Here is what im thinking.
Lots of farms in every city. Food resources and floodplains equals scientists (will be running caste system and representation (only making pyramids if i have access to stone, takes too long otherwise)).
Grassland and hills equals production. Hills have a higher hammer yield than specialists, so food is less important here. That and the limit on the number of engineers effectively gives production cities a lower useful food cap than the others.
The first city with high initial food production i found after my capital will make priest specialists and otherwise work the land until i get a few great prophets so i can make the special building for whatever religions i found. After i get enough of those it switches to regular production as per above.
I need 2 production cities. One that focuses on building wonders and great people, and another that focuses on military units. The rest will focus on science.
Ironworks goes in the military factory, as the other city should have enough hammers to build most of the wonders i want (it will likely be my capital so thats a 50% hammer bonus (except in wartime (which i dont plan on doing before i build up a solid infrastructure))). There is such a thing as too many hammers in a wonder city (once they are all built), but you can never have too many in the military city (especially since great engineer wonders can be built here if i dont feel like fighting).
On great people:
I need a few great prophets right out of the gate, which is why im building them. I DONT specifically need them after that, which is why i dont build a great prophet wonder in the city that makes them.
Any extras i get will be settled in my military factory since they provide a nice amount of free hammers.
I need a great scientist for every city. This will eventually come on its own since im running a lot of mostly scientist specialists, so ill just be patient here.
After that, all the great people are on par. Engineers and prophets will be settled in my military city, scientists in my top science city, spies will give me espionage for the first test subject for my war machine, artists will help border wars if i need it and be bulbed otherwise, and merchants are of course universally useless (they need some kind of boost imo (especially the normal specialist merchants)).
Still deciding on leader traits but i have the rest of the day for that before i begin.
This will be my first real game. I just dusted it off a week-ish ago after having it shelved for years. Curious how its gonna go.
