Sila before samatha, samatha before vipassana according to AN 11.1-3?
As I explained in "Is samatha meditation more suited to lay people than vipassana?", the factors of "being good", "feeling good", "calming down", "understanding", and "liberation" are designed to support each other.

In Mahayana, it is generally understood that the exact path depends on the student's propensity. 

People of intellectual type are better suited for "understanding"-first paths.

Simple people caught up in the drama of life, are better suited for "calming down"-first paths.

For most people in between these theoretical extremes, there is a mixture of "understanding" and "calming down" developed in tandem, with slightly more accent on one or the other, depending on exact situation.

For people of extremely brilliant intuition, there's the fourth path of cutting through directly to suchness. Again in real life these "extremely bright" students do not exist. There is usually some combination of study and practice required to remove all doubts.

The general principle here is that the coarsest / biggest / most obvious obstacles should be removed first. I think it was Thrangu Rinpoche who went as far as to say that we should work on them one at a time, completely focusing on the worst mental/emotional/behavioral issue until it's resolved, before moving on to next.