Warrior First, when is it optimal?

[SeptimusOctopus]

@septimus

I often go BW first with India too, especially when there is a ton of forests to chop like you had. FWIW I quite often find myself chopping stonehenge soon after that while I wait for the food techs to come in.

Yeah, that turned out to be a pretty good start. The combo of early BW, fast workers, and lots of forests can help get things rolling quickly.

 

[huh?]

Go warrior first only in multiplayer or with raging barbs. In the worst case scenario, you're only one tech away from improving your nearest resource. By the time your first worker goes out, the tech should be completed.

Why raging barbs? You'll still have time to get the worker out (and safe from animals) improving tiles before you need to worry about the barbs showing up.

 

[Riflin'Joe]

(a) If your first tech is going to be Bronze Working, and you have the right combination of tiles to whip the worker.

After reading your Vocum Sineratio piece on whipping, I tried this out, but I soon started wondering whether the free warrior is worth delaying food techs (Chinese leaders with grain or English/Roman leaders with seafood excepted of course).

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

After reading your Vocum Sineratio piece on whipping, I tried this out, but I soon started wondering whether the free warrior is worth delaying food techs (Chinese leaders with grain or English/Roman leaders with seafood excepted of course).

If you start with Fishing and seafood, it's not clear to me that you would want to put the free hammers into a warrior....

If you are running Bronze Working first, you're probably planning to use it right away... eg, Worker - chop Worker - chop chop Settler. So you have time to research the food techs while you are waiting for the initial rounds of chopping to complete.

Horses for courses - if that opening isn't to your taste, or you don't like it for the map you have been dealt, then Bronze Working should wait. To some degree, it's kin to rushing an early religion -- in the opening turn, you don't really have enough information to judge, but that's when you need to decide.

 

[A_Hamster]

If you are running Bronze Working first, you're probably planning to use it right away... eg, Worker - chop Worker - chop chop Settler. So you have time to research the food techs while you are waiting for the initial rounds of chopping to complete.

Where do you put Warriors in that queue, or can you get away with expanding that rapidly without an escort for the Settler and a fog-buster at the target tile? If the latter, that would definitely improve my early expansion if I can get one city founded then funnel warriors to it after. OTOH, there are still animals, even if barb warriors aren't yet in play.

My usual queue is: Worker - Warrior (for exploration) - Warrior (Garrison)- Worker - Warrior -Warrior - Settler #1.

 

[Benginal]

Too lazy to write a real response atm. But the current SGOTM features an unusual start. We talked a lot about what to build first since we were coastal with no fishing. I'm sure all of the teams had the same discussion.

 

[NetGear]

if you're playing india (myst/mining, spi), have 3 food tile (cow pig) with no irrigation and all your other tiles are forested, (no mining) this would be a good specific example of going warrior first, tech bw and whip worker roughly close to 15 turns while getting extra warrior for few turn delay on worker.

 

[cbucks]

DarIus with an all seafood start