Cut Worker cost by 36% Tip

[Spark026]

So the manual now states that barbarians capture both workers and settlers, and then try to take them back to their encampment. If settlers are captured they will turn into workers.

With the Liberty social policy that most people will get within their first 3 SPs allows you to build settlers 50% cheaper.

If an encampment is nearby you can just send settlers to the barbarians for their apprenticeship to become useful workers. Saving you 25 hammers each.

Could prove quite useful when sending workers off to improve your civs secondary cities.

 

[Silverwave]

Huum, yeah but don't forget your city stop producing food when you build settlers. Also, if there is already a non-combat unit in their camp, I guess they'll sell the unit.

 

[triske]

If you get your own settler back from the barbs, they turn back to a settler. If you get another Civ's settler and you choose to keep them, they become a worker. If you give them back to the original Civ that lost them, they become a settler again.

 

[Schuesseled]

lol funny strategy.

 

[dtsazza]

Don't forget the opportunity cost of having to have your settler stumble into the barb, having to liberate it from the camp and then having to get the new worker back to the tile you want working (likely a nontrivial distance from the barb camp).

And that's assuming you get a worker back, rather than your original settler.

Chances are it's just going to be more worthwhile to build a worker and get him working on the land straight away. Interesting lateral thinking, though.

 

[bhavv]

In a newly built size 2 city with both -50% settler and -25% worker policies enabled, a settler was at 12 turns, and a worker at 18.

Even though it takes 6 turns longer, you would still have to send it to a barb encampment and capture it back.

Although in my capital, settlers are at 4 turns, and workers at 5, so its not really worth the number of turns lost getting it captured and rescuing it.

Just look out for any workers captured from opponents, steal those and dong give them back.

 

[Dizzy75]

In a newly built size 2 city with both -50% settler and -25% worker policies enabled, a settler was at 12 turns, and a worker at 18.

Huh, that's strange, I swear that in all three of my game starts so far a worker took 18 turns at the very start of the game. Maybe I just happened to start with extra prod?

 

[Draknith]

Huum, yeah but don't forget your city stop producing food when you build settlers.

Are we sure on this one? I seem to remember testing this last night. Was building setter's, but still had city growth occuring. Could have been the wee hours of the morning playing tricks on me, but I thought I saw continued growth even with settler production.

 

[Yakk]

The settler mouse-over says your city stops growing.

 

[Levgre]

Sometimes it's actually better when you use food for production, as growth can be severely limited by happiness. So in the cases where you want to build workers with food this strategy would be good... especially if you settle 2 tiles next to a encampment and bombard them first

But, if they stay a settler, there's no point.

 

[Alexfrog]

This takes too long.


Better strategy: Cut your worker cost by 100%. Let barbarians capture the workers of city states, go kill them and take the workers.
Alternate: just go take their workers yourself. Its rediculously easy. Actually, its exploitative.