Do you guys buy/build/steal your workers?

[Scott Jegg]

I can't believe I actually have to explain how it's an exploit. I have to explain how declaring war taking worker and making peace on the same turn is an exploit. How their are no repurcussions to it. I always play online and it just ing pisses me off so much when this happens, and it happens ALL the time. The game devs did not intend for this to be part of the game, that is why their is an option to "enslave worker". That is why it's an exploit. workers cost a lot for a reason, just getting them for free is ridiculous. It's supposed to be an investment. You build one early on and watch it pay off, but with stealing them, it is no longer an investment, just a waste of time. It also makes liberty weaker, since tradition now completely nullifies liberty now even for going wide with BNW. It makes me sad that some people truly cannot play the game without stealing workers, that is not how the game was intended to be played.

Major QQ

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[headcase]

I generally don't steal; usually don't think to do it and otherwise avoid it for flavor reasons. If gold is good, I wait to buy. Otherwise I build.

Seeing how clear it is that stealing is the best option, your influence should drop much more when you take one by force. It would still be a good option, but at least it means that the CS isn't your friend for the first little part of the game, so there's a trade-off. If it's still too powerful, they could even move the resting point down by 5. (I feel that some of the "Active" quests, like building a road, should bring the resting point up).

Edit: Oh yeah, and having CSs defend their workers just might help.

 

[RealHuhn]

Major QQ

He is 100% right though.

Worker units are an essential part of almost every strategy game because they add tactical depth and critical decision making to the early game. Long vs short term investments. Especially in CIV5 because workers are very expensive and you have to delay either culture, scouting, faith or growth in order to get one.

Stealing a worker from a CS basically eliminates this decision without any opportunity costs. The diplo hit you get is nothing but a joke.

As he also said, it's clearly not intented by the devs because they designed an alternative way to enslave workers.

Therefore, it's a blatant exploit and I don't like how every thread about optimal buildorders gets deluded by people who abuse stuff like this.

 

[Quineloe]

Major QQ

surely this post must fall under trolling.

Moderator Action: Yes, but your reply does also, as it's only likely to produce a negative response or inflame the discussion further. Please report problematic posts rather than responding to them.
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[Bad Wolf]

I usually build my first worker, because it takes the city-states too long to build them and I like getting those tile improvements going ASAP.

Usually steal my second worker though, and sometimes even my third...

Oh, and if it's an exploit, Firaxis clearly doesn't agree - they've had since Vanilla to fix this, and they haven't, which suggests it's more feature than bug.

The diplo hit you get is nothing but a joke.

Any civ who is aware of what you have done will generally hate you for the rest of the game. I don't know how that's a "joke".

 

[Civert]

that is not how the game was intended to be played.

Comments along this line always baffle me.

If its any consolation, I rarely if ever steal settlers.

If captured from barbarions, sometimes I keep them, and sometimes I give them back.
Usually depends on how bad I need one at the time.

I guess stealing a worker is an exploit, but a somewhat petty one.

Now if you could steal a settler, that would be a true exploit.
Thats one I could really appreciate.

 

[Scott Jegg]

surely this post must fall under trolling.

All I'm reading is a guy moaning about not wanting to play a certain way and having his game ruined by others that do. I'm not sure when he was appointed the spokesperson for the devs either.

The mechanic is weak, granted. I'd prefer it if peace was blocked for about 10 turns. In the grand scheme of things, what would change? The worker would still get stolen, the scout would take a turn worth of bombarment, and influence would not start to regenerate for 10 turns longer. Big deal.

Also, trying to say there is already a mechanic in the game for getting workers from a CS... they are not the same. The penalties for bullying and declaring war are different, It's not the same mechanic at all.

Now, we're on the third iteration of this game already, and still we have the ability to steal workers. If this is such a gamebreaking exploit, why has it not been fixed if it's so alternative to what the devs intended?

 

[Bad Wolf]

that is not how the game was intended to be played.

Isn't the game intended to be played any way you can play it?

 

[rexman07]

This thread is slipping into a philosophical debate on what a game "should" be.

In one camp, anything allowed by the game code is "part of the game" and therefore an equally valid strategy. Taken to the extreme, this includes exploiting bugs. For example, say there was a bug that you could build the National College without having a library in one of your cities if you change the name of the city to "Library." Some people would say, "that's an obvious bug that they should fix, so I'm not going to use it." Others would say, "It's part of the game. You can only have one city named Library at a time so it's an interesting mechanic."

In the other camp, the code is a vehicle to an experience. Players in this camp have an ideal game experience in their head, and see the current state of the code is just an imperfect attempt to approximate that ideal experience.

My rules of thumb for the line between exploit and "valid" strategy is:

1. Does the mechanic reduce the strategic breadth and depth of the game? That is, would the game be a "more interesting"/"better designed"/"more elegant" game without this mechanic? Those qualities are abstract and open to debate, so a more concrete subset of these cases can be described as, does the mechanic offer a choice that is almost all upside and no downside?

2. Are AI civs incapable of exploiting the mechanic or defending themselves against it?

3. Does the mechanic go against the flavor of Civilization?

For example, selling luxuries for lump sum gold on the same turn you declare war (in pre-BNW) violates all three of these principles.
1. It's all upside -- there is no extra diplo hit for breaking the deal, there is no risk, there is pure reward. In pre-BNW, it didn't even take any work to set up. (In BNW, you can only trade lump sums with friends, so you can only use this tactic to backstab friends, which are presumably in limited supply, so the mechanic is not so broken.)
2. The AI will never do this to you, nor did it weigh the risk of paying in lump sum against a likely aggressive opponent.
3. It doesn't make sense that instantaneously, before the first shipment of Spices arrived in their cities, 240 gold was debited from their bank account and added to yours. That's just not how international trade works.

Other people may have their own rules. That's cool. It's a game, not a system of morality. Make your own choices!

 

[Greizer85]

I usually build my first worker, because it takes the city-states too long to build them and I like getting those tile improvements going ASAP.

If you play on Immortal or Deity, the AI has workers right away so you can just steal from the nearest neighbor. I agree that CSs take too long to get them (not always but often enough it's turn ~30 or so on Standard speed).

Usually steal my second worker though, and sometimes even my third...

[...]

Any civ who is aware of what you have done will generally hate you for the rest of the game. I don't know how that's a "joke".

Steal only one and the effect is barely noticable. I didn't even know about it until I read about it on the forums. You should never, ever steal twice from CSs because the hits you take are permanent and very severe. If they want to get rid of it they could up the influence decay from even the first steal/DOW by a crticial amount. Or they could increase the decay by such an amount as to make it a real decision whether to do it or not. Short of your settling position, tech and build order, obtaining your first worker is one of the most important acts of the game. Ideally imo you'd want to steal on some occasions, on others you might not.

 

[3drawegroeg]

For example, selling luxuries for lump sum gold on the same turn you declare war (in pre-BNW) violates all three of these principles.
1. It's all upside -- there is no extra diplo hit for breaking the deal, there is no risk, there is pure reward. In pre-BNW, it didn't even take any work to set up. (In BNW, you can only trade lump sums with friends, so you can only use this tactic to backstab friends, which are presumably in limited supply, so the mechanic is not so broken.)
2. The AI will never do this to you, nor did it weigh the risk of paying in lump sum against a likely aggressive opponent.
3. It doesn't make sense that instantaneously, before the first shipment of Spices arrived in their cities, 240 gold was debited from their bank account and added to yours. That's just not how international trade works.

Other people may have their own rules. That's cool. It's a game, not a system of morality. Make your own choices!

I'm with this guy. I sort of don't understand the fascination that some have with getting to the victory screen by any means necessary. Victory screen is my least favorite time of the game. I kind of play Civ like a sandbox game. I set my own goals and win or lost based on accomplishing those.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

When do CS gets their worker on Immortal?
On deity?

Pretty sure it must be on Deity, because I play on Immortal and never saw a CS with a worker before they hit pop 3 I think.

Answering the thread question, I never steal a worker from a CS because the peace-making is what makes it an exploit for me. But stealing from an AI civ is OK, there will be consequences for me to deal with, and I do it whenever possible. Then depends if I am playing Liberty or not. If Liberty, I get one from free and then try to build Pyramids and never build nor buy a worker. If not Liberty, I will probably build a second worker (but rarely a third) and save the money to buy a settler.

 

[kukatr]

Most of the time I build them, but in faraway colonies I usually buy them. These depend on the situation, though. If I need it fast, then I buy it.

On a side note, why do you call it stealing? It is armed robbery and enslaving.

 

[Greizer85]

On a side note, why do you call it stealing? It is armed robbery and enslaving.

In Greizerlandparadise, every citizen is first and foremost property of the state, hence, stealing. I'm surprised you didn't know that... Citizen.

 

[kukatr]

In Greizerlandparadise, every citizen is first and foremost property of the state, hence, stealing. I'm surprised you didn't know that... Citizen.

Yeah, but they are still taken by force, so it is a robbery.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

Yeah, but they are still taken by force, so it is a robbery.

Well, not really, if you want to get technical... people just stealthly take unprotected workers with a Scout and then run with it, nobody sends Archers along to kill a Warrior protecting the worker.

 

[Greizer85]

There is a special prison in my kingdom for people who squabble over the exact meanings of words. Just sayin'.

 

[kukatr]

We can talk a lot about this issue (the role of declaring war and others), but it would be quite pointless and offtopic.

Greizer85, please reserve a cell with a coastal view, maybe in the far future I'll be that desperate.

 

[Ryoga]

Isn't the game intended to be played any way you can play it?

Well not really... I mean, I doubt that developers care if people decide to play the game in whatever way they want, but certainly a game designer designs the game with a clear goal in mind and some kind of obstacles that stand in that way.

When a player finds a system to bypass the obstacles in a way that the designer himself never realized existing, you can rightly say that that player is not playing the game the way it was intended, and how could it be, after all, if the designer himself wasn't aware of that?

That generally is called "exploit", but it's not always bad.

A notable example is a certain level of "Portal" that can be completed without solving the puzzle, through a masterful use of the portal device. The developers in the end realized that this way exited because a beta tester found it, but decided to leave it because it was a brilliant system nonetheless.


The real question therefore is whether stealing workers is something that can be considered an acceptable action from the player given the fact that the option to enslave workers was clearly designed, and the option to make peace with CS anytime was also designed, or if it's an exploit because it gives you a consistent early advantage.

Scott Jegg made a good point that so far there's never been any attempt from the programmers to remove this option or to increase the penalties, while, at the same time, another famous exploit known as "milking the AI" was clearly nerfed in BNW.

 

[Greizer85]

Scott Jegg made a good point that so far there's never been any attempt from the programmers to remove this option or to increase the penalties, while, at the same time, another famous exploit known as "milking the AI" was clearly nerfed in BNW.

To be fair though, this is the new lump sum exploit in that it's the thing that's being talked about. While the lump sum exploit (or tactic if you prefer ) was still in effect, there was little discussion of worker stealing because its effects are not as pronounced. However they are significant and now that it's being discussed I think the devs might make some change regarding it, if enough people deem it necessary. I'd certainly welcome it (and I say this as a shameless enslaver of inferior peoples the world over).