Marble, Stone, Fish, Crab, Copper?
If we want Stone soon, we may need to settle on it, since our 2nd City site will preclude city sites adjacent to Stone; 1N + 2E of Stone appears to be water (thus no city site).
We need some WorldBuilder testing, but we may be able to settle adjacent to the stone. The usual 3-tile spacing rule does not always apply if the two cities are separated by water. But I am not 100% certain of the exact rules, so we will need to do some testing.
Note that the stone is on a grass hill -- this normally does not happen on non-edited maps (except maybe Fantasy lands). So it would not be a 3 hammer city center tile.
(Probably intentional.) We might want to settle on it anyway to avoid the worker turns to build a quarry, but we will have to run some tests.
Nearby Marble and Stone makes almost any Great Wonder with a Stone or Marble Hammer multiplier possible to build. Mining -> Bronze Working is even more enticing with the possibility of nearby Copper (presumably added by the scenario designer).
Fish and Crab ensures us all three Seafood. We shall be Healthy and a Harbor will provide more Health and Commerce.
The seafood health will be very welcome. The fish especially will be excellent for the second city, with its higher food value. This should accelerate our development plans, as the second city will now grow much faster. We will need to fit a WB into our build queues for it, but it will be well worth it.
Exploration?
We should try to send out a Work Boat ASAP, probably after 2 Work Boats for the first two Clam. A third Work Boat can explore north and/or south or spiral around our Capital?
We also need to decide when to send our circling globe pair of Work Boats seek out the AI's lands and beyond. I'd say early as responsibly possible for trading advantages.
I agree we need exploration early. In several of my test games I was able to get some local exploration around the capital with the third WB, as I did not actually need the third clam tile for an extra 5-7 turns. This depends on build orders of course, but even a few extra turns can be enough for the WB to circle an island.
For the circumnavigation WBs, as early as we can spare them is best. This will probably have to be after 3 WBs (2 for capital, one for second city) and maybe even 4 WBs (third clam at capital). More testing needed.
Technology path:
After Fishing, Pottery looks good with all the discounts and that leads to Writing, but ...
Mining -> Bronze Working seems to be the obvious next two Technologies, since we need Mines, Chopping and Slavery plus Copper would be a nice boost. Pottery could follow to build our whipping Granary, usually my first target for the whip, since it allows our Population to grow back nearly twice as fast. Following by Sailing, Mysticism, and maybe Writing. Are there other Technologies we should consider, like Masonry for The Pyramids; it would be tough to beat the AI even without Stone, but might be worth testing.
Our tech path definitely needs some thought. I favor Mining/BW after Fishing, as we will need the whip to build anything large -- galleys, granaries, etc. Whipping is also very useful for early improvements at the second city -- a monument (needed to pop borders for the fish) and lighthouse can be 1-pop whipped quickly, with plenty of time for the whip anger to wear off as the city grows. Monument in the second city means Mysticism fairly early, plus we can not leave the Oracle too late.
EDIT: We probably should focus on getting Marble connected (Masonry). I would favor settling on Marble (third city) for instant connection and that city could at least share the Capital's Clam for growth. We could build The Oracle so much that way in our second city.
I am skeptical that we can get a third city down on the marble in time to help with the Oracle. We would need a galley plus a second settler, which is quite a lot of hammers. Plus we would need Masonry for the marble itself, even if we settle on it.
Precise whipping?
We can whip Settlers with with just 1-2 turns of initial building, 3 Pop whip (3 x 45H = 135H). With a Granary, how long does it take to regrow to Population 6? Do we grow to Population 8 (beyond Happiness Cap) to 4 Pop whip and get up to 44H overflow into the next build. It is even possible to use whipping overflow to quickly build Great Wonders like The Colossus or even The Pyramids with Stone connected. Something to think about. Haphazard whipping will not do; we need very precise and measured whipping and probably build swapping with a Great Wonder to win 1st place.
I agree that carefully planned whipping will be needed to control overflow. As you noted, using overflow allows whipping to contribute to wonder production without the usual penalty. But we need to watch our happy cap carefully -- so far we have not seen any happiness resources. Our charismatic monuments will help, but hopefully we can find some luxuries somewhere.
More game testing?
haphazard1, can you please update your test game with the new real game data? We need to consider the new possibilities and maybe do some more game testing.
I will try to update the test map tomorrow. The additional information adds a lot of possibilities to our planning.
Maybe the civs which would have Hunting anyway get an archer and a scout? Need to check this against the test save, see what units the AIs all started with. But it looks like maybe the map-maker changed the AI's starting units?
