I had a strange thought seeing Sulla send that scout eastward: "A bit late to be sending out a scout." Then I thought, "Well, that is probably my paranoia from higher difficulty talking. This is Prince level, after all."
On the other hand, sending a settler out that far with one warrior escort who isn't even in the region yet? Um... no. Not doing that! Earlier, yes. Not 2000BC, though. (I think the extreme oddity of this opening has put Sulla in to some uncharted waters! I agree with the rest of his analysis, though.)
So I swap Havana to a warrior. No barracks, just one untrained regular warrior. But... two of these beats one of them. One is just begging the RNG gods to rain fire on our heads!
Check this out:
Instead of replacing the settler, the warrior is put in line ahead of it, and then the settler will continue automatically when the warrior completes.
You can also safely remove the settler from the build queue by clicking on it, if you want. The game will still remember your partial progress on it (as long as it hasn't been too long and decayed away).
With that, I begin my round.
1960BC: I move our westerly warrior toward Pink Dot(TM) and spot an English border. Sulla's assessment that Vicky lacks a second town is no longer up to date!
The town has to be at the white dot. (Why? ... Not telling!)
I move the scout eastward. Uh...
Dead meat. Croaker. Lamb to the slaughter. 15 shields down the tubes.
Ironically, the wee little bit of info I did pick up from this move indicates that there is less continent over that way than I thought there would be!
So my gut instinct on that one was correct after all: too late to be sending out scouts. (There is a point at which the animals give way, for the most part, to barbarian warriors. As the barbs get certain techs, they can bring on stronger units, too! Archers running around by 1500BC is not uncommon on higher difficulty!)
The barbs may, on occasion, make a push to take cities. Multiple units appear on the map and converge toward cities. He who runs the Civ3-style Farmer's Gambit is going to suffer! BUILD SOME MILITARY.
The worst part is that this Scout Snack is going to toughen the barbarian unit. They will promote!
1880BC: We learn Mining, I start Archery. (Should have started Wheel, actually, then done Archery next, but I was spooked by the barbarians!)
1760BC: Yep, more hostiles floating around, this time in the west. Without the extra warrior I ordered up, we could staring at some Big Huge Dice Rolls(TM) with the grab for Pink Dot(TM).
1720BC: The barb moves toward our eastern warrior. I move in to the forest.
1680BC: The barb attacks our warrior in the forest. We win (the very high probability outcome!) But we are severely wounded. I order the unit to rest.
1600BC: Settler completed. My turn comes to its end.
I think we are actually going to get the Pink Dot, thanks to Vicky's interest in the wheat resource at York.
STRONGLY urge both warriors to be guarding the new town! There are barbarians afoot!