I replayed a few turns to micromanage better and let Aachen grow all the way up to size 4 building warriors before starting the Settler just to be on the safe side with regards to barbarians.
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Behold the Imperialistic trait in action, granting me +5 Production per turn!
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Met another neighbor, or rather his scout met me.
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The Settler is finished and about to head to the pig+gold site. Should I build another one right away, train more warriors until size 5, or maybe even train a second worker to chop the forests into future Settlers while the current worker heads for Pig and Gold?
More settlers. Get up to 4 cities ASAP; on emperor those sites will start paying for themselves very quickly, and besides you want to get food improved and worked as soon as possible, which you can't really do if there's no city there.
I personally played a bit riskier and built only 1 warrior to fogbust, so by t38 I had already founded my 2nd city (I believe I founded it right on that turn). But what you did is perfectly fine. Considering how far away everyone is, and the difficulty, as well as the nice terrain to fogbust, you shouldn't have barb problems or troubles with getting boxed in, so warrior #3 isn't a necessity at this point. And you're already running into the problem of idle workerturns (or near-idle; if roading's the best you can do another worker probably isn't the right build). So, settler IMO should be the next build. Besides, the general rule of thumb is, except on certain deity maps: before 4-5 cities, the more cities the sooner, the better. Another settler with max imp bonuses to get the wheat + fish, and then maybe yet another for the northern fish. This is why I advocate for fishing - there are quite a few seafood resources with this start, so it's better to have it when we need it rather than need it in the middle of teching something expensive like BW! Oh, and it gives pottery discount, which by my calculations pays for 1/3 or 1/2 of the cost back by itself already.
Speaking of pottery, I still advocate for that before BW. I did the same in my personal playthrough to great effect, without spoiling too much - a headstart on granaries gets you very far on a map like this, and chopping/whipping is nice except for the fact that since this start is so food-poor, without a granary whipping might be overall slower than just hard-building settlers/workers considering the regrowth time. Also, expanding past 5 cities might hurt your economy more than it helps on a map like this, in these crucial early turns.
I'm going to try to explain my rationale for delaying BW a bit more. First of all, you want your new cities to not only be up but also building useful things instantly. If you go BW, then sure, your cities might come a handful of turns earlier. But for that you sacrifice teching power, since your capital will be unable to work any sort of commerce tiles if you forgo fishing AND you whip relentlessly all the while. So you trudge your way to pottery + writing far slower than normal, meaning slower granaries, slower libraries, slower AESTH (for alpha trade), and a negative snowball that adversely affects the rest of your game. As for the new cities - what do they build? Useless warriors? Barracks? Monuments? Sure, a border pop is good for the fish-wheat city, but after 30h spent there you're really just tossing any production into the wind, and also growing at effectively half-efficiency without a granary. With fish->pot, sure, maybe your cities come a bit later, but they'll be fully operational, working good tiles, able to build useful things, able to improve their food ASAP, and growing much faster with granaries. And it's not like the forests
disappear if you delay BW. You could save some for libraries, GLib, and eventually forges/units, that sort of thing. IIRC, I chopped a library in my cap and then immediately cottaged the exposed riverside tiles, something not possible if I went BW first and then spent all the forests on building slightly faster workers and settlers. tl;dr: BW gives marginal benefit at too high of an opportunity cost, so it should wait until after pottery IMO.
I'll add a disclaimer to end this rant. I couldn't resist the temptation and finished this game with a dom win earlier tonight. BUT I won't spoil anything without advance warning, and I won't give you advice that takes into account things you don't already know at any particular point in the game. The fact that my moves
worked should not, IMHO, be taken as spoilers in and of themselves, but as evidence that my advice is at least reasonably sound
.
Here's my t38 save to compare (NOTE: this spoils who some of your neighbors are, so if you wanna hold back on looking at that then by all means do so).
early on such that you don't fall into an early-game "commerce hole", where you limp your way to BW and then stall at TW/pottery because you have 4 cities (after all, you're imp), are paying a fortune for them, and your workers are unable to build roads or cottages to fix the situation.
by the fishman. We seem to be in sync. Cow will be improved fast, likely before Mining, so farme could be started or completed, but a mine is indeed more valuable in this instance with IMP...at least if nothing better to do. And I think you will have time for a mine.
