Having looked at the image more closely, there is definitely a floodplain 2W1S of the settler - the dark green on the western side of the river looks definitive to me.
Also note the change in forest type just south of our settler. Unless it's been edited, that might indicate that we are in a northern latitude, and so perhaps want to bias towards settling further south.
I'm still not sure why the 1NW preference except for those two reasons:
*Preserve that grass tile 1W
*Gamble half of uncovered plain tiles in original SIP BFC (2N or warrior or 2N1W)
In fact, going 1W means more riverside tiles than 1NW.
The only risk is to see along that additional plain forest a FPH and another so-so cottage tile.
Oh, true I forgot 1NW means a larger gamble on grabbing additional high output resource than 1W.
Hmmm there's a lot of competing effects here. If our capital doesn't have another food resource, then dry corn + FPfarm (perhaps with the corn shared a bit with the fish city) is pretty underwhelming. If so, we probably will do little whipping in the capital and will beeline cottages, using plains cottages to throttle growth at the happiness limit. Early on, our happiness cap might be 5, so in the capital that's FP farm and four river plains cottages, producing 5
and 10
per turn from tiles, before they grow to hamlets. As the happiness limit grows, we add in more grassland cottages easily. Not wanting to whip saves needing to get a granary in the short term, too. We give the corn and fish to some coastal city, who can do a good job of whip-based REX, or REX plus some wonder(s) of our choice from the overflow. This sets up for a good bureaucratic capital (academy from scientists from the third city).
From this point of view, an initial settler move 1W is superior to 1NW because it makes more river tiles available in the long term, losing only the chance that the deep tiles accessed by 1NW are good ones.
Frankly, the Hemispheres maps I've seen so far have been quite food poor, so slavery might just not be very good. That turn of revolt takes a turn off the victory, more or less... However, organizing this coastal city that *does* have two food resources might be just the thing we want to drive our REX.
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True, true. I forgot that aspect of forming two LC's. Still the city that may welcome GLH could be a city with few means to produce more wonders.
RULE #1 for that game in rising LCs: Culture slider is never and never touch. Science or gold.
I'm really wondering about Oracle:
Going for a fast writing (creative) after religious path and it synergizes with CoL for more GScientists. Given the low cost of libraries, all high food city should get its own library.
I'm quite skeptical about having enough food for this kind of conventional approach to the game. On a food-poor map, I think cottages win out over both specialists and whipping.
But the wonder we need at all cost! is the Mids along HG and forges. Don't forget we have to ensure ourselve that GEngineer fast. No gambling at 40-60% where the RNG screws the whole game. Sushi doesn't survive well (at least in a technological leap sense) without its alter ego mining.
Once LC will be likely the city that welcomes Mids+HG and perhaps Hagia Sophia.
Meh. If we go for a strategy that will pop lots of great people, then yes, we have to work hard at our GEng (and probably beeline Economics for its GM). However, if we're not pushing hard for GPeople for bulbing, then our capital can build a forge and run an engineer and that will probably pop in time (but we should crunch the numbers when we're at this kind of decision point - how many GSci will a NE+GLib pop before a single engineer will pop a GEng? Probably too many). If we're not building GLib, then there's no need to build other wonders just to get the GEng at 500AD 80 turns early...
If we do look at GLib, then chopping Pyramids in our capital becomes more attractive - for Rep (mostly for happiness), for the GEng, for the option of Police State, and for the option to use early Universal Suffrage. Building a decent wonder without the resource is probably better than settling poor land or waging an early war against an AI capital 20+ tiles away... Seriously - there's lots of room on these Hemisphere maps.
between them. So far, my map experience suggests this might not happen too regularly.
