Truly, a sign that Paul is the lisan-al-gaib; our starting position turns out to be excellent, with etching resin within the BFC, and so little land to the south that we would not have been able to get a decent city from that groundwater should we have settled the 1W position.
The village is a useless map.
I focus on mining -> water transportation, since we'll need to get the wells sooner, and then I'll grab mysticism.
Wormsign!
The mighty sandworms of Arrakis pose a significant threat for those who venture out into the desert. Beware, weapons are almost useless against these great beasts. Only with significant aerial bombardment can be safely destroyed. And even then, there are always more worms.
For now, we don't have any desert-capable craft anyway, so we can ignore this guy.
Some excellent terrain to the west; cactus, spiked paintbrush, and LOTS of water and mesa.
Our neighbors, the filthy Tleilaxu. These masters of genetics are not to be trusted - they are xenophobic in the extreme, and already follow some strange faith of their own. We shall have peace for now.
The fact that:
a) They are quite some distance away (13 tiles) and
b) The Tleilaxu are incredibly annoying to be at war with because their genetic plagues
mean that a blitz is pretty much out of the question (the plagues weaken our units and spread rapidly through our cities and armies, only by making peace can we recover). So lets focus on expanding in the early game, and maybe snag the Aql Monument for some early great prophet points. Then get Mahdi religion, build a big stack of Mahdi Fighters, and go kick them in.
The one nice thing about the Tleilaxu is that, because of their religion, no-one else likes them either. So people won't complain too hard when we eventually butcher them.
We have also not managed to find *any* tribal villages on our island (apart from the starting one), and only now encounter the Tleilaxu, who will probably already have taken anythnig further west of us.
I send 1 soldier home, in case some smuggler barbarians start showing up, since we're not going to get any tribal villages anyway.
We develop mining, and start working on water transportation.
The Shai-Hulad religion is founded in a distant land - probably the Bene Gesserit. They do so love manipulating native religions...
We will have to decide whether to try to found a city at the polar ice-cap. The advantages are that this will give the ice resource, which allows the ice seller building, which is +3 water.
But I suggest we don't; its a long way from where we are (we don't seem to be particularly close to the pole) and takes a long time to get there, which slows early empire expansion, and we'll settle less of our island (and the tlielaxu are already the toughest early foe we could have). Plus, disaster if a thopter with a settler gets eaten by a worm along the way. And the polar cities arent' very useful in the early game, because they are so hammer poor.
Our entire island; if there is anything else, its blocked by the Tleilaxu (or past a very narrow isthmus in the far north).
Looks like we can grab some nice stuff early, and then we'll have to fight or use thopters to get anything else.
Our soldier gets trapped by Tleilaxu culture on the west of the island, so I leave him to monitor their expansion. He won't accomplish anything, and eventually will start costing upkeep, at which time we should disband him.
Tech water transportation and mysticism. Built a water cache to speed growth, then queued up a couple of soldiers and a settler.
My suggestions for city sites (red circles):
We'll probably only get 2 of them, the Tleilaxu will frustrate us in the west. Should we found 2 cities before assaulting them, or just one? I think two will probably work.
I retire, leaving Slvynn to found our next city, try for the Monument, and start preparing for conquest. The worker can either mine the mesa, or built the insect farm.
