This brings me to what I am still concerned about
I now think Coppertownski should go to Thrallia's site and here's what my math tells me.
1.Simon's spot only has 2 hammers and no better growth potential until the seafood is hooked up. An obe costs 45H (23turns?), It takes 15turns to expand the culture, then 7turns of mining. Thats approximately 45 turns after settling
beforewe can even start an ax.This presumes a worker can be transfered at least 6 turns early to get the road built to the copper. Can we afford that long of a delay?
2. Thrallia's spot will never grow fast but farely quickly gives us +3
and copper is hooked in 7+2(road totown)+2Road to sea (hooks Coppertownski to our empire. With a lighthouse slow growth will still give us a modest amount of commerce from the sea tiles.
I am preparing to duck for cover.
How's my math?
Fairly good marks for the maths. Zero marks for not noticing that I'd already posted up the maths earlier in the thread!
I'd assumed we'd chop a hill-forest for the obelisk, which shaves its build time to 13 turns. Otherwise I agree with your maths except I thought mining was 5 turns not 7 (I may well be wrong on that though, memorizing worker-action times isn't my strongest point). And you can build the road after the obelisk, while waiting for the culture to expand so you don't need the worker there in advance (That option isn't there for the other spot btw). So the worker can follow the settler/warrior a few turns later.
IIRC I figured the
difference between turns for my spot and Thrallia's spot for getting copper hooked up was 25 turns (if we don't want the worker there 3 turns in advance to build the road for the Thrallia spot, 28 turns otherwise). To me, that looks significant but manageable on epic speed (It may increase the importance for us to get archery in the meantime, assuming horses don't turn up).
I don't want to downplay the time difference, I think it is significant. And I can't deny I feel nervous about a city there defended only by warriors during that time. How significant? Well, I think it's pretty unlikely that we'll be at war with another civ during that time, since our nearest neighbours share a continent and so are more likely to go to war with each other, and also because I don't know precisely what the minimum date the AI can declare war is, but I can't recall ever seeing it happen much before 0AD, so I strongly suspect (without being absolutely certain) that even on 'my' spot we'll have the copper before we have any war on our hands. If so then the real risk is from barbs. Archers probably can already appear. I don't know how long we'd have to wait for axemen, though I can't offhand recall ever seeing any on monarch much before 1000BC. There has been some 'informed speculation' in other threads in the past that axemen can only appear either when all civs know bronze working or when a barb city has researched it. *If* that is true, then the huge number of AI opponents may make that condition a lot harder to reach, but this is just speculation (More likely that at least one civ somewhere won't research it early, and less space for barb cities to appear). At any rate, if we go for the high-food spot we will have at least a 25-turn longer period of having to be very careful of barbs - especially since, unlike Moscow, Coppertownski will be too small to poprush a defence in urgent need. Of course we could virtually (or completely?) eliminate that issue by stationing another couple of warriors to fogbust, if we feel we can spare the production to build them.
Then there's the long-term issue. The way I see it, it's not just that Coppertownski will have slow growth in the non-food spot, it'll be that it'll have *zero* growth if we want to get any kind of decent production out of it. The copper tile looks to me like plains-hill. That means no food. That means if you work it, you have zero growth. Full stop. The only way out is to to use another tile that can give you > 2 food. But other than the fish there aren't any. The only other way to get one is to farm over at least one gem instead of mining it, but to do that you'd have to irrigate a chain right back from the river near Moscow, after researching civil service (not gonna happen). Or we can keep Coppertownski on very low growth by not working the copper, perhaps working a hill plus however many gem squares it's grown to. That doesn't look like a very viable city to me. Or you can use it as a commerce city, and just agree not to work the copper at all, except in emergencies, just work the gems plus sea tiles, in which case the city will grow moderately fast and will be viable, but only as a commerce city (and looking at the rest of our island, we're going to have plenty of those!). OTOH if you can work the fish, you have, eventually, a half-decent production city (generating commerce from the gems too) - not outstanding but fair - and that's likely to be a rarity on this map.
So that's the kind of rationale that leads me to strongly favour the site that picks up the fish (and is the reason I picked it that site). I know it is balancing a short term risk against a long term gain, so I wouldn't claim that it is definitely the best spot - it is a matter of opinion. And it's always possible I may have missed something in my reasoning.
Sorry I seem to have rambled far too long, but hey, you implied you like the explanations ;-)
My favourite is Simons' site still. Sams' suggestion is too food poor for my taste. With the fishies it has at least some food supply.
I will download and play in about 24hrs.
I would agree to go for AH first. It will take a bit until we have a settler and the galley for Coppertownski. Then we can squeeze in Myst which is pretty cheap. I am quite curious whether we have some horsies around.
