Is anyone upgrading woodsman II guys to axes?

[Bibor]

Just curious. I find it useful sometimes if I have a gold start to save up 80 gold and upgrade for longer worker steals/chokes. I know it sounds like a lot of gold, but perhaps its worth it in the long run.

 

[Fish Man]

I only do it when I can attach a GG. That way I have a chance of getting an ultramedic and I save a lot of gold in the process. 80 gold is enough to fund 10 turns of research or so that stage of the game.

 

[Gumbolt]

80 gold early on is almost the cost of a whole tech. This will have a snowball effect on the rest of your game. E.g It could delay an HA attack by 8 turns. By which time the AI could have axes and spear. It might delay your first granary by 8 turns. Delay open borders/libraries.

If you have a woodmsman warrior then use that to steal workers where the Ai has just 1 city. I prefer early attacks with 10-11 units to take out a nearby AI. Or using a lone warrior to steal a worker. If it is woodsman II I may stay at war to capture workers as the AI rebuild them. I tend to find work stealer on Ai i intend to attack only increases defenders in their capital. Some Ai like Toku and others are a pain to get ceasefires with.

I prefer to choke by placing cities near the AI border I wish to attack.(Stealing good city spots.) Sometimes I can have 4 cities by 2000bc. On Monarch level they are not that quick to get a second city out.

 

[Swordnboard]

When I'm worker stealing, I'm usually not trying to choke. Instead, I'd like the AI to build more workers for me. So after stealing a worker on the DOW turn, I try to distance myself from the city: if you are more than 2 squares away from the city square, they do not feel threatened and don't feel the need to switch to spamming archers. And if a unit comes chasing my warrior, I just run away. Since I already have some war success from stealing the worker, the AI will eventually make peace, much quicker on difficulties below deity. So I wouldn't consider spending 80 gold on an axe which won't really do a better job of worker stealing compared to the warrior.

Eventually (and quicker if you let the AI spam units), they will begin to escort their workers, at which point you do probably need a stronger unit like an axeman, but I'd much rather whip out a couple axes than spend 80g on an upgrade.