0-2550
First steps, shut off lux as we have only one citizen in all our towns, so no unhappiness problems.
Play with the map controls to get a better view and realize we are at the outer edge of a shield and food paradise.
Now for a little analysis of the neighbors:
Japan is religious and militaristic with a MA UU requiring only one resource (iron).
India is commercial and religious with a MA UU requiring no resources.
And if I remember correctly both UU's are upgrades from horses!
So, both neighbors will put a premium on cultural knowledge, India will value things like Math and Currency higher, while Japan will put a value on the Military knowledge. So we have lots of choices as to a research path. Neither are scientific..All of this tempts me to pursue the Writing to Philosphy gambit, thinking to trade Writing for Iron Working and Polytheism and taking Monarchy as the Philsophy benefit (assuming we get there before any other nation).
In between all this musing switch the temple build at Ugarit to a worker, and swap citizens around at the home towns to boost output and protect growth (moving the citizen at Hasttusas to the mined tile and the citizen at Tarsus to the wheat) start a granary in Hattusas, and let Tarsus finish its worker.
Set research to Writing at 20% (50turns).
1-2510
Found Riverbend at...riverbend. Start barracks. Worker moves to road the game tile. Scout and warriors start boxing the compass. Conscript in the far north finds another village. With the extra commerce from the new town crank up the research to 100%, Writing now due in 26. Hattusas grows and the new citizen gets assigned to the irrigated plains. This is going to take some fiddling to get the granary on growth to match up. Granary in 14, growth in seven.
Tarsus builds it worker and it too starts a granary
2-2470BC Northern warrior greets the friendly Bantu who donate maps. His next move will be due east to the coast and then homeward. Worker from Tarsus heads to the forest for a little lumberjacking. I was smoking wacky tabaccy when I assigned the worker at Hattusas to roading. He should be chopping trees too.
3-2430
Meet a Ghuzz conscript in the near north. Warrior heads south towards home.
Meet a Russian (scientific and expansionist with a late MA UU that is a stone killer requiring saltpeter and horses) on a vector towards Ugarit and India. Hope Catherine is disposed to be friendly as her warrior is four turns closer to Ugarit than the warrior I have inbound. She has gold but no knowledge to trade. I don't like trading away Alphabet and Masonry yet but may have to soon as the Russians will meet the Indians.
And her warior moves away from Ugarit and the Indian town, which appears to be the only one. The Ghuzz barbarian moves northward away from the scouting warrior.
4-2390
Continue exploring north, west and east.
5-2350
Continue exploring and find the Russian border in the really far west, with a warrior settler pair ready to move east.
6-2310
Explore some more
7-2270
Exploring. Forest chop puts ten shields toward the granary at Tarsus and reveals a BG. Worker starts a mine.
Russians pop a hut and learn Masonry.
8-2230
We do the same in the north and collect more gold...
Tarsus grows and the lux tax goes to 10% but the new citizen pulls in enough gold to offset the increase. New citizen is put to work on the game forest and growth will now come in seven and the granary in 5. Worker at Hattusas finshes road and moves to forest outside Tarsus.
9-2190
Japan has learned Mysticism.
10-2150
The scout in the north has found a yellow border to his east. The warrior in the west is tracing the Russian border. The warriors north of the homeland are scoping the coast and heading home.
Riverbend will grow in one just as an MP arrives.
Granary at Tarsus will finish in ~10 turns with some help from growth, lumberjacking and a mine. Fiddle with the citizen assignments so that the growth happens after the granary build. Hattusas is on course to complete its granary in 3 and grow in five. When the granaries finish at both cities, train a worker at each, then set Hattusas to producing a settler. Time the worker to the population growth. The worker at Hattusas should start the needed development towards a settler farm. The workers at Tarsus should start improving the ground to support five productive citizens. The sixth can go fishing. As we get closer to writing try adjusting the science budget downwards so as not to waste gold. Also the lux slider will have to go up as Tarsus and Hattusas grow so the waste of gold is self-limiting. And the production of a worker first will relieve the upward pressure on the lux tax.
The objectives of the worker team should be to develop terrain as citizens become available to work it, don't bother to develop terrain before a citizen is available to work it.
The Russian settler team planted Novgorod due east of the Russian borders.
A note on trading: don't be too eager. If the deal isn't rich enough let it go. Only make a trade when you have something to trade for it down the line, in other words if you need gold to close a deal for knowledge find another party to make a deal with to acquire the gold, then do the deal, then move on the third, and the fourth, trading tech for tech, try not to trade knowledge only for gold. Don't sweat it if we are third to learn something, we know enough people that the others don't that trading at fourth and fifth will be very profitable. To get an approximation of tech value you can crank the science budget up to 100%, then multiply the science expense in the F1 screen by the turns required. This will give you a starting point for negotiation, but you will always pay more than that for a monopoly technology. (I forget what the factor is at Monarch just that it is more.) Remember the other guys won't call you if they have something to sell, if they run into you in the forest they might put something on offer but it is usually not to your advantage, so check in every turn. Persistence pays.
... never saw any analysis here.
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