On this particular practice map, I think your placement of the third city is putting your strategy at a disadvantage compared with my capital placement. Who knows what the real map will bring. Yes, I didn't give much thought to third city placement, as it's almost certainly going to be map dependent. Just wanted to show that the third could be settled that far from the capital that early and still get other critical things done as well. (Understand that I need to test some more to get the Oracle by turn 43.) There may be a strategically important 3rd site that we want to reach out to before backfilling cities near the capital. Yes. But in terms of maximization through turn 42 on our practice map, saving a 2nd/3rd city site on the north coast seems like a winning move, because at pop2, it can work corn and fish and build workers in 4 turns and settlers in 6-7 turns. The capital quickly runs out of use for 2 high food tiles, so having 2 different cities sharing the 2 corn and 1 fish works well. Not, of course, if we settle on the corn. Settling on corn loses its advantage quite early because after 2 corn are farmed in my game, its food is the same as yours. But how many turns are you behind? That's why I posted my save for comparison. I suspect your approach is better, but I remain concerned that it lacks flexibility, plus a couple of turns early might be critical. For example, with your capital location, could you research AH (given no copper) in time for a second city site, and still build the Oracle in a timely manner? I'll try to do that with corn settle and see what sacrifices (like skipping Pottery and/or AH) have to be made.
AH is probably the best early tech to save until after Preisthood. Wheel is very important on quick speed. Pottery gives us the ability to 2pop whip a granary for overflow into Oracle. We could pop whip anything couldn't we? A second settler for the third city might time out well, for instance. And wheat/cow/copper site really should build an early granary. I don't see any urgency in looking for horses. I'd much rather have copper. Agree with that, but we may not have copper nearby, so we need to test whether/how we can get the Oracle built by turn 43 and still research AH.
I'll post a save shortly where I settle the cow/wheat/copper site first and corn/fish site second so we can compare results. I'll also try to match your 5 workers and copper hookup. Comparing results is a good. Think all future testing should get the Oracle built by 43.
Edit: I've downloaded the starting save to have a closer look. I think our practice map matches what we can see in the real map. So what are people's thoughts on the scout move? North to reveal the coast or south to reveal the land? Either way could give us useful info about capital placement. If we find more seafood north, I think that gives stronger incentive to save the coast for a GP farm. If we find coast to the south, that might recommend against a southern settler move. More river or hills to the south would make a southern settler move better.
