mabraham
Deity
I am unclear here a bit. I have tested a bit both ways, and I think it comes down to how fast we need to settle off the island. If there are better sites off island, then Sailing 1st makes sense for the early galleys as much as for the Lighthouse. But if we can live with just 2 cities for a bit, the early Granary makes our whipping dramatically more efficient. I think if there is land north, which could create a stronger #2 city, then I would lean to Pottery 1st. Sailing 1st if we have to settle #2 east where we have been testing.
Another factor suggesting early Sailing is putting a mine on the off-island GH. IMO it is the second-highest worker priority after the corn farm. The corn farm adds 2, that mine adds 2/turn to our output. Mining the PFH adds only 1. Road on the corn adds 1 which is sometimes 1. Road also on the PFH gets the 3E city up a turn faster. The early galley will also help scouting.
This is going to sound like heresy, but the granary seems too good to build. If we run a 6/3 cycle with granary, we need 20+21+23 food to regrow to size 6. At size 4 we have 14 excess food. So regrowth will take about 5 turns. At size 6 working four food resources and two mines, we produce a settler in 8 turns. We want to put on a settler for 3 turns before whipping it with max overflow. So sometimes we might have to delay a turn whipping. Alternatively we could grow and run an 8/4 cycle, preferably using < 14 overflow hammers onto a settler for the 4-pop whip. Or we could donate two of those food sources to the second city, which I think is best.
I think planning to build an early granary in the capital makes sense only if there's a second city sharing the tiles, and we know that the 90 delay is not critical (e.g. no AI pressure on our available land)
That 90 is our chunkiest early build apart from possible wonders.
The standard bulb path to Astro requires 4 GS's....bulbing Machinery/Optics/Astro(2). We need to research Alphabet/Calendar/Compass and avoid Meditation/Civil Service.
So how do you generate those GS's?
The Great Library gives 2 free scientists + 2 assigned + NE nets 26 GPP/t. 24 of 26 are GS points....we need 150/300/450/600 for a total of 1500 points which is 58 turns AFTER all of the above is in place. We know that we will actually be generating some GPP BEFORE all is in place, we just don't know exactly how much. So how fast could we actually generate 4 GS's?
OK, that can certainly do the job. However it'll need our first off-island city to be capable of a large pile of pretty fast - that's 900 of wonders, plus granary and library (at least). We may be lucky and have marble. Those need to be delivered somewhat later in the game than (say) the 750 on the Pyramids, but they sound like broadly comparable investments to me. In the GL+NE scenario, we also built the Colossus somewhere, so that's 1275 all up. Recall also that I made the point earlier that the Colossus strategy was predicated on there being not a great deal of land suitable for Caste workshops. If that's generally true apart from this magic site, if we were running Caste, this GL+NE site is still going to produce a pile of for useful stuff - like the start of a navy.
What if we don't NEED Astronomy? How much faster could we move if it was researched even if all the AI's were galley accessible? Galleons move twice as far and carry 50% more, seems like a decided advantage on the surface at least.
True, those are serious (or even necessary) advantages. Circumnavigating reduces the marginal gain in movement points, but we'd take both if we could get them cheaply enough...
The GE adds 150 points to our GPP total IF we want to bulb to Astro also. Not a huge deal, but a definite delay if Astro is required. Astronomy is also very effective for trading overseas obviously, which is something to consider. On the downside, it negates the effect of The Collossus.
... and negates our +1 monuments.