Where do you settle?

Haha well, not entirely. All too often I settle in cities based off lux and food (especially bananas), then realize too late that there's like no workable hammers. I call them "crappy banana cities". My issue is finding a solid balance of food and hammers I guess.

Just make sure to explore with your warrior before settling. If you see anything better that's only 1 or 2 moves away then go for it.

Look at your current location and look 3 tiles out to see what you will have in the future. Look at what else you can see around and judge if moving over one or two tiles will give you more or less desirable terrain/resources.

One thing to be weary of especially as Russia is Strategic Balance. If it's on strategic balance you will very likely get horses and iron in your starting location and moving may cause you to avoid them.

If you have plenty of food but no production move over to more production. If you have lots of production but no food, move over to some food. Just make sure you don't move so far that you avoid the food or production you had in abundance all together.

Also, It's good to move over to touch a desert tile so that you can have a shot at petra when possible.
 
If you go wide - first priority should be good defensive spots. (my priority: rivers/mountains/lakes/hills/marsh(leave unimproved)/jungle/forest/etc). You may have crappy cities on border of civilization if they let other cities concentrate on safe growth and infrastructure.
Also consider resource-specific happiness buildings - if you have 2 horse/ivory or stone/marble tiles - it may be good idea to split them 1 per city. (2 circuses = 1 unique luxury). Try avoid plains if stone/marble is nearby.
 
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