City placement in a world that is cold, hungry, and dangerous

I haven't won much of anything... except rush-stomping neighbors like a wild noob... on emperor. I thought I'd give myself a more cerebral challenge. Feel free to look at the save but only play if you are REALLY intrigued, since this is marathon.

In short, I think this could be a really interesting match that lends itself to espionage. I sort of had it in mind now that I'm playing this difficulty some.

Frederick (PHI, ORG) of Germany
Emperor, Huge Ice_Age world, Raging Barbs, Marathon, Aggressive AI
No huts, no events

Interesting features of this start: BFC stone. A rockin' Riverside Grassland Gems tile 2E of the settler, and really terrible food everywhere. Basically the whole world is brown.

Well... espionage prep is how I'm running things so far. I settled 1E and went worker-warrior-warrior-GW. The two warriors headed SW fogbusting. I trained them to F2 holding hills. They found Louis XIV and stole TWO workers with no diplomatic backlash from any of the other AIs. So far, so great.

But I come before you, as soooo many threads on this board, for advice on city placement for a brown world. And general advice as well. This world seems so bad, that if it weren't for the dearth of copper I'd wonder at the utility of building >1 settler unit at all. It appears that 1 settler could secure another food resource, and 2 settlers could block an AI, if that were necessary. What are your thoughts on that? How mean should I be to Charlemagne? Kill, block, or spy? Regrettably, he failed meditation or poly if he tried them at all, and espionage indicates he is on fishing (ofc I'd prefer he beat tracks to mono... I don't know WTH his problem is). He's fixing himself up to be a real loser.

Frankly, all the neighbors look a great deal wimpier than what I'm used to rolling. Usually the RNG gives me two psychos on every side. This new twist could be dangerous, though. I'm more confident the squares I've met so far (Saladin, Wang, Charley, Mansa, Hammer, Mao, Louis) can find a way to wiggle around the map's food problems.

Show the resources in the 3rd pic.

Banana/wheat and banana/sugar are solid enough cities.

Get the 6 best cities you can and wonderspam; the AI has crapland too and taking wonders from it will hurt it greatly.

Alright then. I picked up AH, gridded it, and flagged resources. EDIT: This extra 15 turns of play here was just for the benefit of showing horses in the pic. I hope that isn't too lame. My second choice city could actually be for copper. That could run the wheat, copper mine, and several cottages but max out there (no need to pop borders at least). Also I'm wondering which city should come first. Probably copper.

On the notion of wonderspam, do you have the Mids in mind? I don't know how much they'd help with this level of food. I was working them just right now for failgold. Maybe I could pick up a spec per food resource and that would be nice with PHI, but for the cost of the wonder and the spec buildings...

That's not all bad... I see a number of okay city sites:

1) To the west, 1SW of the gems, 1E of the horse. That city gets 2 gems, wheat, cows, and horses. I'd grab that site first of all.
2) To the south, 1N of wheat, 2E of silk. Gets wheat, cows, copper, 2 silk.
3) Southwest, 1S of flood plains, 1 NE of gold. Gets 2 gold, cows, flood plain.
4) 4SW of your capital. Gets bananas, flood plain, lots of river tiles.
5) May be worth settling on the coast to catch that fish.

Finally, if there's not enough decent land to settle, that leaves the other capitals as best city sites Go grab one? I think the French have some land...

I'd definitely not have built the Great Wall in this situation; so many AI around means less barbarians spawning anyway. You should always get your first couple of cities out first IMO.

hr_oskar said:

That's not all bad... I see a number of okay city sites:

1) To the west, 1SW of the gems, 1E of the horse. That city gets 2 gems, wheat, cows, and horses. I'd grab that site first of all.
2) To the south, 1N of wheat, 2E of silk. Gets wheat, cows, copper, 2 silk.
3) Southwest, 1S of flood plains, 1 NE of gold. Gets 2 gold, cows, flood plain.
4) 4SW of your capital. Gets bananas, flood plain, lots of river tiles.
5) May be worth settling on the coast to catch that fish.

Finally, if there's not enough decent land to settle, that leaves the other capitals as best city sites Go grab one? I think the French have some land...

I'd definitely not have built the Great Wall in this situation; so many AI around means less barbarians spawning anyway. You should always get your first couple of cities out first IMO.

Click to expand...

I suppose these options will be open eventually, but most of them probably not before 1000AD. They are simply too far away. Take the best one, #1, for example.

That thing is FAR. If the great wall was important already, it would be absolutely essential for holding that site. I know my pictures aren't the best (it's a lot of land to picture) but the hill gems there are not open until IW. And building the road to it would require an archery escort since I have no resources yet. I don't know how much you have played mara/raging, but I stand by the GW here and I think this would be an exceedingly risky first settler even with it. I'm guessing it would be best to kill wang for this site, if I take it at all, and if killing wang is an intelligent thing to do. I don't know yet.

Trying to getting six cities out of all the shizzy land adjacent to the capital, though, makes your choices more appealing. It's just that it would be an incredibly spread-out affair where their extra commerce just might cover the extra maintenance and horrible logistics. I don't really know. I'm actually just a monarch player who sucks at everything but attacking. I'm trying this game out in order to firm up and I appreciate your suggestions.