Round 1: 4000BC - 3430BC
In the beginning, when man had begun to walk upon the earth, there arose a tribe people on the shores of Lake Thebes who called themselves the Egyptians. Armed with the knowledge of agriculture and the wheel, they settled on a hill overlooking the lake and began the journey to build a civilization to stand the test of time.
We settled on the spot and worked the unimproved corn tile for quick growth.
We will work the tile until the city grows to size 2, at which point we'll maximise production to complete the warrior as quickly as possible and then start on a worker.
Our initial warrior began exploring towards the SE, then skirted the sea and went north as the south is clearly thick with jungle. We want to look for a potential second-city site.
Our first neighbour appeared shortly:
That's quite fast. He should be somewhere near. And his scout was heading in the 'right' direction. He's going to beat us to a hut that we saw first
Bad precedent there. We might end up not getting any huts. It's times like this I wish I had a scout to begin with.
Anyway, our explorer went on to explore the north further as our second warrior was about to be completed (see screenshot below) and there won't be any huts to the west where Huayna came from anyway.
As the screen shows, we hit size 2 and I switched the tiles the city was working on. We want the second warrior out fast so we can get started on the worker (a few turns make a big difference early in the game). The governor preferred to grow, assigning the new population to work a 2F1H forest and keeping the original on the corn. At first I thought of changing that to a 2F1H forest and a 3H plains hill forest, but I noticed that working the plains forest silk tile gives 1G in addition to 1F2H. Working that and the plains marble tile gave us the same 2F (to maintain pop) and 4H but with a 1G bonus, which cut the time to research AH by 1 turn. Looked good to me.
After the warrior was built, I sent him to explore west, and let the governor calculate the fastest way to build the worker:
No problem at all there. I let it stand.
Our new warrior encountered animals almost immediately. He got attacked by a lion when he was in a jungle, and then by a panther as he stood on a forest hill on the next turn (the panther had to attack across the river as well, putting itself against the worst possible terrain defensive bonuses
).
The stalwart clubman earned himself a Woodsman promotion and went on exploring. The terrain is rough and forested/jungled enough to keep him safe without having to heal for now.
This is about the point at which I stopped. We have researched AH, and look what it revealed:
Glad we didn't move away. What's next? I'm thinking Mining and BW before we head straight for Priesthood so that we can chop a settler and the Oracle.
A map of the known world:
There's a good potential city site in the northern peninsula. It reminds me of Kumbi Saleh from the previous game. I've marked it out:
There's a site with 3 sugars, 1 silk and 1 pigs to the west, but that area is jungled and hasn't been fully revealed yet.
Any thoughts or advice?