Okay that round went by surprisingly quickly.
woopdeedoo had already gotten a good number of our spawn-busting Warriors into position, so there wasn't much trouble with Barbs in the north.
In the south, however, we had a bit of a Barb threat to deal with. It looked like the Barb Warriors were "coming for us" and had thus decided to enter our Cultural Borders. I couldn't be certain, though.
So, I moved our St. Petersburg Warrior 1W onto the Grassland Forest. In this way:
1. If the Barb Warriors were going to enter our borders, they would either:
a) attack our Warrior that was defending a Forest
OR
b) Move to the barren Grassland square 1N of there (1NW of St. Petersburg), at which point we would have 2 Warriors (see that one Warrior will be completed in 2 turns in St. Petersburg), which would have given us the option of either attacking or defending using 2 Warriors
If the Barbs were not going to enter our borders:
2. In that case, the northern Barb Warrior might have moved 1N onto the Plains Stone square. We could have then had 2 Warriors closer to the Barb Warrior and could have "danced around" until we had 2 Warriors against 1 Barb Warrior.
As it was, the Barbs chose option 1. a), which gave us really good odds of winning the fight.
Incidentally, the second Barb Warrior also entered our borders and also suicided on that Grassland-Forest-defending Warrior of ours.
After those Barbs died, we pushed out some exploring Warriors to the SW, both to explore and to better spawn-bust the area as a preventative measure against too many future Barb units spawning in the area.
We had settled a City to the north of our capital but we hadn't sent a Worker there. So, I sent a Worker to the Pig. There aren't really any other squares that we can improve here other than putting Cottages on the Grassland squares. I would prefer to leave Forests on the Plains squares instead of putting Cottages on them.
At the end of the turnset, the Worker was 1NW of Novgorod. We will Chop that Forest, since it is in a decent location to encourage Forest regrowth after it is Chopped. To encourage this Forest to regrow, we will NOT build a Road 1NW of Novgorod... the square will simply be an empty Plains square after we Chop it, which gives us the best chances of having a Forest regrow there in the future.
After that 1NW Plains Forest is Chopped, we might as well put a Cottage on the Grassland Forest square NW + W of Novgorod. We could also then either put a Cottage on the Grassland Forest 1E of Novgorod or lay down a couple of Cottages 1SW of Novgorod or 1SW + S of Novgorod.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to get a couple of Farms in the area, but the only way I see us doing so is later chain-irrigating over top of a Cottage or over top of the Wine, so we may or may not do so... but that decision won't come up for a long time, until after we have learned Civil Service for chain-irrigating.
Notice, also, that there is a Warrior to the NW + N of Novgorod. It is only really spawn-busting 1 square that isn't covered by the Warrior to the NW of there, which is the square that ie 1E of the Grassland Jungle Dye. At some point, Novgorod will grow and we will want a Military Police unit in the City. At that point in time, we'll probably put that spawn-buster inside of Novgorod as a City defender and just leave 1 square to the north where it will be possible for a Barb unit to appear. It's such a small area that we won't worry too much about a Barb spawning there later. By that time, our Cities will be able to afford to easily slot in an Axeman in the off chance that a Barb unit does appear up there.
Okay, it's the end of the turnset already. We learned Pottery and Masonry and have begun work on The Great Lighthouse.
We also just finished work on a Galley, which is why we were working Hammer-based squarse instead of Food-based squares... I turned the City Governor back on so that we'd be working Food-based squares again just after taking that screenshot, for the purpose of building Settlers more efficiently.
I loaded a Warrior onto that Galley which can unload on the island to the south next turn. Next, the Galley can return to pickup the Scout that you can see is S + S of Novgorod. The Scout will pop the Hut on the island to the south. Yaaa, fun for you, enjoy!
I figure that with 1 Warrior and 1 Scout on the island to the south, we should be able to explore it enough and spawn-bust it enough to be able to possibly settle down there. Look to see if you can pair up the Copper with a Food Resource and if you can, then it'll make for a good City to have, since it will mean +1 Commerce in each of our Cities, due to us getting Intercontinental Trade Routes.
I am pretty confident that it's another landmass to the south of our capital because we have explored to the SW and have fully uncovered the peninsula down there. I have marked off 3 City locations, one of which was already decided (the Stone City location).
The other two Cities are "okay but not great" City locations. Since we will be building The Great Lighthouse, they will be worth settling, but settle them AFTER we have settled an off-continent City or two; they are low-priority settling locations.
We're also building a Settler in Yoshiville (not pictured) which should be used to found the Great Person Farm in the north-west. The exact location is marked on the map with a sign. I did not update the dot-mapping because the BUG Mod was messing up for me so I played without using it. So, rely on the signs instead of whatever the dot-mapping may or may not say.
Our biggest issue is a lack of Happiness. The only early-game Happiness Resource that we have discovered is a Gold Resource by Alex, but he has already settled there. He also settled in a terrible location, completely missing the Gold Resource, so we'll later have to raze and resettle the City. For now, we should keep peace with Alex, since his Cities will offer us some Foreign Trade Routes and since we're in Rapid Expansion mode instead of war mode, to correspond with our building of The Great Lighthouse.
Since we're on Prince difficulty level, we could probably try for a whole bunch of Wonders, but I think that we should not do so. You won't learn a lot if you try and build every Wonder. Better would be to pick only a few of them and then learn to live without the rest.
For example, we probably COULD build The Oracle, but I will suggest that we ignore it.
For our tech path, it might take the entire rest of the set to learn Writing, since our tech rate will be hurting until we complete The Great Lighthouse. After Writing, if we do complete it, we should probably go for Alphabet.
I have just finished whipping a Work Boat, so it can probably go exploring in hopes of finding other AIs.
Writing will give us Open Borders with Alex, for the Trade Routes and to help us explore his lands with our Work Boat Explorer. Before then, perhaps the Work Boat can head to the south-east, to explore the islands down there.
There are two Workers near St. Petersburg. One is Chopping a Grassland Forest and can probably Chop the second Grassland Forest.
The other one should probably move to the Stone and build a Road, then maybe build a Road on the Plains square 1S of the Stone. After that point, our Cultural Borders will probably have expanded and we can start improving the Resources there, starting with the Corn.
You will also get to name the Stone City. I suggest that you build 2 Work Boats there, followed by a Granary and a Lighthouse. It already has a City Defender.
The capital should probably keep building Settlers, although once we learn Writing, we will want to build a Library for one turn, 3-pop-whip it, and then build a Lighthouse while we regrow. Since we might not learn Writing during the next 10 turns, the building of the Library may or may not happen until 2 turnsets from now.
Yoshiville could probably build a mix of Workers and Settlers, with more emphasis on Workers.
As for the other Cities, when in doubt about what to build, build Granaries and then Axemen. Barracks before the Axemen are optional.