If there's one aspect of the game that can be equally exciting and frustrating, it's planning your initial city-states. Sometimes I discover a vast floodplains valley with abundant resources. Sometimes, often enough for me to remember, it's a water tundra start that requires a snow path to find the other civs. Anyway, I usually eyeball it, and except for occasional misses (horse, iron, etc) it works out. This time, however, I am genuinely perplexed.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f180/LordPaul256/DotMap.jpg

Quick question, what do you guys use to create those dot map pictures of individual BFC dots with different colors? Eyeballing it requires me to keep a pretty firm picture in my head.

As you can see from the map, I'm playing Hannibal on a prince level Terra map. Peter the great is across that little isthmus to the top right. My first instinct is to place a city up there to cut him off to whatever land I got here. A coastal start is ideal, because our UB is the Cothon. The best I can see is the hill two left of the rice. I'd get banana & rice that way, though both require a border pop. I want those gems, though, and that leads to the question of the third city.

I need that stone to the left of Carthage. I want to try a Great Engineer strategy this game, and plan to chop rush the Pyramids after the first two cities, allowing the other two to take over expansion/military. I'm thinking 4 tiles left of Carthage. The stone would need a border pop, but rice & cows right away would be very helpful for a third city.

Now, if I place those two cities, how am I going to get the gold or the gems?

If my second city is just 4 north of Carthage, I could close off the isthmus, but would have one useless coastal tile & no Cothon. I think that blank tile two right of the bananas is might be a metal, but I'm not betting on it. The blank tile 1 left of Carthage was a chop by my worker to knock out my 4th Warrior. I only wanted 2, but I was waiting for my city to grow & I just kept cranking them out.

As for the fourth city, and first not spawned by my capital, I want to get that gold & floodplains tile south-west. I'm not seeing really ideal down there, either.

So, any tips? Advice? I'd appreciate it.

I put down the game for several months and I was pleasantly surprised, upon returning, to find out that dotmap functionality was added to the BUFFY mod at some point. No more copying and pasting into MS Paint!

If you use BUFFY, the command is like alt-X to start dotmapping, select a color and then place the dot wherever you want. Hit alt-X again to turn off edit mode, or just right click somewhere outside the dotmap. While playing, ctrl-X toggles your dotmap on and off. It's really simple and makes this aspect of the game sooooo much simpler.

cow-rice-stone-river is the only good site visible.

Keep exploring.

I'd argue that gem/banana will be good post-calendar, though you wouldn't want to settle it before that unless not doing so loses it.

BUG or BUFFY will do it for you (Alt-X to draw the dot map and Ctrl-X to see it and make it disappear). You can download BUG or BUFFY from the following link:

for BUG
http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4bug/

for BUFFY (HOF Mod)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=329225

cow-rice-stone-river is the only good site visible.

Keep exploring.

Pretty much. I guess I have no choice. I'd still like to cut off that isthmus, if just so I can hold Peter the great off while I scout new land. He found me somewhere in turn 5-10, so I know he's close.

I'd argue that gem/banana will be good post-calendar, though you wouldn't want to settle it before that unless not doing so loses it.

That's my current instinct as well. Not having the Cothon will suck, but it will block off that isthmus, which I feel needs to be done.

I put down the game for several months and I was pleasantly surprised, upon returning, to find out that dotmap functionality was added to the BUFFY mod at some point. No more copying and pasting into MS Paint!

If you use BUFFY, the command is like alt-X to start dotmapping, select a color and then place the dot wherever you want. Hit alt-X again to turn off edit mode, or just right click somewhere outside the dotmap. While playing, ctrl-X toggles your dotmap on and off. It's really simple and makes this aspect of the game sooooo much simpler.

Thank you. That sounds exactly like what I need.

BUG or BUFFY will do it for you (Alt-X to draw the dot map and Ctrl-X to see it and make it disappear). You can download BUG or BUFFY from the following link:

for BUG
http://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4bug/

for BUFFY (HOF Mod)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=329225

And there it is. Awesome.

alt+x is by far my new favourite hotkey, and if you want to remove a dotmap, just right click to erase it.

cow-rice-stone-river is the only good site visible.

Whats wrong with gems-rice-mountain-banana ???

Whats wrong with gems-rice-mountain-banana ???

It needs IW+Calendar, it's not a good third city site.

Whats wrong with gems-rice-mountain-banana ???
To add on to what Kossin said taking the rice away from the rice-cow-stone spot really hurts it while this spot already has the grassland and Banana. Definitely explore the isthmus some more to see if there's any sure cut spots over there.

Agree with Dave.

Settle 1SE of cow and 1SW of rice on the corner of the river. You get fresh water and instant use of both those resources w/o a border pop. In addition 1 road (w of capitol) will connect the cities via river for a nice trade commerce boost immediately. Your capitol seems exceptionally food-poor. Did you settle in place?

Agree with Dave.

Settle 1SE of cow and 1SW of rice on the corner of the river. You get fresh water and instant use of both those resources w/o a border pop. In addition 1 road (w of capitol) will connect the cities via river for a nice trade commerce boost immediately. Your capitol seems exceptionally food-poor. Did you settle in place?

Hmmm? Yeah.

You can't see it unless your looking for it, but I have a warrior about to pop a hut under the transparent blue of the bottom panel, and he ended up with Iron Working on turn 21. The game was an absolute route (sp?) after that.

Got iron in the blank spot by the rice/bananas up top. Dot map fell into place.

It needs IW+Calendar, it's not a good third city site.

To add on to what Kossin said taking the rice away from the rice-cow-stone spot really hurts it while this spot already has the grassland and Banana. Definitely explore the isthmus some more to see if there's any sure cut spots over there.

I'm all for looking for better spots, but unless you like the look of the lone plains-cow or rice spots there's not much else to go for. Surely if you explore further afield you get more distance maintenance.

I agree with calender coming too late to be early, but ironworking seems doable early (hut-jam notwithstanding), and gems means bigger cities, which is the best way I know of to take the edge off maintenance buildup during the early game. I have cottaged bananas before now, they're quite good until calender comes along.

As a background I'm a 25% ish emperor, so my comments are more like questions as there seems to be a lot of immortality here.....

The job of your first 2 settlers are to bring in commerce and extra production (as well as copper/horses), in whatever order works best. The exception is mainly if you need to block land and that settling a jungle/desertish city will accomplish the job.
The gems+banana cities will come online too late to help so it's better to look for something else before (working riverside grasslands only really isn't that great).