Hi again, and sorry it's been several days since my last post. Too many days considering we're about to start playing, but I'm having a lot to do IRL at the moment.
Keith asked some questions that I'll give comments to:
Opening Strategy:
1. We need to figure out what the expert play is, quick expansion (REX)? Exploration? Stonehenge for city border pops and extra happy face?? Religion? Oracle for free tech? We should leave no stone unturned.
The way I see it, if you want a "HOF level start", there is two paths to go. Either a) you rush a neighbour early (f.ex. with Axemen), or b) you expand fast and go for a tech lead. Personally I mostly do b), and in this setting, a) seems difficult to pull off anyway.
My suggestion is b). If going for b), I have a couple of thought I want to share. The first one concerns settling in place. On an Archi type map, it is much more important to settle other islands that reserving room for another city on our starting island. Remember that trade routes get a "+100% other continent bonus". On the standard Archipelago map, every island counts as it's own continent, which means we want to settle different island. Trade routes will start at +2 with own cities, and at +3 with foreign cities. It is possible that "other continent" could mean something different in a user-changed map, that I don't now. Maybe we should test that just to be sure.
To me it is not important to fit another city on our starting island. What counts is how fast we can expand beyond our starting island.
Also, if going for b), I think we should go for a tech lead. On Emperor this means an early Alphabet. How early is up to us to figure out. If the choice was up to me, I would even skip BW and simply trade for it instead. As I see it, the usefullness of BW on a map like this, is not Copper/Axes, but Slavery, which we will use obviously. But we have to calculate the production gain of Slavery versus the amount of time it sets back Alphabet. Of course, if going for Alphabet before BW, then BW is (one of) the first techs we will trade for, at which point we will switch to Slavery. To me the question about skipping BW or not boils down to how fast we can get to Alphabet and meet the AI. I've played many successfull Archi games skipping BW (and even Sailing), but this seems like a "new" idea in this thread.
Of course, if it turns out we need Optics to meet our rival AIs, then an early Alphabet is not the right choice. If the map is a modified Archi map (giving the AIs more land) with Tiny islands (would fit what we see), then it is usually possible to navigate without Optics. In any case, Alphabet leads to Currency, which we want anyway due to favorable Trade routes.
2. Is there a 'killer wonder' we should get? It is Emperor level so we should be able to get a wonder or two if we want.
Stonehenge is not bad, but I wouldn't go for it early. Early it is more important for us to expand, imo. After all, apart for +1 happy in our capital, the main use of Stonehenge is combined with other cities. Of course, the AI might prioritize it and take it from us, but it's not a big loss.
Oracle is always nice if we can get something good for it, but not something I would plan from the get go. It depends too much how the game unfolds.
Colossus is probably a good choice, but to say for sure, we need to see more of surrounding area.
Great Library, Hanging Gardens and other standard wonders are things we should come back to.
3. Is being first to circumnavigate the world a game breaker? One extra ship movement is huge!
Not a game breaker, so I wouldn't normally send out my first WB (early growth is more important), but we do need some WBs exploring.
4. Besides a beeline to Astronomy, what techs do we need to research?
My suggestion (with or without Sailing/BW or both):
Fishing - Mining - (BW) - Sailing - Pottery - Writing - Alphabet - (Mathematics) - Currency
This assumes settling in place or on PH and building Worker first and then WB.
5. I hope you all agree that we don't want to build anything that is not essential - always the minimum that will work. Why have six, when two will do?
Which is why I would not build Barracks or Warriors early. I don't see any early wars coming, and we want to save our production and unit upkeep for civilian units (WBs, Workers, Settlers) early.