Framesticker
Prince
In a situation like this I would generally cottage all the flood plains as well - they still give +1 food do they not? Can someone explain to me why this would be a bad idea? Cottaged flood plains + bureaucracy seems like a great idea for a commerce rich capital, but everyone seems to agree on farming at least a couple of them.
Early on, growing on +1 food tiles is slow and bad. It's very unlikely that he's going to have a lot of population or time to develop cottages in the early game (especially if he's going for the Oracle and etc.) so farming the FPs into half-assed 4F resources is pretty much the only option for now. After he grows, establishes and can make his capital lean on other cities for Worker/Settler/Military production, he can turn it into a fantastic Bureaucracy capital - but cottaging so early in the game is sacrificing early growth of both the city and the empire.