surrounding for your second city location. What lies beyond that is not of any importance in the very early game.

And founding that early religion is not as good as you think. Watching higher level players you will notice that it is usually considered a bad play to found any of the 3 early religions. The most noticeable function of religion in this game is that it causes diplomatic tension between civs in different religions. You want your opponents to be in different religions so that they fight each other. Then you can pick your own religion based on who you want to be friends with.

Depending on the Civ that you select, T1 workers are usually a safe bet to give you a decent start. Improving either farms or mines early is generally considered better to get up-and-running ASAP (if your Civ doesn't start with Agriculture it only takes 9 turns to research by which time you can already be researching something else by the time your worker is out and improving tiles). Working improved tiles earlier rather than later is much more preferable to your early development.

Work boats can be an exception if you have a 3 hammer tile nearby or settle on a plains hill.

Rule of thumb I personally use is how many improvable tiles have I got in the BFC and how quickly will it take me to research the techs needed to improve those tiles? It's pointless going Worker T1 if you've only got 1 Agri resource, you don't start with the Wheel or Mining and are surrounded by forests (as the worker would be sitting around waiting for the correct techs to be researched).

Hunting as a starting tech is only considered weak because it's one of the cheapest techs to research. On higher difficulties all of the the AI start with Archery so they all starti with Hunting by default so you can't trade it to anyone. Of course, if you start near Ivory/Deer/Furs it can be beneficial, and it does allow for a slightly faster AH research rate so it's not entirely useless.

Founding religions is more of a chore than anything else. It's generally advisable to let the AI found the early religions so there's some early-game dislike amongst them (Isabella, Monty, Saladin and Pacal all spring to mind) as they will most likely dislike other AIs in a different religion to them. The more AIs that dislike each other the more warring they will do amongst themselves so the less likely they are to trade technologies making them research much slower as a result.

The real benefit of starting with Mysticism with the Celts, in your example, is that the Celts are Charismatic so they benefit from +1 happiness from Monuments (or you can build Stonehenge if you want...). Founding an early religion and converting to it will, in most cases, make you disliked unless you can spam missionaries to other Civs to get them to like you. Building missionaries when you should be improving your infrastructure (i.e. building Settlers, Workers, Libraries, military etc) is detrimental to your early game expansion.

As always, there are exceptions, founding a later religion such as Christianity/Confucianism can sometimes lead to it becoming a majority religion by natural trade route spread but are generally researched as to 'block' or deter the AI from going that route (once a religion is founded AI's are less likely to go for it so you have a valuable trading tech/bribing chip in case of a backstab, Theology especially).

Every situation is different but this is a rough idea of what my early game priorities are usually like. Hope it helps!

I have been sceptical myself but than I tried it and it works Having a farm asap is better than 2 or 3 pop because You will catch up in growth and already have a worker and he will be already improving tiles That way You will have a good starting adventage over AI. The exception might be when You have no land food crops around starting place (I think that it's a game rule that You have at least one in BFC of first city) but only sea food resources - in that case it might be a good idea to build work boat first but than again I'd still go for worker Don't let Your city work unimproved tiles if You can help it - remember that and try it Yourself, You'll see

Thanks for the responses. I guess Worker first being better is ultimately down to the fact that most of the production comes from the Palace rather than terrain, as was pointed out. It is counter-intuitive and almost certainly not intended by Firaxis that this opening would be optimal (as was pointed out, some players never even build Scouts). Even IV isn't perfect.

Another question now that this thread is open:

1) Slavery vs Caste System. The benefits of Slavery are obvious (especially with the way overflow works, as I briefly read about) but Caste System seems less clear. I'd hoped Caste System would be optimal in certain situations and especially for certain civs (India being the prime example, well known for the its caste system) but it isn't really clear when one would choose it over Slavery. Both civics help covert Food into something more useful (either Hammers for buildings --> science or directly Food -> science). I found a number of threads on Slavery vs Caste but none seemed to provide an adequate answer, most posters seemingly having just decided that Slavery is great and that's that. Caste System appeared from these posts to fill just a niche role, a civic that one might run only for a short time (say, to generate a Scientist for an Academy, especially with a specialist economy/philosophical leader) or whatnot. Is Caste System superior to Slavery as a longer term civic in some situations or with some civs, or is it a completely marginalized civic?

Well, an academy GS is something you should be shooting for not long after Writing generally...and don't need Caste for that

Caste is very powerful for any Civ depending on the situation and what you are trying to do. The thinking here relies more on the shorter game vs. the longer game. If you are just going straight early Conquest and wiping the map then it's probably not something you think about much. On higher levels though that only gets you so far, so you usually think about speeding up to a good unit like the Conquistador for some Renaissance stompage.

For me, the best use of Caste is at a point where your base empire established and you are ready to run a Golden Age. You don't necessarily need a pure GP farm, Nat Epic or Great Library to use it in this case, but it is certainly nice to have all that. The main thing is good food and growth in cities. Run Golden Age, and pop out as many GSs as you can for a Lib bulb run. You can even put some cities in a starving mode using the food buckets as long as possible to run as many specialists as you can.

late game, you might find yourself in Caste as you move more toward a hammer focused economy with workshop/watermills/windmills, and running Representation. And you do that as much as you can until Emancipation just hurts too much or maybe you can just avoid Emancipation.

Bottom line though, Caste is a great way to boost your tech in earlyish/mid game for some bulbing action, especially with Golden Ages. Spiritual civs have a little more leeway on how often and when they run it. But it is usually in short spurts at that point.

What everyone else has said, but just to help put a few numbers about your statement of "curtailing growth by staying at size 1.

Imagine this fairly typical (partial) capital. You have a corn tile next to a lake... It produces 3F naturally, and 6 when improoved. You have no other natural 3F tile. You have a bunch of 2F1H or 1F2H tiles.

Starting warrior first, you are producing 3F (corn) + 2 Home square =5, and 1 hammer fromt he home square. Your population eats 2 food.

You need 22 food to grow, so grow in 8 turns (warrior is only half done). Then you start your worker, working corn + 2F1H... You are now building the worker at 5 hammers per turn, so need 12 turns. So, on turn 20, the worker is done, and start improoving the corn, while continuing the warrior on a 2F1H tile. On turn 24 you complete the warrior, and start a second one... You have 14 food in the bin. You On turn 25, the farm is done is done, and you will grow to size 3 on turn 27. You have a worker, a warrior, and a partially built warrior.

Now, we do worker first... It takes 15 turns. Corn is ready on turn 20, and by then you have 15 food in the bin. You grow to size 2 on turn 22, with 5 food overflow. Then grow to size 3 on turn 26!! and just finish the warrior.

So, worker first, your city reaches size 3 QUICKER, not slower!!!

traius said:

Now, you think that gains made from huts could counter this. But first of all, if your prince title is correct, huts are about as likely to be bad as good. So huts are a risky gamble (if you spawned 3 barbs, you might kill yourself this early). As you move up in difficulty, huts are MORE likely to be bad for you, but MORE likely to be good for the AI.

Click to expand...

Except if you're popping them with a Scout you can't get Barbs ....

Strategist83 said:

Thanks for the responses. I guess Worker first being better is ultimately down to the fact that most of the production comes from the Palace rather than terrain, as was pointed out. It is counter-intuitive and almost certainly not intended by Firaxis that this opening would be optimal (as was pointed out, some players never even build Scouts). Even IV isn't perfect.

Click to expand...

Its not so much the Palace as it is the way pop 1 cities start.
They effectively start with 2 working pop, the city tile itself, which feeds the second and gives a production, and a second assignable one thats basically unfed as a result. This means a new city starts off with (almost always) 4 net production before growing.
The +1 net production from growing onto further improved tiles isn't worth the effort as a result.

traius said:

But first of all, if your prince title is correct, huts are about as likely to be bad as good.

Click to expand...

BTW, the default title below the user's name is not necessarily related to what level they play on; it's related to how many posts they have (see FAQs here). I play emperor, but my current default title is "King," a level that was changed to "Monarch" in Civ IV. (It was king in II; I don't remember if they changed it in III or not.) Prince is 300-599 posts.

With 30 posts and 30 days after registration, you can set a custom title and one might set it to one of the defaults.

Strategist83 said:

Thanks for the responses. I guess Worker first being better is ultimately down to the fact that most of the production comes from the Palace rather than terrain, as was pointed out. It is counter-intuitive and almost certainly not intended by Firaxis that this opening would be optimal (as was pointed out, some players never even build Scouts). Even IV isn't perfect.

Click to expand...

The only time I see scout first being optimal is if a 1st turn worker would have nothing to do at any point (ie wasted turns). I've seen this happen a few times where starting techs have no applicable resources available, lots of forests and no multiple same-tech resources (IE there's 1 Corn and 1 Pig). This means that multiple techs need to be researched in order for the worker to be kept gainfully employed and he would pop out before enough techs can be researched.

The other situation, and I think this has been said, is with a seafood start with Fishing start tech. But even then, if there's an improvable land-based food resource and I can keep my worker gainfully employed, I might still go worker first.

Go ahead and build a warrior first. Just make sure you steal 2-3 workers with that one warrior. I do sometime go warrior first if I play a civilization with an initial scout.

LincolnOfRome said:

Go ahead and build a warrior first. Just make sure you steal 2-3 workers with that one warrior.

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This can sometimes work if you play on a level high enough that the AI starts with a worker (IMM+). Or if you are playing inca and go for a quechua rush. But it's also a bit risky, in case you can't find any available target nearby.

I've never tried worker stealing. Doesn't that damage diplo relations enough where you are now a target? Is this technique only effective with "peacemonger" leaders (like Gandhi)? After all, if metals are lacking in your immediate settling area, don't you become a juicy target if you start relations so aggressively?

Its a double edged sword for certain, but if you steal a worker quick enough, then the AI will take peace before he has time to get any units to you. (Because it thinks you are winning the war, since you took a worker of his, and he took nothing of yours.) Yes, he will be mad at you, and this increases the likelyhood that he attacks you again, but if you can set up a situation where you can steal two or three of his workers, and prevent him from improoving a significant number of tiles, then even if he does attack you, he will be so hobbled that he cannot hurt you, and you will just take his land a bit later.

Obviously, it is risky, and situational, but in some situtions, it is by far the most effective play.

Yes, It does damage relations.

It hurts the AI and stunts their growth.
It speeds up your growth.

The positives outweigh the negatives.

At lower levels, the best strategy is often the warrior rush--another warrior first strategy. You just build six warriors as quickly as possible and attack the nearest AI.