Talking about second city, do people usually focus on a prodcution city or a food city when they build their second city? I find that trying to judge this based on what I currently have with my capital is a bit hard. The capital is such a great spot usually that I could do either hammers or cottage there. So I'm left wondering if I should settle a hammer or food city as my second city, unless my capital is in a really obvious floodplain-food-rich area or something like that and I need production, but as I said, capitals are usually so well located...
It sounds like you started to answer your own question. IMO, settle your 2nd and 3rd cities as counterpoints to each other. If your capital is high in production
(and you choose to specialize it as such), then your 2nd and 3rd cities should be high in
and
.
When the capital can go any direction, that should make it
easier to choose your 2nd and 3rd city sites. If your capital is high in
, and you can't find any other spot high in food suitable to run specialists, then the
other land (or the lack of other land, rather) answered your question for you.
I also like the first few cities to be tight for lower maintenance -- which usually allows for an extra early city or one distant city for a resource grab.
On that note, there are a lot of questions left unanswered by the fog, but this is my take on it as it lies here now:
The capital has too many plains to become a 'monster' capital any time soon. It's only redeeming quality to me are the Forests begging to be chopped around it.
Cottage spam it and make it a
-
hybrid of sorts.
The Pigs/Wheat/Stone city has decent production and enough food to support a little whipping. Hook up the Stone and use Londres' Forests to chop out the Great Wall, Stonehenge and/or the Pyramids (the latter being a cheaper alternative to solving the
problems you're likely to run into soon).
The Double-Corn/Fish city has great +
. If you're Elizabeth, you'd be wrong not to settle this city soon. With Caste System and a Lighthouse, you'll be able to run 6 specialists at population 9! (Without Londres' Corn, you're stuck with 4 specialists at population 6.)
The Sheep/Marble city is essentially a Marble-grabber. Yes, I realize it's one-off-the-coast and has very low food, but it's placement assumes there's nothing better hiding in the fog. It has a good amount of cottage-able Grasslands north of it to make it a viable early placement.
The Flood Plains city depends on what's hiding in the fog. One of those placements is probably one-off-the-coast.
I usually make a grab for the Oracle, but even on Noble, it might be a stretch ... you'd have to settle Sheep/Marble first and chop out the Oracle, but I'm not sure it would net you as much gain as just settling good cities quickly.
If it was me, I'd settle Grey > Flood Plains > Yellow > Green. (Bring your Western Warrior down along the coast to scout more around the Marble and Sheep. Bring your Eastern Warrior to scout more around the Flood Plains and to escort the 2nd Settler there).
-- my 2
