I've had a good long look on the map, this will be a challenging game! Very few good city locations, not much food, health and happy resources. Everything covered in fallout of course. Not a good cottage map, we'll need other approaches.
Here's a list of questions/issues, in a somewhat random order:
- unit movement?
- GLH, yes or no?
- techs?
- city spots?
- is there more food in the copper bay?
- is there a northern connection to France? (I've tried 'the radar' a bit, apparently not. There's more land there however to explore.)
- should we gift Sailing to Gandhi? (that might get him to Cautious, enabling trade. The downside is that he has Masonry already, setting him for the GLH.)
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This will be a very difficult game, I think we should play it tight, aiming for the immediate or potentially immediate benefit at all times. Let's look at the opportunities we have right now.
Watery map seemingly calls for the GLH, but I feel that's a trap. WB revealed torched islands with no food and we have very few good land tiles around. GLH value is nothing with 2 cities, 3 commerce with 3, 8 with 4, 10 with 5, 2n with n. (Assuming only domestic trade routes.) Things could get better with foreign trade routes, then again maybe we won't get them. It's a dubious long term investment. On the other hand, we have immediate benefits we could go for. Here's a list of goals as I see them:
Pillage De Gaulle
Most likely, we're the only team having that archer out. At this point, we're leading in power by far. Let's take advantage of the choices we made for maximal value. The original plan was to pull back the archer to our second city spot and to use the chariot for the attack. The thing is, our archer is much closer to De Gaulle and he doesn't have copper connected yet! That's an opportunity we should go for.
Unit movement proposal:
Archer towards De Gaulle. It's important to stay off flat land if there are combat archers around that could attack. Ideal scenario: his copper tile is on a hill and we park our archer there.
Chariot to that nearby hill to have a look and then straight to De Gaulle, following the archer. Chariot can explore the copper bay for food along the way.
This plan implies that we'll need another chariot northwest for exploration and also something to garrison the second city.
EDIT: there's another option, see below.
Third city location
There's a nice pig site nearby, but De Gaulle has his culture across the canal on it. We have to settle the spot asap to get the pig in the inner circle to fight his culture. The longer we wait, more French tile culture to fight. We can't decide yet though, there could be more food near copper.
Cottaging the capital
The map is extremely low in commerce, but the capital has 2 river grasslands. When Ivory is hooked, the city can grow to size 7. Instead of working the plains hammer tile, let's work a cottage instead. In fact, we don't have to improve that tile at all in that case, we can move our workers to the second city spot immediately!
This move also gives us the option to build another chariot after the library before the third worker. 3 turns to build, allowing the first chariot to keep exploring northwest and using the new one to pillage De Gaulle. Let's go for the opportunity at hand!
Getting the first GS for the Academy
We've discussed that, the designated Yar place is good for that. One note about building the library, we shouldn't whip it. The goal is to build the library and to get to size 4 asap to hire two scientists, whipping would delay growth.
Tech order
This map needs Alphabet, Currency and Civil Service. The tentative plan would be Agriculture->Pottery->Alphabet->Currency. Pottery to get capital cottages, Alphabet to build research in our third/fourth city and Currency to switch to wealth to keep the slider high for capital Library and Academy. Currency also has half of the GLH effect, 1 free trade route.
We should look for trade opportunities with Gandhi, assuming he's nowhere around to be pillaged. With GLH off, we're free to gift Sailing. This might get him to Cautious, enabling open borders and trade.
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As you can see, skipping the GLH allows for many other things that work in synergy in our favor. Kcd, I think it's best for the game pace that you plan and play the next set as well. This is the point where we have to plan our general strategy, hopefully the discussions won't take that long after that.
I'm certain I worked the cows as soon as they were pastured.
If we rush DG, we'll need to consider where the next city goes very carefully.
