First city--settle on cows?

[brianb1974]

I love settling on marble/stone plains hills. And I'm willing to settle on plains elephants/stone/marble, unirrigated rice, sugar, or riverside silk/dye/wine.

But I've never settled on a cow before.

Would you?

And yes, I already moved the warrior, which is how I saw the gold.

It looks like south of the gold is desert. If there's a river down there with flood plains, there might be a good city that can use the gold. If not, that gold may be virtually unworkable.

So settle in place? Settle on cow? Or stall for a turn to get more information?

I'm leaning toward settling the cow.

 

[Kesshi]

brianb1974,

Yes, very much yes.

Grassland cows would make your city into a 3 food city, so you wouldn't lose everything that the cows would otherwise normally provide. The food from the 3 Coastal Clams could easily support more production by working the nearby hills, or go heavy commerce while working Cottaged Plains.

 

[Alrin Kharr]

You usually want to avoid settling on top of a good resource if you can avoid it, but in this case I would say absolutely settle on top of the cows. The extra food from settling there + the 3 clam tiles will provide you with enough food to work the gold tiles and skyrocket your early tech rate.

 

[bhavv]

On that map I would, you lose two from the cow, but will easilly be able to work both golds.

 

[azzaman333]

No, I would never settle on cows.

 

[Bleys]

No, I would never settle on cows.

I agree. Settle 2S or 2S+1E, past the cows, and use the clam in the North to feed a Jumbo City at some point. Lots of brown up there.

 

[DarkFyre99]

There are many resources I would almost never settle on, and cows are one of them... but in this case it would definitely be worth it, since it would net you two gold plains hills, and three crab to work them with.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can always just settle in place and put another city to work the gold nearby, using 1 of the cap's foods if necessary.

 

[Grey Fox]

No, I would never settle on cows.

Did you even look at the screenshot?

In this case I think it's a no-brainer. And you get 3 food in the city center so it's not all bad.

 

[DaveMcW]

Cows and 2S are both strong sites.

 

[PaulisKhan]

It wouldn't have hurt to have moved the warrior 1 SE before asking. The more information people have to work with, the better.
Moving the settler to the forest two south could be an option, but hard to say for sure without knowing what is down there (probably all desert)

-edit- Show us more of the map, it might be possible to get two great cities of that.

I see a clam+ele+ele+shared cow city

and a clam+clam+gold+gold+shared cow city

-2nd edit- the more I think about it, the less inclined I'd be to settle the cows at all.
3S+1E gets 5 major resources and 2 grassland hills, regardless of any other squares it might pick up, that's a very worthy capital. In addition it leaves a most excellent second city location with zero resources wasted, and shared cows for regrowing to happy caps.

 

[brianb1974]

@Paulis--would you be willing to spend a turn to get that additional information? The warrior started on the cows and has already moved SW, which revealed the gold mines.

 

[brianb1974]

repeat--delete

 

[bhavv]

A few turns wasted at the start of the game is insignificant if it is going to get you a city with 2 golds, a cow and 3 clams. On second looks, I would rather settle on the forest south of the cow.

 

[PaulisKhan]

@Paulis--would you be willing to spend a turn to get that additional information? The warrior started on the cows and has already moved SW, which revealed the gold mines.

ah of course, I should have realised that.

Personally I would move the settler S->SE onto the hill without any hesitation at all.
I've learned to love moving my settler at the start and now do it in every game, even if I end up settling where I started.
The only people I could understand not wanting to explore a little are people determined to get one of the early religions (but I am not one of these people).

The problem I have with the city location 2S of the settler is that it locks out the clam+cele+ele+shared cow city (that's not to say that you couldn't use the eles and clam in a different way).

If you don't like what you see you can move back to the cow and settle the next turn, only losing you one turn. I consider the risk of not finding anything and having to move back to be well worth the chance of utilising one of the best resource tiles (grassland cow) in the early game.

 

[Kesshi]

The problem I have with the city location 2S of the settler is that it locks out the clam+cele+ele+shared cow city (that's not to say that you couldn't use the eles and clam in a different way).

PaulisKhan,

2S has zero ocean tiles.

 

[azzaman333]

Did you even look at the screenshot?

In this case I think it's a no-brainer. And you get 3 food in the city center so it's not all bad.

I'd settle 1S of the cows, leaving the northern clams for the ivory later.

 

[Gliese 581]

I'd probably settle 2S here.

 

[Sian]

wouldn't move 2s ... as far as i can see theres desert south of the gold titles

 

[azzaman333]

Desert, who cares? You've got a whole bunch of strong tiles to work anyway.