Worker first, then Settler strategy

[GreenMonkey]

I've played about 15 starting games now (I tend to abandon them in the early A.D. if things aren't going well).

Personally I haven't found the worker chop rush works that well. You get more cities but get behind on other things.

My absolute best game to date was last night was with China, it worked like this...

start working on Warrior
Mysticism
Polytheism for Hinduism - warrior produced - start working on Stonehenge while waiting for growth

warriors/scouts explore map - getting 100+ gold at this point is essential to keeping research at 100% IMO

Wheel
Bronze Working
Switch from stonehenge to Worker & chop rush settler
Finish up stonehenge as city 2 is building.


I had a size 4 capital before my settler came out. I ended up with a size 6-7capital chucking out settlers in 6-8 turns, which populated my empire a lot quicker than the settler rush. Pumped out archers to defend the cities in between settlers. That meant I got on top score-wise and stayed on top.

I'm currently dominating the game for the first time on noble, ahead technology, wonders and military.

I found the extra size helps on technology and economy more than the extra cities do (they just drag down on you in the super-early game). And you can actually get the early religions - I founded Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism and Christianity. The holy shrines produced (thanks to Stonehenge and Pyramids) saved my ass in the late B.C. and early A.D. - they make a BIG difference in economy before courthouses show up. They help support a big empire before you have any real economy buildings.

 

[MiamiBigAL]

Could be a pretty good singleplayer strat but you'll get shat on hard in multiplayer.

 

[The Apple]

start working on Warrior
Mysticism
Polytheism for Hinduism - worker produced - start working on Stonehenge while waiting for growth

warriors/scouts explore map - getting 100+ gold at this point is essential to keeping research at 100% IMO

Wheel
Bronze Working
Switch from stonehenge to Worker & chop rush settler
Finish up stonehenge as city 2 is building.

Why bother creating a worker first, if you're not going to be able to have him do anything once he's created? You say you didn't even start researching wheel and bronze working untill after he was already created, so what's he doing all that time, building mines?

 

[Mujadaddy]

He said "start Warrior" but then he said "Worker produced" --- that's the difference... he didn't start his worker until he got bronzeworking, if you read it again...

 

[Wlauzon]

Ok I just finished a game where I totally ignored religion. Since I was on an Archipelago map, I also got no religious "seepage" from any other civs for a very long time.

I concentrated on anything that would advance military tech or make cities grow faster.

I finally got some sort of religion around 1950 AD from a traveling missionary.

Not a decisive win (won a time victory), but a win nontheless - so it CAN be done without religion.

 

[Heroes]

Actually, I think organized is an ideal trait for an all-out mil civ (Japan has the right trait combination here), as your military civics have high upkeep, the half-price CH's can be a life-saver to keep down maintenance costs on newly counquered cities, and needing less cottages to pay the bills means more workshops.

I guess the power of organized comes from high upkeep civics: police state (+25% military production, -50% war weariness, the ideal thing for warmonger) + vassalage (+2 XP to new units, + some free units, again ideal for warmonger) + caste system (for artists in conquered cities) + merchantilism + organzied religion. Clearly, these lead to war!

Some people say organized is bad because most of the good civics are cheap. Well, they are cheap if you like peace (free speech, free religion, etc.), but to make organized useful you probably have to be a warmonger.

 

[Arkanin]

I'm able to do pretty well on Emperor at this point. The power of this strategy isn't building a ton of settlers, necessarilly; it's having a ton of production in general and (ab)using that huge shot of production for an early game lead.

Personally, my 'worker chop' build usually looks like

Worker + Bronze-working -> Chop Settler -> send warrior, settler, colonize (if sufficiently large and I think I am safe) -> chop another worker -> send second worker to start chopping a settler in city 2, chop archer / warrior in city 1, as soon as I have a third city, I start chopping stonehenge in it (depending on if I can get it or not), then chop a fourth settler in my first city while I build military units manually in my second one and let it grow.

I've come to the conclusion that properly abusing forest chopping is essentially mandatory if you want to have a good start to the game. It's also mandatory for early wonder production.

 

[GreenMonkey]

Why bother creating a worker first, if you're not going to be able to have him do anything once he's created? You say you didn't even start researching wheel and bronze working untill after he was already created, so what's he doing all that time, building mines?

A yes, typo, fixed. Meant warrior.

Great game. Size 17 capital produces Grendadiers in 1-2 turns

 

[Harv72b]

I'll give this strategy a try in my next game. Thanks!

I'm just curious, though...could this finally be a reason to try one of the Indian civs? Those fast workers will cut 1 turn off the time it takes for each chop...?

 

[abj9562]

IMHO oin noble it was fine. On Monarch sort of OK, On Emperor you couldn't pay me to chop a forest except on key mining locations.

 

[fightcancer]

Personally I haven't found the worker chop rush works that well. You get more cities but get behind on other things.

Like what??

I'd really like to know what kind of scores you're getting with your strategy.

 

[Harv72b]

Just wanted to update, I tried this strategy (worker first, rush/chop my way to 4 cities), and it worked like a charm. Playing a standard noble game on a normal-sized archipelego as Catherine, the advantage I wound up with from the quick expansion was staggering. I started on a medium-sized continent within spitting distance of the Americans...no problem, I have a slight technology lead but a HUGE production advantage against them, so 550 AD rolls around and I invade, taking their last city in 810 AD. From there it was just cruising...I enjoyed a points lead of over 1,000 for most of the game, stressed research techs in the middle ages, and quickly ran over the remaining AIs & won by space race in 1966. Final raw score was 4,000 even (adjusted it was 7 thousand something--Henry VIII).

BTW, my starting location pretty much reeked in this game. On a penninsula on the northern edge of the continent, a couple hills, maybe 8 tiles of forest, a few plains, and the rest was all desert. I had 1 cow, 1 wheat, and a clam near my starting point (along with 3 spices), and that was it. But the rapid expansion put me within range of the only copper source on the continent (on another penninsula just above the American's start point, which I cut him off from). Had I gone with a more leisurely early expansion, the Americans would've wound up with the copper and the only iron source (which they did end up with...for about 15 turns ).

I'll try it again with slightly tougher settings.

EDIT: the one downside was that my capital pretty much wound up sucking, as I had to chop all the forests in order to get those settlers out fast enough. Since there was no river nearby and actually just the one hill (which I settled on), Moscow had pretty much nil for production the entire game. No worries, though--Washington turned out to be a nice little town.

 

[GreenMonkey]

Like what??

I'd really like to know what kind of scores you're getting with your strategy.

Well, I'm not done with my game yet But I got in the lead early and stayed in the lead. Last I saw I was 200-400+ pts above the 2nd place civ.

You get behind for the same reasons mentioned here. No early religions. Primary city growth stalled (which slows down research). 2 early cities helps in some ways, but then again, it also drags your economy down with the extra upkeep.

PS And this is all without a source of iron. No Cho-Ku-whatever dudes for me. I'm working on getting a source of iron and coal from the Mongols.

 

[khumak]

IMO worker first is almost always better even if you don't plan to chop forests. A size 1 city takes a long time to build a settler. A size 3 or 4 city with improvements produces settlers much faster as well as increasing your research speed.

You're going to need some warriors to protect your settlers and workers from animals and barbarians anyway so may as well build them first and allow your city to grow while you send the warriors out scouting.

My early economy can't support more than about 12 cities anyway so as long as I can build enough cities to hit my "maintenance cap" where I still have a reasonable research rate I don't see a reason to build any faster. I don't like my research slider going below about 60%.

I also tend to like prebuilding roads to my future city sites so even my 12th city only takes a few turns for my settler to run down the road and build. Plus my religion spreads faster that way. I also STRONGLY favor coastal cities. They make MUCH more money due to trade than inland cities. I'll build inland to get special resources I need but other than that I'll take a tundra city on the coast before a grassland/plains city inland.

 

[Mujadaddy]

I don't like my research slider going below about 60%.

SIXTY?? I don't like seeing it at EIGHTY for more than a few turns ...

 

[karmina]

IMHO oin noble it was fine. On Monarch sort of OK, On Emperor you couldn't pay me to chop a forest except on key mining locations.

Why? I just won my first emperor game (Cath.,continents,duel size) by nonstop chopping in 500BC, score 64k. Actually this strategy is much more useful on higher difficulties, due to the extreme unhappiness: only 2 happy faces without luxuries, add one for military and one for palace. So your cities can't grow early anyway, especially if you pop rush occasionally.

Start with worker & bronze working immediately if you got a value-4 tile; otherwise wait until size 2. Chop settler, chop warrior, chop 2nd worker (for improvements), chop 2nd settler. I was forced to build my 2nd city one tile closer to the capital than I planned, because of animals. However, with some luck 1-2 warriors *are* able to hold off the barb archers (use forest mountains), even on emperor when they appear about turn 10-20.

I got horses in my game, so I directly went for mounted archers (after getting the 3 improvement techs of course). 4 cities, built 2 or 3 more workers, then chopped and pop-rushed barracks & mounted archers until the end.

Money is an issue with 4 early cities (tech 40-60%), but building huts at rivers helps, especially for financial Russia. After you conquer the first AI city all your financial problems are solved - I got some 180gp

BTW, the AI founds new cities at the SAME SPEED on emperor!

 

[kalder]

@karmina
Nice report, thanks.


However, I'd like to say that a Duel game isn't great evidence of the quality of this strategy, as Conquest victory is by far the easiest.
I think that the chop-growth/expansion (call it anyway you want) rather than a strategy is way way to speed-up a lot of good different strats in Civ 4 (but maybe not all strategies). It must not be confused with the concept of chop-rushing military...
Of course, the chop/expansion technique can't work in some special situations (e.g. very small islands, no forests) and in other may need significant modifications (e.g.: lots of barbs around, lots of other civs around you and therefore few land to claim, aggressive civ declaring early war).
Anyway, in a "standard world" (e.g. normal size, normally forested, with fair amount of land for each civ to expand) it seems to be very effective. Obviously, it's still up to you to choose which strategy (i.e. which victory you want to achieve and how you want to reach it) you will follows with the help of the chop/expansion technique.

 

[Alexfrog]

I'm wondering what people think of this strategy on Immortal difficulty?

I'm finding it weaker to found the 2nd/3rd cities very early because their upkeep is higher and the barbarians come earlier and are more of a problem.

But it works incredibly well on monarch and below, thats for sure.

 

[mikester]

I tried this strategy last night with the Russians (creative, financial) and it worked great on Noble. I'm a Civ4 newb but I'm no stranger to strategy games, and moved up to Noble after my first couple of games. But I would always start off strong and by early AD period I would be way behind the AI.

With this strategy, things worked out much better. I had a good map, so that helped. My capitol was on a peninsula and right next to a river, ocean, horses, and corn (sweet!). I explored and found there was only 1 other civ on my island, so my second settler I planted near a copper mine right near his border. My third settler got killed by wolves, so I thought it might be over, but I decided to play on because the starting location had been so good. I created another settler and found a great location right near the other civ's border that would have left him with no room to expand. Well, he ends up settling a city in that same area 1 turn before me (damn those wolves!). So I create my city right between his main border and his new city, and with the Creative attribute my borders expanded quickly and completely cut him off.

So I decided to be a real pain and built 2 more cites around his isolated settlement, hoping to surround him and throw the city into revolt. As soon as I completed the last city to surround his, he declared war on me. But since I was already up 5 cities to 3, I had a production advantage and was able to hang in there and easily took over his isolated city.

So now it is around 175 BC, I have my units gathered outside his 2 remaining cities, and I'm just a few turns away from completing construction. Once I get a few catapults, his cities are toast and the whole island will be mine. Then I can start spreading Hinduism around the world (managed to get a GP prophet and build a shrine) and between that and the economic boost I get from the financial trait, it should be smooth sailing.

Man, I love this game!

 

[ÆnigmÆffect]

I tried this strategy also, and haven't fully made up my mind about it.

I played a Prince game, small pangaea map, but with 6 or 7 opponents, going for conquest. I got Persia.

I got 4 cities total fairly quickly (after checking the replay at the end of the game, I had my 4th city shortly after the AI got their 2nd). While it was important for me to grab land quickly (I met 3 civs within the first 10 or so turns), my economy was crap. My tech slider hit 60% or perhaps lower to stay even in gold, and I actually fell behind in tech after a while (I got a 5th city shortly after, and that hurt economy more). However, I quite locked the AI in place, and everyone was really nice, and didn't really attack me. I ended up with a good army and started taking over a close neighbour (since they had no decent resources, since I took them with the early expansion). And, annoyingly, getting their cities tanked my economy even more...

Nonetheless, the pure gp gain from capturing cities kept me going. Eventually, I won in the 1500s (I prolly could've done it earlier). Oh, I had to keep my slider at 40% to stay positive in gpt by this point, but this is because I had such a large number of cities in a fairly short time.

So, I'm trying to figure out whether it's really situational, or rather an "always use" type strategy.

I tried this strat again on an old game (a 4000bc save that, the first time around, I won via culture), and strangely, it seemed the AI kept up with my expansion rate somewhat. And not getting early religions early probably would've hurt my culture later on (I just played a few turns to check the strat out).

So, conclusion? Inconclusive. Seems to be pretty powerful (it originally felt overpowered, since I grabbed so much land on the small map), as long as you have some way to keep the economy going (eg. war).