I'm fine with that approach as long as we will be able to stay at a 100% Science Rate until Animal Husbandry is completely learned. If we can't do that, then we might as well take a turn of 0% Science Rate now.
Will we gain any bonus Flasks for the fact that Toku knows Animal Husbandry?
I don't have Civ 4 access so I'm a bit lost as to what that means, since I'm not sure what our current City Size and build item are... are we already building a Settler? If not, is the idea to grow ASAP but to put as many grains of Food as possible into Hammers when we do grow? Are you even saying that you might delay growth by a turn just to get more Hammers?
Normally, I am not a fan of this type of approach since moving forward usually limits your options more than it opens them up. That said, since no one else wanted to go for Judaism via learning Polytheism, and since you guys seem to be heavily leaning toward settling the Corn in favour of the Deer for the Gold City, I'm okay with skipping Hunting.
If we're skipping both Polytheism and Hunting, then Animal Husbandry seems like a good bet for our next tech.
Now it just sounds like you are mocking me!
I admit that it does matter more when you're parking a spawn-buster than walking around, but all else being equal, you might as well try and get those free Hammers.
It's the cases where it's not equal--i.e. if you may need to defend from a Barb and you have the choice of standing on a Hills square next to a Forest versus on a Grassland that is not next to a Forest--where I defer to the "what makes sense to do ignoring Forest growth chances" line of thinking and only when the options are otherwise equal will I really push for trying to increase our Forest growth chances.
We'll be able to complete AH on T32, a turn early, so the settler will have moved 2t closer to the gold, but will still be able to go anywhere. So I said MM max hammers, because we
could exchange a coin for a hammer for the next 2-3t until the corn is finished. That wouldn't help with anything, so I think the 2-3 hammers might be more useful at this point. The short answer is, no, we don't gain a beaker from Toku knowing AH. [With 1 AI out of 10 original players, we only gain beakers on 20% techs at certain base-beakers (8, 13, 17, 18, ...).] We will gain a beaker on Hunting and TW when we start working the gold or gems tile (2 AIs knowing tech, base-beakers > 15).
Delhi has just grown to pop2 and we'll start building a settler eta = T30, eta gems1N or gold1E = T33, eta gold1N = T34.
Your idea of testing where Toku might settle next is a good one, but I don't think there's anyone who wants to do it. With some certainty about that, we could delay Gold till ~T43. What's at stake is some amount of beakers, because Gems will probably have a cpt lower maintenance and the gems mine could be worked starting 2-3 sooner. But there are some trade-offs.
* Building Gold sooner fogbusts better because the Gems area will be largely fogbusted by our border expansion in 3t. I'd like to avoid barbs spawning if at all possible. A barb archer can prove costly in hammers spent on warriors at this point. They'll start spawning when 4 more cities get settled, worldwide.
* Gold gives certainty that we get that site.
* Gold sooner means we could build SH at a site where the 100
expansion will be very useful against both Toku expansion and barbs.
* Gold1E will later get corn and will be able to work a lot of hammers, so it would nicely prebuild GW for failed gold. This alone may pay back the cost of beakers lost from not Gems first.
* Both cities can build a fogbuster in 5t, but Gold builds it where closer to where we need it.
* Gold first argues for AH first, exposing any horses. TW next speeds up Gems first by 1t and gets it connected early for possible autospread and TRs. TW doesn't help Gold get settled sooner but should be done by the time the worker is available to connect Delhi.
* AH first gives the worker time to 6/7ths finish the fp farm, with the last turn delaying the gold mine by 1t. TW first leaves the fp farm 3/7ths complete indefinitely in favor of roading to connect Gems.
So it's a juggling act, deciding what's best. My inclination is to go for failed gold aggressively while REXing. bbp and perhaps others strongly want to stake our claim against Toku. So the ideal decision seems to be GOld first. Since we can delay the start of hunting for 3t, we can wait for border expansion to see if we'd prefer to settle G1N or G1E.
