nerovats said:
Couple of questions, not saying right or wrong, why:
-trade with first contact
-get pottery first
-buy 2 workers
-were there 2 workers in London to buy
-not trade alphabet
-why put slider at 30% if 10% will prevent riots too
I saw the questions at church. I am part of the tech crew and was checking the site before instrument rehearsal started. Just got home.
trade with first contact Well, why not?

The Vikings had something we did not. It could help us get something before others could and give us a monopoly on that tech.
If you have guidelines that you follow on trading at first contact I would like to know them. Mine are 1) do they have something we want or need? and 2) is the price too high? What else should I be aware of when trading on first contact?
(When I read this, it sounds like a demand. It is not. It is a question.)
get pottery first Again, Pottery + Writing = Map Making, which would allow us to make galleys and explore the seas. It would also let us buy and sell maps between civs.
buy two workers I bought them to cripple England. In time, they will pay for themselves since they have no gpt upkeep fee. And together they will help us improve Spain. But the main thought was to get them out of England and into Spain.
were there two workers in London to buy Yes, which surprised me. One worker would be 'normal', two was unexpected.
not trade alphabet Alphabet leads to Writing, which we are learning. I wanted to keep the path to Map-Making closed to everyone else. I made the guess that we would try go get Map-Making quickly, since we could get a monopoly on it. If we did decide to do that, trading Alphabet to the Viking would allow them to research Writing and they could beat us to Map-Making. Plus, they may have been researching Alphabet already, and then could switch to Writing and learn it faster than we could.
I thought that to trade Alphabet to the Vikings could ruin our chances to get a monopoly on Map-Making, even though we had not decided to research Map-Making.
There is an article on what the AI will research next. I need to read that again.
why put slider at 30% if 10% will prevent riots too I was afraid that the next player would not pay attention to citizen happiness and have a city go into revolt if the slider was at 10%. In fact, I was afraid that if I had had seveal more turns to play, I would have had a city in revolt with the slider at 10%.
For myself, I have to make an effort to check to keep the citizens happy. While it should be part of what I do every turn, it is not. I feared that the next player would have my same weakness.
Last Thoughts on These Questions
I hope this explains why I decided what I did decide. And I hope that it is understood that I am exlplaining and not defending. My decisions may not have been the best ones. I may have lacked some understanding of how the world works at Emperor. But with what I did know I tried to make the best decisions that I could.
I am very interested in comments and feedback.