Are these islands worth settling?

[Fizz'l]

Can anyone give me advice on whether these islands are worth settling?

I'm thinking:
crab/fish - good growth but no production unless I switch back to slavery.
Crab/whale - production still crap here.
Iron - at least I can make some buildings slowly but no food resources here.
Horse - I don't have a horse resource yet. Could chop buildings here.

Could someone also confirm that putting 2 cities on big island would allow me to form colony? (Maybe this would be a good idea? )

Other relevant info:
Monarch difficulty
Continent/standard size/medium sea level/temperate.
Playing as Pacal so financial bonus on water tiles .
I have great lighthouse so more trade at least in near future
Thanks

 

[lymond]

I think you need 3 cities to form a colony. (you can fit 3 on horse island..your vassal will suck, but hey you can trade for his horse)

Well, GLH definitely makes an islands worth it. Granted it's getting late game.

The main question is what are your goals in this game. Do you plan to go corps (sushi, mining)? I don't know enough about the map to know if sushi is good, but sushi/mining can make any of those cities quite production.

The cities can help a bit toward domination, if that is a goal, or Space simply via extra research.

If you settle and go corps, feed workboats from the mainland since they can build them fast. The two seafood locations can use a granary whip, but not really need in the others until sushi. Otherwise, all those cities can just be set to build wealth for now. You don't have to build stuff any them. gran/lh for seafoods is all.

Oh..and fish/clam island can be two cities.

yeah, get bug/bull mod, or even better, the BAT mod.

 

[Pangaea]

If you have the Great Lighthouse, then just about any city you settle offshore is worth it. Doesn't matter much if they basically just built Wealth until the end of the game, the commerce alone will outweigh the costs.

You only need two cities to form a colony, so that is one way to go on the bigger island. Normally I wouldn't settle anything there, I think, as there is no food, and food is the most important resource in the game.

 

[Fippy]

Side note, highly recommend using BUG as minimum
Gives you min/max sliders among many other goodies, 60% research rate also looks like you could improve on managing them (100% until out of gold if you want something teched).

On topic 2 seafood = good city without other tiles (can whip everything needed), worth getting sooner usually.
If they are reachable ofc, just an overall hint.

 

[Fizz'l]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Yes I was going to look into installing bug or maybe bat mod sometime today.

I'm relatively new to BTS but I think I understand corporations. These islands would make sushi better option for me. I have iron, 2 copper and gold and could access that second iron if wanted so mining Inc may be good too. But unfortunately i don't have a GE and no way to effectively generate one.

One thing that I forgot to ask. Should I be settling stuff just to deny the land to the AI?

I'm on caste system now so maybe settle and run a GA for the border pop then switch to slavery. Probably only one city on the fish/crab island to avoid the colonial expenses.