Starting Position with floodplains, plain cows and forest, What to do?

[Cryp18Struct]

Hi!
I generated a start position (pangea, arid climate) where i am unsure what the correct approach is.
I randomly got Ethopians(hunting, mining)/Zara Yaqob (creative, organized)
settings:

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Position:

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My first move was to move the scout to the northern forested hill:

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Settling on the marble feels like i am giving up too many floodplains, so i simply settled in place:
(not sure if correct resoning)

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My biggest problem is: What techs do i research and what does the worker do?
I tried this start with different approaches
(1: Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry
2: Agriculture -> Bronze Working: farm floodplain, chop forests and ignore cows),
and none felt right.
How would you play this?

 

[sampsa]

I'd 100% settle on the marble, it's just so much faster at the cost of 3 capital fps but also saves a forest and a river grass (which is IMO not a worse tile than marble really). The tech path is indeed a bit clumsy, so those bare hills help a bit. AH-BW like a boss, settler at size 2 to work unimproved fps, then workers chop more settlers to settle all that nice land.

 

[scheines]

My gut was to SIP but after reading sampsa’s post I think settling on marble just might be better. The extra hammer just feels too helpful to pass up. You can still get 3 FPS, cow, and various other riverside tiles. Plus, it’s not like your capital will be able to work more than 7-8 tiles for a very long time anyways.

I’m not sure if I’d want AH first; big investment for plains cow. Though, it’s your only food, so it might be foolish to pass that up.

This is why I hate non-agriculture starts

 

[Fippy]

Agree with settle on marble, but Agri - AH - BW for me.
One of those cases where Agri isn't that expensive (makes AH 20% cheaper) and a farmed floodplains would be helpful.

 

[sampsa]

I think especially the lower difficulty level we go, the better skipping agri is (since expanding faster is so lucrative). Not sure really if on immortal skipping agri is better or not, but intuitively I'd skip it.

 

[SittinDown]

Fippy and sampsa, have great advice.

Settling on the marble feels like i am giving up too many floodplains

• That's a huge river. You can probably fit a few cities around these rivers - chop up the forests on the edges of the river. Probably better than trying to get an uber - bureau capital.
  
• Too many FP's can make it tough to get your settlers out fast.
• Even on the marble, you'll eventually have 8 good river cottages, vs 9 where you originally settled.

 

[Cryp18Struct]

Thank you all for your input.

I'd 100% settle on the marble, it's just so much faster at the cost of 3 capital fps but also saves a forest and a river grass (which is IMO not a worse tile than marble really). The tech path is indeed a bit clumsy, so those bare hills help a bit. AH-BW like a boss, settler at size 2 to work unimproved fps, then workers chop more settlers to settle all that nice land.

This is something i would never have considered, but it seems to be a great choice.
This way i have settler + second worker out at T36, compared to
only 1 settler done at T37 (Agri, AH, BW)