Looking at the terrain it looks like PH will get 1 more grass hill, which would make it a substantially better production site than SIP.
By that line of reasoning, settling on the Corn is an even more superior choice, since it gets access to the same 2 Grassland Hills squares plus an additional Plains Hills square.
In addition, one of the advantages SIP has is the early second city, however as that would have to share tiles with the capital it would reduce it's advantage in food, and make the lack of production there worse.
I don't see why settling in-place's PH can't "count" as a Hills square, but whatever, I'll play along and will pretend that only GH squares are good squares.
SIP gives us 3E, which actually gives us an equal number of Grassland Hills squares as PH. PH can one-up SIP by settling on the western island for the Clam and GH that PH missed, but it might be that there is no hidden Fish for that City, making that western island only good for a Clam plus a GH. Settling in-place "uses up" those two good squares and thus gives us more freedom to settle elsewhere.
Given the excess Food that we have access to though, I don't see why a PH can't "count" as much as a GH can. Or maybe, as Mitchum seemed to guess, you are suggesting that there is another square visible in the fog?
minor note: gold info is missing in your previous table (important because many saves will have to mint a turn or two to complete writing, so they can't be compared directly)
I ran Binary Research and never had to run more than a turn at 0% Science in my tests. So, the amount of Gold left-over was always a negligible amount, valued at less than one turn of 100% Gold slider. I'd hope that the other tests were similarly exectued.
Resource Guessing Game
THen PH has the advantage of potential additional sea food. By going SIP we close this door. I am more undecided than ever.
Okay, let's play that Resource-guessing game.
Let's say that the two hidden squares contain two Fish Resources. Then what will happen? Well, we'll have a capital with 5 Food Resources and 2 Grassland Hills squares... two Hills squares that are great when you're low on Food but not as amazing when you have a huge Food surplus.
What will probably end up happening is that we'll play the opening in a similar way, except that we'll net 2 Fish instead of 2 Clam Resources. We'll probably ignore the Clam Resources for a long time. We're already hitting Happiness + whipping caps with 2 netted Clams (even with SIP netting only 2 Clams), so netting 2 Fish would certainly give us the same problem.
So, what have we gained?
Well, those Fish will be Coastal, which is rare, but okay, it's magical, so just accept this magical gift!
Therefore, the Commerce output will be the same.
The difference will be:
PH has +1f.
SIP: 2f1h+1f3h+4h = 3f8h
PH: 2f2h+1f3h+1f3h = 4f8h
So, +1 Food from settling on the PH. Then we'll get +1 Food from each of the Fish.
So, we've gained +3 Food in a City that is already way-over-Fooded.
Yes, the extra Food = more production, blah blah, but really is too much of a good thing really a bad thing?
I am going to claim that if there are 2 Fish Resources there, then DynamicSpirit would have "balanced" them for teams that settled in-place or on the Corn by putting another island to the north. He probably even made it so that this island "forces" you to settle there anyway, like by giving us two Desert Hills Gold Resources there. Even if PH "uses up" those Fish, you'll probably end up giving away those Fish to the Gold City in the long run anyway.
Now, let's play this game again, because it's fun.
What if, instead of 2 Fish, there is one more Clam. Now we've got the same location as SIP except we get "+1 Food" from settling on the PH. Again, it's a net gain, but it gains us more Food, the one input that we have a lot of already anyway. It's nice, but not really game-breaking.
Roll the dice again.
This time, 3E gets 4 Fish and a Grassland Gem Resource.
Aren't you glad that you settled in-place over settling on the PH?
Roll the dice once more.
All hidden squares are barren (empty of Resources) for PH, 3E, and the western island settling.
PH is still a decent location. The western island might not even get settled, though, at least not for a long time, so we will "waste" the GH and Clam over there. Not the end of the world, since we apparently found a better City location than one which gives us 1 Clam plus 1 GH.
SIP is still a decent location. 3E still works as a nice early supporting City and can generate some of our Great People after we get a Library.
Say that we decide where to settle... then what?
Okay, let me take a different track. I think that we need to agree upon a multi-turn set medium-term plan.
I really don't want to play the game as a series of independent votes.
For example "we chose to settle on the PH" as a group, each for our own individual reasons.
Next, "we chose to build WB first," because we voted for this idea as a group.
Then, "we decided to send out WBs 2 and 3 for exploration, because exploration is important."
After that, "we built a Granary, because Granaries are great."
Somewhere down that path of decision-making, we'll find that had we been aware of some of these decisions a bit ahead of time, then we could have planned out a build order and tech path that would have matched it nicely. Instead, for example, we followed a build order that, say, assumed we would use some of early Work Boats for netting, but this assumption broke-down when we sent out our WBs for exploring. Then, we'll find ourselves faced with inefficient whipping of additional WBs or else having our chosen-test-run-path fall behind in its pace.
But, if we'd planned from the start that we'd wanted to make those decisions, we could have picked a test-run or made a new one that got us these extra build items (in this case, extra exploring WBs) as efficiently as possible, say, by using different whip-overflow timing.
That's why I DO NOT think that we'll be significantly moving the game forward by deciding where to settle. Is "Worker first" going to be the best choice for sure? I haven't seen anyone advocating in favour of a particular test run... so, the answer is "no, we'll just have limited our options but we still won't really be proceding beyond the first turn of founding our capital."
What I propose
Let's not just vote on settling location. It won't help. It will "get the game moving forwards," but only for up to 1 turn. Then we'll be stuck, but we will have limited our options.
I think that we should instead vote on a whole series of items at once and then use the results of that voting to decide how to execute the initial 100 Turns or so.
I don't think that I can come up with an exhaustive list of things that need to be decided upon, but let me start:
1. Explorer #1 does What?
We've seen LC come up with a neat plan for scouting around the nearby islands with a Work Boat. We've also heard people talk about how great it is to meet the AIs ASAP. So, which plan do you prefer? Shall we use our first explorer to:
a) Look at a maximum of 2 islands for a potential off-island settling location and then go and find the AIs
b) Follow LC's approach of exploring all of our nearby islands first and we can meet the AIs later
c) Let's meet the AIs ASAP. If our first explorer happens to find a decent off-island settling location, "good for it," but we will not really stop the boat and will try and meet the AIs ASAP
2. Explorer #1 comes When?
It's hard to quantify "when" in terms of turn numbers, but I think that we can subjectively quantify it in terms of Cities settled.
For example, if exploration is the number one priority in your books, then perhaps we should get explorer #1 built before building City 2. Maybe you prefer a more balanced approach with expansion.
a) Explorer #1 should be completed before building Settler 2 (i.e. the Settler for City 2)
b) Explorer #1 should be completed before building Settler 3
c) Explorer #1 can wait to be built until after building Settler 3 (pick this option if an early Explorer #1 is not a priority for you)
3. Explorer #2 comes When?
a) Explorer #2 should be completed before building Settler 2 (i.e. the Settler for City 2)
b) Explorer #2 should be completed before building Settler 3
c) Explorer #2 can wait to be built until after building Settler 3 (pick this option if an early Explorer #2 is not a priority for you)
4. A Library in the Capital comes When?
This point was only briefly raised, but why not quickly vote on it. If it turns out that the team secretly wants an early Library, we should be planning for it in our build orders now, right?
a) The capital should focus on building a Library before Settler 3 is built
b) The capital can build a Library sometime in the future
Feel free to add more items to the list.
If everyone is 100% agreed on a particular test run, then sure, let's forget all of this voting and follow that test run. Otherwise, I am not really convinced that picking a settling location without getting some sort of consensus of the other issues floating around is going to help us more than possibly hurt us.
