Browd was kind enough to answer:
You are not alone on your landmass, but for the Liberty vs. Honor test you are trying to do, you probably want to re-roll. A few more details in the spoiler.
Before having looked at Browd's spoiler, I decided to go with his 'you probably want to re-roll'.
So I'm disregarding this start, but I'll still post a little report of what happened, I think I owe you that. Decisions I made here I'll probably make again, so comments you have can be helpful; I could take those with me for the next start.
When I posted the 4 starts I had to resist the urge to call names to one of them. I liked them all except one. Number 2 annoyed me; that river was probably a short one and then I like to settle either at the source or at the mouth of the river. Not inbetween and squeezing out otherwise good settling opportunities on either side. I wanted to move that settler, but then some important resources wouldn't be in the city's radius anymore. The start looked like a headache to me. But being a bit of a mind reader, I guessed you guys would pick that one, and yup, without fail you did!
Most of you would have settled on that hill, is what I'm also guessing. I like hill placement, normally I would move a settler for it, but I really didn't like the exact position of that hill on the river, but also I couldn't move much without sacrificing resources.
I ended up settling Constantinople off the hill, one tile closer to the river mouth. That gains a sheep, and more chance for a second city at the river mouth - that's in the fog, so it's guessing, but my guess was the river wasn't long.
For the capital itself of course next to the hill is weaker than on top of it, but both Liberty and Honour would start this way; for the test it didn't matter much where exactly I settled. I didn't split the game up in two games until turn 5, as both would start with a scout and researching Pottery. Pottery because Byzantium needs to beeline to a religion to profit from its unique ability, and with a scout I start nearly all the time.
The first warrior move was north and revealed a ruin. That turned out to be a map:
A map is not the best, but better to have a map at turn 1, revealing quite a chunk of the terrain, than at turn 25, revealing one additional water tile on top of what you've already revealed yourself.
Visible is a silk just outside of the capital's radius. There are nice resources around but the exact layout is a bit annoying; Hard to say how cities should have been placed here.
Another ruin is visible in the west, but I decide to continue exploring north with the warrior, leaving the ruin to pick up for the scout.
Turn 5 I split the game. I'm thinking the Liberty game is best off with an early monument, because it means an earlier settler, the Honour game gets a second scout. This scout can protect a worker while the warrior bothers with barbs, and can be used as a garrison unit later.
Turn 6; the warrior bags a culture ruin (both games). This means the first policy can be picked. That's Tradition starter for Honour, Liberty starter for Liberty.
Turn 7; bag Animal Husbandry (both games, the scout picked up the earlier spotted ruin in the west).
But I'm beginning to wonder why I haven't met anybody yet. This is unusual. I carry on for a few more turns. The warrior finds a barb camp and Kuala Lumpur in the north. The scout, or incase of the Honour game, the scouts, explore east.
At turn 11 in both directions my scouting units are spotting ruins. Here's where I stop. No other civ has been here. I must have huge space for myself, I'm likely alone and that's not what I want for my test.
This is what I'm seeing at this moment:
There's enough there for a strong game, even a
very strong game, I think. It looks like there's acres of space with plenty of good stuff around. I like Kuala Lumpur, and the ruins were good, but it's very isolated.
When I asked for someone to have a look at the whole map, Browd's advice sealed it. I believe taking one of the other starts is better for what I'm trying to do. Some people had mentioned 3 or 4 as their favourite. I'll check, might toss a coin.
What I found easy was alternating between both games. Play Honour until the end of turn 6, save, pick up Liberty that's still at turn 5, play that until the end of turn 7, save, pick up Honour again that's still at turn 6, play until 8, save, pick up Liberty again... That's the easy part!
They were very popular in Civ3/4 days but never really took off with Civ5.
