Hey Chaosquo -
As a general rule, worker first is almost always best except for some coastal starts. However, if your plan is to aggressively worker steal or even warrior rush (lower levels) that can be a good play on certain levels. Map dependent, ofc, and you must know that you have Ais in fairly close proximity.
Regardless, unless you start with the needed food techs, food should ALWAYS be your priority. BW is, ofc, usually important, but to make good use of slavery you want that food up asap.
On most Pangaea's, worker stealing approach can be workable, but on most other map types it can be a uncertain.
If you start with a warrior, most certain build a worker first. If Hunting, then it is a decision based on what I described. But keep in mind that it is a gamble. Sometimes you can have bad luck with worker stealing such that the worker does not present himself in an attack position soon enough, or the neighbor gets an early religion and pops second borders fast.
Ha..the painful case of walking my warrior all around an AIs borders looking for that darn worker then coming around to find he'd improved something on the other side in the meantime and scooted to another unreachable spot.
There's also the somewhat odd case of those civs you play with terrible start techs, especially in conjunction with your starting resources. Justy, Monty, Rags, etc, are some that come to mind. In some cases, while you may get up an improvement, you might have some idle worker turns. I might at least taper the worker build by throwing some turns of a warrior in there.
Regardless, the idea of growing to 2 or 3 is in most cases a false presumption...the usual exception being some coastal starts where you go WB first and then whip the worker soon after...but at least you are netting a seafood.
Keep in mind that I usually worker steal, even with Hunting, I just do it with my warrior after my worker. And I usually do it to steal multiple workers and choke the AI.
