In the beginning there was Moscow.
Well actually in the beginning was much discussion about where to settle and how to actually play this game.
There was no real consensus on a starting spot but a slight preference to move the settler 1S for Moscow.
However, there was a bit more consensus about our plan for the game. There was no real support for milking the score, or even playing for maximum points but there was much support for trying to get as early a domination win as possible. We have three things to use to help us along, Peter, Russia and Vanilla.
Vanilla has the funny situation that if you avoid researching Masonry, you can bulb Civil Service from a Great Prophet and Nationalism from a Great Artist. So our plan was to build an early Oracle for Code of Laws, use the resulting Great Prophet to bulb Civil Service and head research towards Music (which is required for Cossacks) as quickly as possible to get the free Great Artist to bulb Nationalism.
Russia has, of course, the mighty (Vanilla un-nerfed) Cossack, strength 18, +50% vs mounted units, the greatest unit in Civ IV history.
Peter has the Philosophical trait and as we are intending to bulb many techs (Civil Service, Education and Philosophy), this will be handy.
There was similar indecision as to the site of our second city but this was the result.
At this stage Hatty started REXing in our direction pretty heavily and she would eventually beat us to 2 of our intended city sites.
The Oracle was completed for Code of Laws.
A third city was built getting use of the 6 food grassed floodplain
And a fourth city was put north of St Petersburg to grab the seafood.
We only learned Animal Husbandry after getting it in a trade after Alphabet was researched and discovered that there are no nearby horsies. Hatty has already beaten us to the nearest, so we are hoping to grab the ones to the west.
Around 500BC we got our Great Prophet and bulbed Civil Service and immediately revolted to Bureaucracy.