Stealing workers

[kochman]

Is it worth starting an early war to pick off a free worker. I'm talking about doing it very early in the game during the exploration phase. The negative for declaring war early means that civ will probably never be my ally. A free worker though is hard to pass up.

If the owner is later going to be the target of your axe rush that will bring about his complete destruction, the answer is yes. Sometimes on the higher levels you can get two because the AI will double up and isn't thinking you will DoW so early.

 

[Ghpstage]

Sitting Bull or either Celtic leader can capture ridiculous numbers of Workers by using G2 promoted Archers. I had a few Emperor games a while back where I managed to build only my first 2 Workers, every other one was captured

The other benefit is running around on hills with G2 will make an effective choke all by themselves too

I haven't tried it on Immortal yet though, had a few bad experiences with wandering Archers that put me off early non rush wars

 

[iggymnrr]

Did dial in HC on deity for some worker stealing experience. Great plains map, epic speed, and after 45 turns have 4 workers, 2 Pacal cities (worthless capitol until cottaged, 2nd city had fish and clams-nice on this map,) also DoW'd Elizabeth for one worker, 1 cover quecha and 2nd worker via captured settler. Signed off that war fast and already have OB with her. So yes it does seem like you can have your cake and eat it too. Discovered Tokugawa, Monty and Ghandi are in the game. Interesting.

 

[CivIVMonger]

@CivIVMonger
Able to win on emperor, a few wins on immortal and 1 vanilla deity win (some time ago).

Good luck I guess...

 

[shyuhe]

On the deity domination challenge with Liz a few months ago, a few players stole workers from their neighbor. It really does slow the AI growth - you just have to make sure another AI doesn't fill the void.

 

[Alastriona]

Did dial in HC on deity for some worker stealing experience. Great plains map, epic speed, and after 45 turns have 4 workers, 2 Pacal cities (worthless capitol until cottaged, 2nd city had fish and clams-nice on this map,) also DoW'd Elizabeth for one worker, 1 cover quecha and 2nd worker via captured settler. Signed off that war fast and already have OB with her. So yes it does seem like you can have your cake and eat it too. Discovered Tokugawa, Monty and Ghandi are in the game. Interesting.

HC is alot better then others at worker stealing and early warfare though. I've tried worker stealing on emperor with others leaders and it can go horrible wrong if you steal from too many different players. One game I almost died due to 3 AI declaring because of "you attacked our friend penalties".

 

[iggymnrr]

@Alastriona
HC is also good at using a single quecha to park outside a bard city with 3-4 archers. Even barb archers often are perplexed. If you get lucky you might see a single injured archer remaining ... cough, cough ... and steal a city away from the AI. As to the worker stealing mention I did suffer a -1 hit from Ghandi. No one else cared. (Monty and Toku are the other neighbors. Wasn't stealing from them. Have my work cut out for me.)