Settling strategy for Progress: workers

[tu_79]

Hey, I've tried a test under "laboratory conditions" to see if it works better to settle first or produce workers between settlings. SF means producing settlers just after monument and shrine, without waiting for settlers. SW means producing a worker just after each settler.

Spoiler Settings :

England, Continents standard, Emperor, only 2 city states, only 1 AI player.
No barbarians. No treasures. No events.
Test settling 6 cities in a row. Compare settling first vs settling-worker strategy.
Everything is set to auto when posible. Research path is the same in both examples.
Avoid building wonders. Avoid producing units other than workers.
Policies will be Progress left side -> right side

Important disclaimer. This map has many plantation resources under forest and jungle tiles. I went Goddess of Renewal in both cases. This does not favor using workers, precisely.

Spoiler Here is the outcome in the first 100 turns :

As you can see, Goddess of Renewal is very friendly to a 'Settlers first' strategy, it allowed to found on turn 111 (without barbarians or enemies, mind you), while not falling behind in policies. However, a major difference is that roads take much longer. Had I beelined Fraternity instead, the 'settler-worker' strategy would have been much better at science, but I wanted to follow the same path in both games to minimize differences.

 

[YukiN]

This seems a very weird test. You build settlers if you want to grab land, get fast pop and get early infrastructure in expansions. You place workers in between when you need to build improvements. Settlers and workers don't do the same thing and there are a lot of moving parts that will affect the outcome immensely. For instance, your choice of pantheon is tied to unimproved terrain rather than improvements, favouring settler first. Certain resources require a higher tech and thus delays the time when workers become useful. Starting on mining resources means a fast worker is very powerful while marsh sugar or forest plantations heavily favour spending your resources elsewhere. Certain civs like Carthage or Songhai that have free city connections means you go right branch first, which gives you a free worker and reduces the need for additional workers to build roads.

What precisely are you trying to test or demonstrate here?

 

[tu_79]

This seems a very weird test. You build settlers if you want to grab land, get fast pop and get early infrastructure in expansions. You place workers in between when you need to build improvements. Settlers and workers don't do the same thing and there are a lot of moving parts that will affect the outcome immensely. For instance, your choice of pantheon is tied to unimproved terrain rather than improvements, favouring settler first. Certain resources require a higher tech and thus delays the time when workers become useful. Starting on mining resources means a fast worker is very powerful while marsh sugar or forest plantations heavily favour spending your resources elsewhere. Certain civs like Carthage or Songhai that have free city connections means you go right branch first, which gives you a free worker and reduces the need for additional workers to build roads.

What precisely are you trying to test or demonstrate here?

First, learning to get data from logs.
Then, trying to see if it's better to grab the land first and then improve the terrain, or improve the terrain as settling is performed. I agree the choice of pantheon obscure the results, but that's what I'd choose, given the scenario.

I don't have a clear conclusion, as it depends strongly on what the terrain happens to be.

 

[CppMaster]

You should run multiple games like this with random civ to make better conclusions.

 

[Owlbebach]

Hey, I've tried a test under "laboratory conditions" to see if it works better to settle first or produce workers between settlings. SF means producing settlers just after monument and shrine, without waiting for settlers. SW means producing a worker just after each settler.

It heavily depends on your land. It simply depends on how much stuff you have to improve. If you have mining resources - better to have Worker or two. If you have plantations in Forest - forget about Workers

My personal experience is that it is usually better to get 1 Worker before Settlers then all Settlers, and then build Workers in secondary cities after monument and Shrine.

 

[tu_79]

It heavily depends on your land. It simply depends on how much stuff you have to improve. If you have mining resources - better to have Worker or two. If you have plantations in Forest - forget about Workers

My personal experience is that it is usually better to get 1 Worker before Settlers then all Settlers, and then build Workers in secondary cities after monument and Shrine.

Nice. I think showing a graph of a case might be useful, since impressions can be subjective, but I need to showcase more games.

 

[CrazyG]

This really depends on your luxury, your monopoly, and your pantheon. China, Carthage and Spain all probably want the settler first most of the time.

 

[Minh Le]

It also depends on how much land you want to cover.

 

[tu_79]

When you try to factor a variable, you need to isolate it, as much as possible. That's why I took England, no early bonus but the spy which I did not use. That's why I removed events, barbs and huts. And neighbors. Obviously the most efficient expansion strategy is the wrong approach with aggressive neighbors. But when theorizing, you need isolated factors, so you know how each one of them works and maybe you can predict the outcome when all factors are considered.
For example, let's say that in one scenario the most efficient expansion is settling 4 cities in the first wave, go for roads and settle another 4 cities. When playing Carthage we know that we can settle more than that and faster. And that we won't need roads for a while if we keep settling on the coast. But we'd already have a base for making plans.

Edit. What failed in this test was picking God of Renewal, as it favored one strategy over the other.

 

[CrazyG]

Just something interesting I'll share.

I did similar tests before, and what I found was that rushing towards the food and science policy seriously outperformed going down the left side first, even if you weren't building city connections. This was before the gold got moved to the worker policy and the production was moved earlier, and I think both of those changes favor going right before left.

Another thing when considering this, if you get a settler out extremely early and that city can go well first, its a positive.