The Early Worker Grab

[Dragonlor]

Does anyone else do this? My beginning warrior is exploring and comes across a civilization that happens to have a worker on their border. My warrior dashes in and kidnaps the Worker. Now I can have a settler and worker very early in the time it would take to build one or the other. I just run the worker back to my empire. If he happens to die on the way by barbarians at least I slowed the start of an opponent. If it's not too far my Warrior will escort the worker back.

 

[Shillen]

Yeah I do this when the opportunity presents itself. I'll also pillage a couple of his more important improvements while I'm at war with him. But the bonus worker is huge in 2500BC.

 

[Heroes]

Does anyone else do this? My beginning warrior is exploring and comes across a civilization that happens to have a worker on their border. My warrior dashes in and kidnaps the Worker. Now I can have a settler and worker very early in the time it would take to build one or the other. I just run the worker back to my empire. If he happens to die on the way by barbarians at least I slowed the start of an opponent. If it's not too far my Warrior will escort the worker back.

Absolutely! It seems to be the "standard" thing to do at higher levels! My exploring warrior steals 3 workers from 3 civs in an immortal (level)/immortal (Persian UU) game.

 

[Dairuka]

Yeah. I've been suggesting this in every thread for the past three weeks since the first Quecha Rush thread came out. It saves you 6-15 painful turns of no population growth to do this. A huge boon if you get one before 2000 BC.

Also note if you're stuck with an Explorer {Expansionist Civ}, to always build a warrior right away. That way you can still have a good chance to pick up a worker from your neighbour.

 

[weasel77066]

Yea, I do it too. Last game I played I copped an Indian settler. (it became a worker for me) That mustve really hurt him bad. He stopped expanding for quite a long time. Even after the peace treaty- I was never able to be rid of his negative attitude towards me. It ALMOST screwed me in the end, but I won anyways (snicker)

 

[Heroes]

Yea, I do it too. Last game I played I copped an Indian settler. (it became a worker for me) That mustve really hurt him bad. He stopped expanding for quite a long time. Even after the peace treaty- I was never able to be rid of his negative attitude towards me. It ALMOST screwed me in the end, but I won anyways (snicker)

My aim is always to conquer the whole continent, so grab as many workers as possible, and kill them off so that they don't have you any more ... Seriously, without controlling your continent and therefore having several times of size and population than AIs, it's quite hard to keep up in tech pace at high levels!

 

[Xerol]

A good way to "repair" relations, if you can get Open Borders with them, is to found a religion early and spread it to them, so they convert. If they manage to stay that religion for a while, you can get up to +5 relations which can overwhelm a war of long-ago.

 

[anton_z1]

Yeah. I've been suggesting this in every thread for the past three weeks since the first Quecha Rush thread came out. It saves you 6-15 painful turns of no population growth to do this. A huge boon if you get one before 2000 BC.

Also note if you're stuck with an Explorer {Expansionist Civ}, to always build a warrior right away. That way you can still have a good chance to pick up a worker from your neighbour.

This is slow. By 2000 BC i have already 3 cities and 4 workers. Stealing a worker may be good, but you scrap your realtionship, thus forget about exchanging research later.