Where to settle?

[MIS]

Songhai. Truffles or hills both seem reasonable to me. What do you think.

 

[IcyAngel]

Settling on spot: best starting tiles; don't underestimate the time and/or gold it takes to grow your borders.

Truffles: no. You lose on a good cocoa starting tile; truffles are very fast to connect and the improvement is good; reaching three tiles for the ivory is a greedy investment. Settle a city by the ivory later.

Hill: arguable only because you can spot tundra by the tea, which means *perhaps* a city there would suck.

Keep in mind, you can rarely work every good tile in your capital anyway, because you'll be working specialists there sooner or later. Leave some for your satellites.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I'd settle on the spot as well, no doubt.

 

[stii]

Agree with settle in place, I don't see what we are gaining by moving. Settling on truffles is a bunch of gold, but it costs you the title later and the 2nd coco for a while

 

[looorg]

I would go to the hill, a very distant second option would be to settle in place, I would never settle on the truffles in this scenario.

If you go on the hill you will have three unique luxuries in the capital later for duplication (coco, tea, truffles). Technically you would have that if you settled on the truffles to but since ivory and truffles are the same improvement type I wouldn't waste a settle on top for that. It's just one improvement while the others are a chop and a build.

If nothing else fantastic show up a second city either by the lake on the desert hill, or somewhere close around there. As long as it's in range of the ivory.

 

[randomnub]

Check the monopoly tab, if there're just 2-3 copies of tea/ivory on the map a long term plan to include either in your capital working range could allow for EIC duplicates and strong % monopoly, hence moving to hill or over truffles.

99% of time in similar situation I'd just settle on spot anyway, you snowball hard to fast 4pop with those good starting tiles, and you might want to save all gold to rushbuy mandelaku instead of buying tiles.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Randomnub, I'll often build EITC in a non-capital city later on in the game once I decide which additional monopoly I'd want, so I wouldn't move my settler because of tea or ivory, a strong start is paramount for Askia to be able to start churning out mandekalus as soon as possible.

 

[randomnub]

and that's why the 99% clause has been added to my post

 

[LifeOfBrian]

True, you did include the 99% clause

 

[andersw]

Sip.
Double coca is very strong, the truffles isnt bad to help with early game purchase, also settle in place means you have a hill in border to improve with a mine.
If you settle on hill or truffles there would be a long time until natural border growth to a hill.
Tea spot sucks a bit but ... cant get everything.
Ivory would have been tempting to reach but ... you have better cav as Songhai so no ele rush needed.

 

[IcyAngel]

Check the monopoly tab, if there're just 2-3 copies of tea/ivory on the map a long term plan to include either in your capital working range could allow for EIC duplicates and strong % monopoly, hence moving to hill or over truffles.

AFAIK you cannot see the number of luxuries before at least one has been improved on the map.

 

[azum4roll]

AFAIK you cannot see the number of luxuries before at least one has been improved on the map.

You can, by selecting a civ (yours) instead of "Greatest" in the dropdown list.

 

[Stalker0]

Settle in place. You have a great start, but your biggest weakness overall is a lack of production. You want those hill spots open to give you mine hammers as soon as possible. Compared to that, an extra lux that I will get eventually is a very low priority.

The more I play, the more I realize that its all about immediate yields when I'm not playing Tall. I almost don't even look at the 3rd ring now when considering settle spots, it takes way too long to get there.