Worker steal: Easier than ever before

[alpaca]

Most of you have probably noticed it already: When you capture a worker from an enemy, it's now moved one tile toward the direction of your enemy's border.

This makes it easier than ever before to get those choice, tender worker-slaves on Deity or Immortal, where the AI starts with some. On Deity, you can sometimes even capture two workers at once if you're lucky, although it will often cost you your starting warrior. Attached is a screenshot to highlight this.

 

[bpheater]

Badass. Gracias for the update.

 

[Lessa]

Except when it shunts them directly next to a barbarian! Which was how I found out about the change.

 

[kamex]

One tile towards the enemies borders? Don't you mean your own borders (if it makes it easier)?

 

[Martin Alvito]

Scouts are absolutely amazing at Worker theft now. Unless you're planning on a triple Warrior build to paste a city-state next door, you want to build a Scout. It can steal on rough terrain and run for safety in the same turn.

If you send both units, you can sometimes ZOC a safe double steal. I was able to execute one against Askia recently, and he let me buy peace very cheaply about twenty turns later. Don't expect that sort of treatment from early warmongers like Monty and Alex.

 

[bobshiznit]

I'm loving it

 

[Monthar]

I was loving this myself too.

 

[EscapedGoat]

In my current deity game i stole 3 workers from 2 AIs, 1 from a city state and freed a Japanese one which i decided to keep for myself - all before turn 30. That's a pretty crazy head start, and some decent ICS'ing actually put me ahead of the AI on score (MOAR cities + MOAR workers = MOAR win!)

I may be wrong, but I think this change affects barbarians as well as the player - i seemed to find a lot of workers in barb camps, which makes sense if barbs get the same "bonus". A worker steal now basically creates 2 targets, which is a lot harder for the AI to handle than 1 target.

What I don't like about the whole worker steal thing is that it basically makes building workers extremely suboptimal. For the price of one worker (70 hammers) i can build 3 scouts (75 hammers), and those 3 scouts can steal 1 city state worker (no risk) and with allmost 100% certainty bag minimum 1 worker from 2 different AIs.

The great thing is that there is no risk - the AI cannot mount a decent counterattack that early and will most certainly sue for peace a little later. If he does manage to assemble a rag-tag invasion force of archers and warriors, they will be cut down by the new and improved cities. Archer + city + rush bought city wall in case of emergency = that city is not going to change hands for a while.

 

[alpaca]

One tile towards the enemies borders? Don't you mean your own borders (if it makes it easier)?

Well if it's inside enemy territory, it's booted in the direction of the border, away from the city. I think what actually happens is that the game selects the "safest" position and puts the worker there, so it tries avoiding enemy units and such.

In my current deity game i stole 3 workers from 2 AIs, 1 from a city state and freed a Japanese one which i decided to keep for myself - all before turn 30. That's a pretty crazy head start, and some decent ICS'ing actually put me ahead of the AI on score (MOAR cities + MOAR workers = MOAR win!)

I may be wrong, but I think this change affects barbarians as well as the player - i seemed to find a lot of workers in barb camps, which makes sense if barbs get the same "bonus". A worker steal now basically creates 2 targets, which is a lot harder for the AI to handle than 1 target.

What I don't like about the whole worker steal thing is that it basically makes building workers extremely suboptimal. For the price of one worker (70 hammers) i can build 3 scouts (75 hammers), and those 3 scouts can steal 1 city state worker (no risk) and with allmost 100% certainty bag minimum 1 worker from 2 different AIs.

The great thing is that there is no risk - the AI cannot mount a decent counterattack that early and will most certainly sue for peace a little later. If he does manage to assemble a rag-tag invasion force of archers and warriors, they will be cut down by the new and improved cities. Archer + city + rush bought city wall in case of emergency = that city is not going to change hands for a while.

Yeah I hate the worker stealing from a game design point of view. In fact, when I'm not trying to play for a certain goal I avoid it entirely.

 

[avl8]

Thats pretty good boost for scouts!

Do barbarians also get this movement bonus if they steal worker/settler from AI?

 

[alpaca]

Thats pretty good boost for scouts!

Do barbarians also get this movement bonus if they steal worker/settler from AI?

Well they do get it when they steal from me so I guess yes.

 

[Sneaks]

I have to say, this has caused me to see a LOT more unguarded barb workers and settlers just moseying around.

 

[swordspider]

If you're not taking a worker from a city-state in a multiplayer game, you're just not playing right. You get peace the same turn, so your unit is fine and then the city state calms down over the next 30 turns back to nuetral. Just attack one with similar resources.

 

[neilkaz]

Playing Immortal prepatch, I only made 1 worker during my last several games and captured all the rest from AI's. Now this is even easier.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[MykC]

I stopped trying to steal workers along time ago, but now that you mention that I can build 3 scouts for 1 workers, I'm convinced that stealing workers it the right thing to do now.

 

[alpaca]

This thread was made to point out how ridiculous worker stealing is as a strategy when compared to building them yourself. You can basically just get something like 70 free production. Getting very early victories might actually be easier on Deity than on a middling difficulty level because the AI usually still doesn't attack you, but you can get free workers very early and it almost always has enough money for RAs.

Personally, I would like worker stealing to be removed. Or better still, replace workers with an abstract system like in Call to Power.

 

[Sneaks]

This thread was made to point out how ridiculous worker stealing is as a strategy when compared to building them yourself. You can basically just get something like 70 free production. Getting very early victories might actually be easier on Deity than on a middling difficulty level because the AI usually still doesn't attack you, but you can get free workers very early and it almost always has enough money for RAs.

Personally, I would like worker stealing to be removed. Or better still, replace workers with an abstract system like in Call to Power.

Perhaps another addition to PWM? Workers/settlers die when capped instead of change control?

 

[alpaca]

Perhaps another addition to PWM? Workers/settlers die when capped instead of change control?

Ya, when it works again

 

[Beef Hammer]

It's pretty annoying to say the least, I hope it's a bug and is going to be fixed.

 

[Monthar]

Perhaps another addition to PWM? Workers/settlers die when capped instead of change control?

Or just reduce the cost of workers to be comparable to the warrior and scout. If the cost of workers is cut in half, that'd make them slightly cheaper than warriors, but more expensive than scouts. Then it'd be just as good to build your first worker(s) as it'd be to steal them. Since you'd then be more inclined to build your workers instead of stealing them, the down side would be a weaker military.

The other benefit of reducing this cost, is if you did steal workers, it'd be much easier for the AI to replace them. Thus you wouldn't hurt the AI as much with the theft.

Current costs
Worker 70
Warrior 40
Scout 25

Proposed change
Worker 35