4000 BC (0): We start out as China; we are Industrious and Militaristic, not a bad combination, and we get Riders, an awesome unit, nearly as good for their age as the fabled Panzers are for theirs. With a civ like this, we're almost certainly going to have some fun with Middle Ages combat.
Also, we're in very lush lands -- a couple bonus grasslands, some hills, some forest, a wheat, and on a lake!
ZF1 - save file, 4000 BC
Peering through the fog at neighboring tiles, I see a hill NE of us, and what looks like a second wheat to our SW. Hmm, having 2 wheat in range would allow us to grow super fast... but our lands are already quite good for food, it might be better to save that 2nd wheat for another city, and get a couple more hills in radius, so that eventually we can work those hills using irrigated grasslands for food. I move our settler one tile NE, while our worker starts on a mine.
3950 BC (1): We found Beijing. Woot, we have incense in our radius, and TONS of hills. Looks like a good call to move NE, our capital is going to ROCK for production in the not too distant future. Not only that, there's a river to our west, good for our second city. The only problem is there's coastline on the other side of those hills, so our capital may not be really close to being central to our empire. That's what FPs are for, though. We start researching Ceremonial Burial at max rate and begin a warrior scout.
3900-3700 BC (2-6): zzz. We finish the mine and build a road... our worker moves off to a plains on the other side of the city to irrigate it and build a road toward the incense and the bonus wheat tile, which is currently out of cultural range.
3650 BC (7): We build a warrior for scouting purposes, and start a settler. I'm going for the farmer's gambit! Here we ignore defense for the first several turns on the premise that we are unlikely to encounter anyone really early, and if we do they are unlikely to be able to attack us, in the hopes of founding more cities sooner so as to get a production and economic advantage. Our scout discovers there is indeed a wheat to our SW, great spot for our second city.
3600-3500 BC (8-10): We explore, and build roads/irrigation.
3450 BC (11): Our cultural borders expand to include the bonus wheat tile, and we start irrigating it. We spot a cattle to the N of Beijing on some plains, and our explorer spots an Elephant and a goody hut to our west. There seem to be lots of rivers around here. Makes you wonder if the AIs have lands this good...
3350 BC (13): We discover Ceremonial Burial, and start Bronze Working. I'd like to get that and Iron Working, for defense purposes, then start on the path to Republic. That usually gives the best economic results, and with all these hills we need to get rid of our despotic penalties quickly. We pop the goody hut, and get barbarians.
Fortunately, this is only Regent (barbs get penalties) and we're on a mountain...
3300 BC (14): Our warrior handily busts up the barbs without so much as a scratch, and promotes to elite! Ah, the joys of being militaristic.
3200 BC (16): Our warrior spots another bonus cattle to our west. Our worker starts building a road to the incense hill. Next up: a road to our new city, as it should be founded soon.
3150 BC (17): Beijing grows to 3, and is unhappy because I didn't build any MP. Not to worry, we'll just raise the lux tax temporarily until the settler is done. I micromanage Beijing to give us 4 shields this turn and 3 shields next for maximum food growth and to complete the settler in 2 turns with no shield waste. Micromanaging is easy when you only have a handful of cities...
3050 BC (19): We complete our settler! He's off to found near that wheat. Our incense is connected, and Beijing is smaller, so we no longer need lux tax. Beijing will grow in 4 turns, but will waste 3 food in doing so, so somewhere in there we can micromanage it to trade that extra 3 food for shields. Our worker is off to build a road to our new city.
3000 BC (20): Our settler moves on to the bonus wheat, but shouldn't build there, he can go a bit farther before founding. Our warrior moves south and spots some coast. That suggests a good spot for our next city to the south of where our settler is standing, so it can be on the coast -- this allows harbours and shipbuilding -- as well as on a river, so as to get extra trade and not need to build an aqueduct. It should still pick up the bonus wheat tile even without a temple, since its 1-square radius border should automatically extend to intersect our capital's border, as there will only be one square between the two.
ZF1 - save file, 3000 BC
Ok, I said I wasn't going to make a dotmap, but then ChrTh suggested some guidance was appropriate, so I went ahead and made one. Key factors on this dotmap: proximity to capital, no wasted squares, and access to fresh water! All of those are very important to the future growth of a city. There is a bit of overlap, but that's not too critical until we get to the Industrial age, and a little bit of overlap won't hurt much. Blue dot is top priority, followed by Red and Yellow; the latter might move slightly (but not off the river) depending on what else is in the unexplored areas N and E of it. Of course, there's the area S of Beijing to consider as well, though that's likely to be a peninsula by the look of things; we might only be able to get a couple of cities down there depending on how far it extends. We're near the bottom edge of the map, so it can't go too far. Regardless, the ones we want to found first are those with (a) lowest corruption, and (b) best potential for growth in the short term. All of these fit the bill, although a bit less so for Yellow; it's mostly plains & forests, but it should be able to get one grassland right away by border expansion up to Beijing's borders, similar to how Blue dot should get the bonus wheat, and it shouldn't be too hard to irrigate a couple plains with the river right there. We might want to wait to found that one last out of our top priority cities both so we get a chance to explore up there and so we can build a couple more workers first.
We have lots of secondary priorities as well: for instance, to found cities on the coast N and E of Yellow dot to pick up that land and coast, and the same holds for the area W and NW of Red and Blue dots. We probably also want to found a city up near that bottleneck at some point so as to keep our main core safe from attack. Fortunately, we soon will have 2 cities able to grow and pump out settlers quickly, as well as workers to improve these cities and connect them up!
Soon we're going to have to start worrying about defense as well as founding cities. I left Beijing on warrior since right now we mainly need MP and we will want to build another settler soon, but we can't go completely without military for too much longer. Once we get Bronze Working we should seriously consider building a couple spearmen to protect our cities. I expect Beijing should be able to build a another settler first, though, after the warrior, or at least a worker.
And I STILL had to go back and irrigate another tile before I could do the wheat!
