A potential great start, but what now?

[lockdar]

After seeing the announcement for the new civs I decided to fire up Civ6 again and try them out. I got this start as Maya and it feels like a potentially good start. I discovered Uluru very soon and I'm looking at that huge expanse of desert, hills and faith.
But how can I actually use this? Maya city placement seems like something you should be very mindful of due to their awesome bonus. It also feels a little restrictive. How would you guys advice I continue onward and how can I use all that faith that is just lying around there? The tile to the northeast of the capital has citrus on it btw, the name of the city blocks it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2109976695

 

[UWHabs]

I'm not a max player, but personally I just map out the area and see where good district spots are. As Maya, you don't worry about fresh water, but aqueducts would help you. And you want to pack cities within that 6-tile range if at all possible.

So given that, the obvious city spots I see are on the slinger tile, you have a ready-made +5 harbor spot, and could be a very useful city to pop in a bunch of fisheries with Liang. The grass tile just east of the 2 Cocoa would be my first city's observatory, and I'd look to get a city that can use the similar +4 observatory spot on the other side of those cocoa tiles. Given that, the logical spot is settling between the lake and the mountain, and what city has a couple possible aqueduct spots if you need the housing. You've also got a +4 observatory site up by Uluru, although any city there is going to struggle unless if you can get Petra in there. There's at least a few more cities you could fit within the 6-tile range to maximize bonuses, and obviously you're perfectly defended so you never have to worry about that

And you don't even have any nearby AI, so in that sense you can potentially even plan things out better and even further optimize your settling. There's other things to consider too - east of your campus looks like a potentially beautiful industrial zone location. You could place an aqueduct 1E of your cap, a dam east of that, and if you build that city on the tip, they also have an aqueduct spot that can reach inland. In fact, you could fit a dam on the other river too, which all tough the grassland square in the middle, meaning that one industrial zone would be +10 (2 aqueduct, 2 dam, 4 districts). As for Uluru itself, honestly it often kind of sucks. In your case, you probably want to settle a city directly next to it to grab the resources, the default faith/culture for settling on the tile, but you don't really have much food near there to actually work those tiles. Unfortunately you can't even really settle anything nearby to try chopping out Petra, although if you got lucky and you happen to not have any wonder-spammers, maybe you can sneak it out late and then have a late game powerhouse.

So basically I'd say just start laying out pins to map cities and then the first couple districts each, and settle the best ones.

 

[KayAU]

I don't know what a smart person would do, but here's my general approach as the Maya:

• Measure six tiles in each direction from the capital's city center, place a map pin on each spot
• I try to put a city, on or close to, each of these spots, making sure to stay within the six tile radius
• In terms of tech, I usually go Pottery->Irrigation->Writing->Animal Husbandry->Archery, more or less
• Getting a Builder out early and putting a farm on a resource will do two important things for you: get a boost for Irrigation, and raise your housing limit. I would have done this before the Settler.
• Once you have Irrigation, make those Plantations. These get you the necessary adjacency for your Observatory, as well as a lot of gold
• Get some slingers out. Mayan Slingers hit harder within the 6 tile radius
• Use your Plantation gold to upgrade those Slingers into Hul'che as soon as possible, and no-one should be able to mess with you

More specifically for this map:

• The open tile next to the two Cocoa tiles is ideal for an Observatory, that's a straight up +4 from plantations, and a nice spot for future improvements through districts or farms
• Personally, I like these city spots (in no particular order):
  • Due east, potentially amazing Mausuleum city, with an easy +3 Harbor (unfortunately not next to the City Center), but that's a tradeoff
  • North, desert tile next to Maize
  • 6 tiles North-West, by the reef
  • 6 tiles South-East, between the Maize and the Diamonds

I don't have time to elaborate more at the moment, but this looks like a fun start with lots of potential.

 

[lockdar]

Thanks for the replies both of you! I'll see what I can make out of it.