What would you do with this capital?

[Patricko]

I'm a bit rubbish at specialising cities. So need some advice.

So new game: Normal speed/size, Monarch, Pangea, Catherine.

At 3000bc I've done a bit of exploring, found a couple AI civs. Time to think about how to specialise the capital, but I'm stuck for ideas (or maybe too many ideas).

What would you do with this capital?

 

[fed1943]

Good food and commerce.

Specialisation also depends on other, current or future, cities, but
I would say a comercial city.

Later a science, perhaps bureaucyatic capital.

 

[Izuul]

This is a good commerce capitol for Bureau. Food surplus will get a boost from wet rice once you get IW.

You are making a mistake farming a regular grassland tile before mining that gold. That probably would've been my 2nd improvement after farming the first sugar. Early commerce from gold is extremely valuable.

I would go settle that corn + stone site very soon. Capitol border pop will allow you to improve copper without settling next to it. That's an extremely strong site.

 

[Pangaea]

Jungle in the capital? That is certainly unusual.

Lots of food there, especially post-calendar and a nice river running through. Prime cottage land really. It will be a good spot when you get Civil Service and swap to Bureaucracy.

Agree you should have mined the gold before farminga normal grassland. You want a cottage there anyway as it's riverside, so those workerturns are ultimately a total waste. You don't exactly lack food here. Do the riverside gold first, as it offers more commerce.

Get out a settler and grab the copper/stone site too. That is an excellent city. Send the warrior you just produced down there to fogbust and protect the city site. One off coast is a little ugly, but you could put the city on the grassland between corns and stone, and have access to two excellent food sources (plus more from the capital if you wish), stone and copper. This could be a really good National Epic site, especially if you manage to pump out some wonders there too. It could have a good amount of hammers from potentially three green hills, stone and copper. Heck, this would be a really good Heroic Epic site too. Settle it asap!

Maybe you want that second warrior out first, but if not, you could queue up a settler right now, cut the forest south of gold, and chop into the settler. You have Imperialistic so get 30:hammers for the pre-math chop when building settlers.

Cottage-wise you have 7 riverside cottage spots (that aren't hills or resources), only one of which are plains. This is good, and will provide a lot of your research when Buro is online.

You'll need to explore a bit more first, but with luck you have the entire SE to yourself, provided you block off the AIs to the north and west.

You are creative, so although there is an AI capital in the NW, you should probably be able to hold onto the marble if you settle a city 1NE of it (1W of clam). The other blocking spot could be between silk and spices SW of your capital. With creative you will quickly gain the clam there, and already next turn the capital's borders expands to include the cow.

Some pretty darn good spots here. Try to grab them early, which being Catherine helps ensure.

Unfortunate about the close jungle, but a double-gold spot is excellent and you have so much food here. The AIs typically research IW pretty quickly, so don't bother doing it youself. You have bigger priorities than cutting down that jungle so soon, as you don't really need the rice just yet. If you manage to grab that northern marble, you'll have both marble and stone, and can wonderwhore and/or failbuild to your heart's content

Edit: Alternatively you could divide up the corns and have a dotmap something like this (just a very quick suggestion). The city by the lake could still have three sources of food, with wet corn, and two sugars/farmed sugars, which is good enough for a pretty decent NE site. The city still has three green hills and now freshwater, which helps when the city gets big in the mid game. Nice to have a few forests to chop into the NE too, especially if you get that marble. It'll be up in no time.

Spoiler :

 

[aitkensam]

I played this map on a bit (to 500BC).

Re the capital, I think as you are fairly happy limited for a while not much need to think about specializing yet. A couple of the grassland/river tiles want cottages and need to get gold mines and ph/river mines up asap.

As others have mentioned there are some other really nice sites around and I think that's where the key to this start is - settler/worker spam

Spoiler for progress. (Sure there are lots of mistakes but this looks like a fun map and wanted to encourage others to try it. )

Spoiler :

For techs IIRC, I finished wheel then went pottery, writing, masonry, AH, myst, med, PH, math, Oracle Currency, HBR, Archery, Aest, Trade for Alpha / Monarchy / IW / Sailing, Poly / Lit (due in 3)

My key thoughts on this were:
Creative = cheap libraries. Want them asap and pott more useful than AH to begin with.
Masonry/AH for 2nd city
Oracle - This was an afterthought. I was going to skip it and go Math/HBR but as nobody had got SH/TGW by 1500BC and we had some spare gold I thought last oracle might be ok. Came in at 1080BC.
Math - cos lots of forests and some people nearby to HA rush.
Currency - I love currency
HBR - It was a bit late for this really but I thought - monarch, wth.

Builds, improvements & cities (again iirc)
I stopped the warrior that was queued and built a settler. Fast cos of our traits. Worker action also cancelled, went to improve gold. Scout explored peninsula to SE. Found cow and knew I wanted 2nd city 1SE of copper. Warrior in cap not needed for military presence at the mo so he went NW to Hannibal to find a worker steal, got one (to make 3rd overall) from marble hill to the west of his cap. After steal he went west to meet other AI.

One warrior after settler to size four, then a worker, then warriors to 5, settler for 1N of eastern corn, library to size 6, more settlers / workers / a bit of failgold on SH, oracle (1080BC) when PH in, then Mids (650BC). City 4 on coast 1SW of clam (to get marble). 5 1W of horse. 6 4W of cap (to grab land).

Up to 475BC got: 6 cities, 5 granaries, 4 libs, 2 barracks, 1 stable, oracle, mids. 13 HA, 2 axe, 7 warrior, 7 worker, 1 settler

Great People
Got prophet at 20-30% odds Settled in cap.
Next due in 10 turns.

War
Declared war with 13HA (5 on route) in 475BC.
Carthage (2Arch) should fall next turn.

Future
Still space for two nice cities in NE + crappy peninsula cities.
Hannibal likely to add 2-3 cities to cause, depending on how many are worth keeping, so should be well over 10 cities before 1AD.
TGL next build for capital.

 

[enKage]

Having a source of sugar assured (city settled on) other sugars (or most of them, at least riverside) should be cottaged also

 

[cseanny]

You've got stone and a lot of forest in 2 early potential city sites (not to mention the Capital) so I vote Farm the sugars > settle 2 more cities > you don't even need early granaries due to excellent food (easy to grow to happy cap by the time you get HBR w/out granary) because while in PS your Capital can work 16 and a 2nd stone city can work 12+ which means they both get 1T HAs with chops.......> get at least 4 workers out > pre chop > and with Math instant Mids (PS) and then 20 HAs well well before 500 BC. Too easy to get 12 -14 cities from a 3 city HA romp. Use REP scientist and a delayed cottage Capital after.......