Turn 0 (4000BC): I start by moving the warrior onto the plains hill nearby. This reveals a pretty nice starting area, close to a river with gold + triple wines in the vicinity. After thinking for several minutes, I decide that moving two tiles southeast will probably give us the best results. That puts us on the river, next to a pair of river hill tiles, very close to river hill gold and plains wines, and with tons of lovely plains river tiles all around us. Coastal capitals generally don't seem that great to me in Civ5, since the water tiles have very weak yields. We can put future cities on the coast if we need ships (and this is a Pangaea anyway).
Turn 1 (3960BC): Found Istanbul. This reveals more wines resources, and unfortunately the game doesn't prioritze the gold resource despite being the best tile currently outside our capital's radius. We'll likely have to purchase that one. I decide to research Mining first, because we will surely need it for that gold resource soon. Animal Husbandry probably needs to be next, so that we can spot the all-important horses resource.
I thought for a very long time about whether to build a scout or a warrior first, before ultimately deciding on a scout. The advantages of the scout are its cheaper cost (25 against 40 shields), its greater mobility, and the hope of discovering more tribal ruins/AI civs to sell things to. The advantage of the warrior is that it forms an actual military unit, one that can be upgraded to swords and eventually longswords if we have iron. My thinking with the scout was that we will probably benefit more from finding other civs for sale purposes than we would from a slightly better military unit in the extreme early game, not to mention being cheaper to boot. Hopefully this won't blow up in our faces!
Turn 3 (3880BC): We have already found a barb encampment to our east. On a hill tile, urg. Will cause some harassment problems for us.
Turn 6 (3760BC): Our warrior finds Japan already, extremely close to us. Kyoto appears to be about ten tiles away from our capital. This is almost certainly going to end in early war... Anyway, Istanbul finishes its scout and begins a worker. We need at least one worker to be able to connect resources, and I'm not keen on going the two warriors + attack route here. Especially against Japan's civ ability with wounded units fighting well.
Turn 9 (3640BC): Scout meets the Cultural city state of Monaco, also very close to our south. Somehow we managed to beat Japan to the punch and score the full 30 gold meeting benefit (more gold than we have earned the entire game so far!) The land area us is actually quite good, with lots of plains and hill tiles, along with gold + wines + silver + spices. We simply need to remove Japan from it!
Istanbul grew to size 2, and I'm forced to work a 1/1/1 plains river tile for lack of better options. We have excellent production (already 6 shields/turn) however our growth is rather slow with all these plains tiles. Definitely will want to farm that plains wheat tile first with our worker. I think it might be a good idea to cap Istanbul at size 3 for a little while in the early game, working the plains wheat, the gold tile, and maybe one of the wines. It would give us strong early game production, which seems like a necessity in this situation.
Turn 10 (3600BC): Discover Mining and start Animal Husbandry tech (8 turns).
Turn 11 (3560BC): Meet another Cultured city state (Brussels) off to the west, who also gives us the 30g contact bonus. We currently have 87 gold, and 60 gold has come from gifts upon meeting city states, almost 70% of the total. I think that's rather silly and random, which is why I'm not a fan of this aspect of the game design. More importantly, we meet a scout from Alexander of Greece, which arrives from the east. Maybe Greece is beyond Japan to the east (?) I definitely wish we had met a different AI here! Gandhi, where are you?
Turn 12 (3520BC): Nobunaga pops up and immediately asks for a Pact of Secrecy against Alex. Naturally I reject this; Pacts of Secrecy seem to provide no benefit while causing the AI you sign them against to hate you. The general rule is to always sign Pacts of Cooperation, and never sign Pacts of Secrecy. The diplomacy in this game really needs more transparency about everything, but that's what I've found so far. We also find a barb encampment in the west by our scout.
Turn 13 (3480BC): Our scout gets attack by barbarian warriors moving out of the camp; we take 5 points of damage but otherwise survive. Luckily we were on rough terrain, jungle. Rather than move out of the way, I opt to heal in place; if the barbs attack again, we should win and kill them, then can clean up their camp. Elsewhere, an Aztec scout moves next to Istanbul, introducing us to Montezuma. Looks to be a crowded neighborhood, which is distinctly not good for us...
Turn 14 (3440BC): The barb warrior moves back to his camp rather than attacking our scout. I'll continue healing for the moment, no need to lose an early unit needlessly. The barb encampment in the east was dispersed by a Japanese warrior; our own warrior spotted the action, and was attacked by a remaining redlined barb unit. We pick up 4 experience and take 2 damage, which I'll pause briefly to heal.
Turn 18 (3280BC): After a couple of quiet turns, this was a busy one. Our scout and warrior are both restored to full hit points, and out exploring again. The barb camp to the west has spawned a second brute, so be aware of this. We also discovered Animal Husbandry, and yes indeed, there are several sources of horses nearby. There's a good spot to the southeast that I think we should claim ASAP, both to lock down our border with Japan and get that critical resource. For our next tech, I went ahead and picked The Wheel (12 turns). We're going to want roads to connect our cities soon enough, plus this tech is on the path to Horseback Riding if we want to go that route. The only other real option that I could see was Pottery/Calendar for our wines, and that seemed a lot less compelling.
Istanbul completed its worker, and I have set us right on a settler (13 turns). Building warriors feels like a waste of time to me - better to get out there and claim horses immediately so that we can build some real units. I might wait until size 3 under other circumstances, however our capital grows very slowly. Not worth it. I also went ahead and spent 50g so that we can work our gold resource, which provides a much better yield than anything else at the moment. Our worker is going to farm the wheat, then should move and mine the gold tile, which also conveniently eliminates any turns of wasted movement. Ah, to have the Fast Worker again...
Turn 19 (3240BC): An Aztec Jaguar Warrior clears the barb camp near us. Well, I guess that's one nice benefit of playing on Deity - there are so many AI units moving around that the barbs don't stand a chance!
Turn 20 (3200BC): The Aztec Jag is killed by the barb unit spawned by that same camp a minute ago. Haha! There's another city state just to our west that I'd like to meet, but our scout has the chance to finish off the barbarian brute with 1HP, and I feel compelled to do that first. Definitely check out who that is next turn and pick up the 15g, then probably send our scout to heal within our city's borders before setting out to explore again.
That's it for my turns. A lot happened in those first 20 turns! More thoughts in the next post.