What do you do with this start?

[SevenSpirits]

All right, so I'm trying my 1.5th immortal game (in the first, I realized partway through I'd made a mistake with the settings) and I need some help.

Keep in mind that I am the kind of person who almost loves reading strategy articles more than playing, so I don't have a lot of experience despite immortal being the right level for me.

This is with Hemispheres, all normal settings except non-tiny islands and varied continents. As you will see, it looks like I got one of the "varied" ones. I'm playing Frederick and started Bronze Working -> Fishing -> Archery -> Agriculture. I'm not sure about the archery, but there was no copper in sight at the time.

Anyway, here's the situation:





So, it turns out no one can come steal my land... and as far as I can tell, that land sucks. Half of it is either desert or tundra. Now, there are some good areas. And I certainly have a lot of room, and no time pressure to take it all immediately.

However, I have not been in a situation this isolated before, and I could really use some help in deciding where to place my cities. Any suggestions?

 

[Jet]

Send a workboat to scout the south.
Settle a production city on the river, then the copper, then the 3 fishing villages. If you're isolated, pack them in tighter than that.
Mysticism, AH, Writing, Meditation, Priesthood, Monarchy.
Cottage the capital.

 

[DaveMcW]

Capital - cottages
Interior city on grassland hill - cottages
Build a coastal city everywhere there is seafood.

 

[lordofcivs]

Yeah,

Regenerate the Map.

 

[CivSetä]

Mediocre start, but will do. As DaveMcW said, put second city on grassland hill and cottagespam. Rest of your land is more or less crappy, just grab resources. You should consider running hybrid economy, remember that you can run two scientists if you have one seafood tile in fat cross. Two academies maybe and then bulbing? Explore south for more fertile land and to make sure if you really are isolated.

 

[Ruler]

I think it's bit too early for second city. I could get my first cottages up or scientist and last not least second worker before first settler.

I hope you keep playing.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks for the feedback, all.

Ruler, I built my second city two turns after the screenshots. Since I'm organized, it's only -3 gpt and it makes 2 right off the bat, so it seemed easily worth it. I did switch the capital (which had made no investment in settler #2) to a workboat, and scouted with it. Turns out I'm alone on an island!

Roughly followed tech order from Jet and city placement of Dave. Used both GSs on Academies, founded Taoism without bulbing, got Bureaucracy and switched both it and Pacifism simultaneously.

It's now 560 AD. I have five cities, and am about to found the top right one. There is a fish four north of crabs + deer, so I'm founding on an island in between them. By the way, the two other fishing villages both turned out to have iron.

Now here's the situation: with me not paying attention to GP priorities, I skipped Alphabet because there was no one around. This makes it a bit harder to bulb Education. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd want to. It will only take about 15 turns to research at no deficit, at my current rate of about 170 beakers. (Paper is 5.) So one option is I could go straight for those.

I was kind of leaning towards Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Optics instead though. This will take about 15 turns.

Additionally, I just got a Great Scientist, and in 12 turns, I will get a Merchant. I'm not sure what to do with them yet.

 

[volfan37132]

You have four wines in your capital. My guess is you are isolated.
Therefore you won't be trading wine anytime soon. I would cottage
three of the four wines. They make such good cottage locations and
put one winery on the other location. I would put my second city
two NW of the ivory between the desert hill and forest. I would
go for great Lighthouse there. That I do rarely, but I would on this
map. Agree? Disagree?

 

[CivSetä]

Go for liberalism, I'd try to grab constitution or even democracy. Wait for AIs to appear to find out how much time there is left before actually researching the last turn of it.

 

[Bino]

I always like when others keep playing maps i find ugly

Dumb question, why out of 4 wines, Volfan suggests to cottage 3? Isn't worth to build wineries i guess? Do cottages on certain resources yield more commerce than the proper building? If yes, which resources in multiple copies are worth to cottage? /OT

 

[Percy]

Well. A Town (Cottages => Hamlets => Villages => Town) Brings 4 commerce, +2 with Free Speech, +1 with Printing Press (which also gives +1 to Villages), +1 with Financial. It also gets +1 Hammer under Universal Suffrage. Finally, Cottages and the like grow twice as fast under Emancipation.
A Winery gives +1 Food and +2 Commerce, as well as the luxury resource. For a Capital, possibly with the Bureaucracy bonus, and most certainly a lot of multiplier buildings, it is probably a better idea to take advantage of the natural +1 commerce that the resource Wine gives (regardless of what you build on top of it) and build a cottage on it, rather than being stuck with the mediocre advantages provided by a Winery.
Of course, you do lose the resources to trade with other civs. It's up to you to see what to do with them, it's a choice, and i don't think you can go much wrong. However, if every other civ has access to Wines so that you cannot get any benefit from trading, it's probably much better to cottage the tile.

 

[Bino]

Thanks, guess i won't build more happiness resources from now on, very good advice!

 

[volfan37132]

why out of 4 wines, Volfan suggests to cottage 3? Isn't worth to build wineries i guess?

My thinking was explained well in post #11. With this isolated start you
will not be trading much soon anyway. Also, cottages (pottery) should
be available before wineries (monarchy). Hey, you can change your mind
later if you want and bulldoze the cottage for a winery. But, looking
at the moneybag with coins stacked on top of the tile you may think twice.