Challenger Save.
Did anyone settle in-place? After opening the saved game and seeing that Cornucopia was so far away, I felt that it did make sense to go with the initially proposed plan to explore the rest of our "Desert Island" for a few turns before the (assumed) Barb Animals' arrival deadline. That revelation is a nice one, LowtherCastle, that we could have explored for longer than 5 turns without Barb Animals showing up.
I went NE with my first Settler movement and settled where nocho did, although he seems to be ahead of me in terms of City count and Wonders. Looking at where kcd_swede settled and counting the squares, I likely would have ended up on the same Plains Hills square and would have setteld there, instead, had my first Settler movement been SE.
I did not get a competitive date for the "First to Net the Crabs Resource" challenge, having netted mine on Turn 106. Someone who settled on kcd_swede's Plains Hills square likely won that challenge.
As LowtherCastle rightfully points out, having the Palace in Cornucopia would have been a Maintenance nightmare in terms of Colonial Mainteance costs. Thus, we were fortunate that in a game with Vassals enabled (and hence, Colonies being enabled, and hence, Colonial Maintenance existing in the game) that it was not trivial to settle Cornucopia as our first City.
However, as MarleysGh0st implied, if someone was sufficiently stubborn enough and got lucky enough with exploration, that someone could have dared to have declared war on Sitting Bull or Isabella, with the risk of that AI's Galley killing said player's own Galley, and having survived said Galley assault, have been able to have had the Galley and Settler join each other. MarleysGh0st did say "find a way or make a way for the boat," and declaring war on one of those 2 AIs would have qualified as having made a way. If Barb Animals cannot spawn until we settle, then a Barb Galley presumably also would not be able to spawn to pick off our wounded Galley.
I followed my own proposed advice of sending the Galley south, only to find that I couldn't go any further and had to head back north, risking an accidental click that could have declared war on an AI. What was interesting is that the AIs' Galleys acted like Barb Units, which stay in place for 1 turn before moving.
In hindsight, settling in-place could have worked out quite fine for an early Cornucopia, since it looks like doing so would have bridged a Cultural gap, even without having to found a Religion in the capital to make it happen. One would have likely done well by building Work Boat -> Settler (for Cornucopia) -> Warrior (to explore and to fend off Barb Animals) -> Settler (for a better Mainland City).
However, from my recollection, we could not see enough information to know that settling in-place would have given us the missing pathway to Cornucopia by spreading our Culture over a single square of Ocean to connect to a Coast square on the other side. As feedback, maybe a nearby Coast square to the west could have been revealed, showing the potential connection, assuming that the Mapmaker wanted some of us to settle City #1 at Cornucopia, perhaps as the originally planned challenge that got scrapped. Had Vassals been disabled, settling City #1 at Cornucopia could have made sense, as there wouldn't have been Colonial Maintenance in the game. There are some times when we just cannot fully trust a Mapmaker, especially when there is a level of coyness in the related responses in the Pre-Game Discussion Thread. All of that said, I think that in this game, things worked out for the best by not having made it clear that we could get the initial Settler to Cornucopia, due to the Maintenance nightmare that would have required us to move the Palace to the mainland.
As a hindsight-suggestion, I think that it would have been useful to have pre-built a Lighthouse for each AI (via pre-settling the AIs' first Cities, clicking on the Edit City button followed by clicking on each of the AIs' Cities and choosing the Buildings tab in the World Builder), at least in the Challenger Saved Game. While I did not see what most of the AIs did, with an early Great Spy (can you guess which Wonder I built first?), I got to watch what Isabella was doing and her lack of choosing to build a Lighthouse was enough to keep her One-City-Challenged. Seemingly beelining to Monotheism was one way for her to delay even the possibility of building a Lighthouse for a long time.
Please note that I am thoroughly enjoying the game, as designed!
These items of feedback are not complaints, but instead are just ideas that I am sharing in the hopes of inspiring future games.
Without looking at the Sevopedia, I am guessing that the Civs in our game were all ones which start with Fishing, and we were the Leader that has the Organised Trait (for a cheap Lighthouse), giving the AIs a chance to build an early Work Boat, yet still leaving it likely quite random for the AIs to research Sailing and then to build a non-cheap Lighthouse to be able to get going anywhere seriously.
Great tip from nocho about Toroidal Circumnavigation! I couldn't see an AI having snagged it in the Event Log and had been confused about the lack of earning the bonus.
Instead of settling Cornucopia as City #2 (as we could have aimed to have done had we known for sure that settling in-place would have allowed as much), I settled it later. Indeed, I wanted to settle City #3 for a Crab Resource just to get in on the Fastest Crab Challenge with a reasonable date, but Barb Animals hindered me and in fear of losing a Settler, I settled more conservatively and thus also posted a very poor date for that side-challenge.
Yes, kcd_swede, there is certainly an awkwardness to using the quote-a-message functionality on the forum. I don't really want to quote a person's full message, as doing so can clutter the page and can also make it harder for them to edit a typo. I think that most of the players come back to the forum frequently enough to read replies without needing to quote an entire message.
Fine_Distinction, yes, when an AI first settles or spawns into existence as a Colony, regardless of the Difficulty Level or Game Speed, that AI gets 10 Hammers in their capital City. You could say that the percentage of free AI Hammers scales with the Difficulty Level, since higher Difficulty Levels mean that most build items cost less Hammers for an AI to complete. The AIs also thus get a slightly greater initial boost the quicker the Game Speed, which is just yet one more way where the Marathon Game Speed works out in favour of the human player.
AIs are coded to settle in-place unless they are prevented from doing so, such as on a map where you crowd 18 AIs onto a Duel Map and some Settlers spawn so close to each other that they have no room to settle in-place due to the game rule of not being allowed to settle a City on the same landmass within a 2-square-radius of an existing City.
That said, I believe that AIs which start with a Worker may explore with the Worker for a turn. If this memory is true, it implies that at least someone on the Design Team or Development Team had originally had the idea of an AI spending some time to explore so as to potentially pick a better starting location. But, the final decision seems to have been to just have an AI settle in-place when it would not break a game rule to do so.
Isabella built 0 Buildings and 0 Settlers in my game up until 1 AD. Indeed, in my game, 3 of the AIs are One-City-Challenged.
I did witness Deity Barbs decending on Isabella; she came close to losing her capital when 3 successive waves of Barb Archers plus Barb Axemen (each successive wave was one square behind the previous wave) assaulted Madrid, with only a wounded Archer to her name keeping her alive.
circumnavigation bonus in 2 more turns.
I settled on the hill N of the sheep, as recommended by the game's blue circle. My second city took the same site as K's New York, but his capital got the clams/cows bonanza, which must explain in part why he's soooo far ahead of me. I have 7 cities, 25 pop, with a settler etc. on the way to Cornucopia courtesy of popped borders from K's Bridge City location. Built Stonehenge, and just got GLH at 1 AD, but Oracle and Colossus are a ways off yet. Should have circumnav in a few turns. One big difference with K's game is that my AI are all still stuck at 1 city, with scores of 188 (England) to 146 (Vikings)--I have 382. Not sure what kind of victory I'm aiming for--conquest seems kind of cheesy with such hobbled AI. I haven't done Culture in a very very long time--might be fun.
Later I noticed a way via Izzy and I hadbeelined Wtg so my third city was Cornucopia. 
in their capital? Also, in spite of starting with warriors, they also all started warrior first!
. Playing peacefully on Noble did not seem challenging and I am normally not that good at war and I was still mildly annoyed with Kathy declaring on me while having a defensive pact - so I decided to
This is also one of to awards I need to try for my first epthalon.
