How do I deal with this start?

[Tiepolo]

Civ 4 Warlords, huge continents, 14 leaders, Prince difficulty, normal speed.

I'm playing as Shaka and managed to pop another scout to my south, thus allowing a huge amount of exploration, and after uncovering a few tiles, I nearly shat my pants with this start. So many good spots, but I would cripple my economy if I were to REX... Help please?

North:


Capital


South


Edit: Oh and the save:

 

[batavier]

Your capital is really short of production. It has only one hill and that one has gems. I thought you always get at least 3 hills, or is that only in BTS? To fix that I would put a city between the marble and the corn to the east, food and plenty of hills. Then grab the corn and the ivory to the south.

 

[UWHabs]

with the 2 gem squares, you can afford to REX. Especially since the Ikhanda helps with maintenance, it's not so bad.

I'd try to grab the wheat/pigs/marble as a very strong production city. The flood plains below could be a decent GP farm, but you can get a couple half-ok GP farms on the coast, with fish/wheat and fish/pigs.

You have lots of good commerce sites when you plow the jungle, so make sure you have a few production sites while you're at it. I'd consider workshopping most of the non-resource squares in your capital to make it a good bureaucracy capital.

But with nobody directly near you, rexing should be fine. Work towards calendar to make use of the dyes, and those and the gems should power your expansion.

 

[Tiepolo]

Alright thanks guys. So should I just plop down the production sites and GP farm first and then put the commerce cities down to pay for themselves?

 

[slobberinbear]

Have you researched Bronze Working? If not, you need to do so immediately to locate the copper. If so, then you need to tech Animal Husbandry and/or Iron Working to find the horses and iron, if any. Copper, horses, and iron drive your initial settlement decisions in most games, unless you start with a strategic resource in your BFC. You'll want iron working anyway for the jungle tiles.

Don't forget to make lots of cheap (Expansive) workers, too, especially to clear the jungle.

 

[Tiepolo]

Ok so I played through the founding of my second city, the production site, grabbing corn and marble.

Do I finish Ulundi's worker and dial up another settler for the GP farm position?



Also, Ulundi has pretty shoddy production with one hill. Arg. I like the workshop idea though.

Edit @bear: BW was finished, no copper in sight. I'll check again, currently hitting up AH.

 

[batavier]

Ok so I played through the founding of my second city, the production site, grabbing corn and marble.

Do I finish Ulundi's worker and dial up another settler for the GP farm position?

Is that your second worker? In that case yes. You really should have the
second worker ready before the second city is settled.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Alright thanks guys. So should I just plop down the production sites and GP farm first and then put the commerce cities down to pay for themselves?

In general if I have the luxury to chose, I settle into my future "ironworks city" (riverside, good food but not necessarily 2+ pigs, lots of trees for health) as a first priority. The reason for this is that the AI will chop everything where it builds, or at least more than should be chopped to allow the IW city the health it needs. Preferably the IW spot also has your copper or iron for getting the military units going. If that's in a different spot, I revert to "depends on the game", and if my neighbor is someone like Shaka, okay fine, IW can wait, we need axemen YESTERDAY. And yes, GP farm is soon after that because even if the AI doesn't REX into the top food pits, the barbarians will.