Bulbing, Settling, Building an Academy? What to do with a Great Scientist

[Dirk1302]

Isolated you don't have to go to extremes in settling as on a crowded map. It's still important to settle the good cities early. Reasoning "i can do with 3 cities for now because i have all the time in the world" won't do imo.I still aim at having 6 cities up 1AD on isolated starts. Depending on the island size the whole island should be settled (and improved) between 500 and 1000 AD.

 

[City Raider]

I usually go in this order:

Academy
bulb Phil
bulb Edu

I'll settle any between Phil and Edu if I know I'll get more before I can research Edu.

After Education I may bulb if it will help with the Liberalism slingshot (getting Steel or Rifles) otherwise I settle in my SSC or Academy anthor city depending on beaker count.

 

[Silu]

I've never thought about not REXing out hard when isolated. Perhaps I should try slow expansion next time this happens. With cottage heavy econs, though, faster settling = faster cottages = faster growth = faster teching, no? Especially with no one to trade with until Optics. Then again, I've still not had an isolated game on Monarch (my current level), so I could be way off on this, too

Think about it this way. Normally you play the early game optimizing land area gained by the initial settling phase. In isolation you optimize tech rate instead, since that is the limiting factor. These different criteria cannot be met with identical tactics. Obviously this doesn't mean you can slack on the expansion, rather that you can slightly delay the not-so-good sites in order to acquire key techs such as Currency faster. This is amplified by the fact that you can't just expect to crawl to Aesthetics and backfill 5 useful techs with it.