Quote:Hm ... your last one is pretty interesting. It does get the settler out quick, but I wouldn't settle on top of the plains hill in this case. The main reason is that we're already going to be a bit short on production, and there's no guarantee we'll get extra hills when we move there. We do get 3 useless tiles, though the fish will still be 5 food 2 commerce even if the capital isn't coastal. Though there's also the risk of getting bad tiles if we move 2 west ... but even the tundra forest isn't bad since we can get 20 hammers from a chop.
By the way, our official leader pick is Suryavarman II (Exp/Cre) of Byzantium (Hippodrome/Cataphract). Our starting technologies are Mysticism and The Wheel, so we'll have to likely start out with some form of Hunting -> AH to improve our food. If we settle in place, we'll get some much-needed commerce which could help us land an early religion.
I'm agree with you that settling on PH could be not optimal in the long run. Just wanna explore this option too.
Although, in my opinion, hammer boost from T1 is pretty valuable. On screenshot above its 35 free hammers on T36.
Settling GH and work PH mine gives you 0f/5h. Vice versa: 1f/5h.
Of course, settling on coast is another story, but we'll be teching so slow (especially compare to almost everyone FIN here), I just doubt we'll be safe after tech Fishing and build WB. All my sims was like we decide ignore Fishing and move inland, so it was PH vs GH settling. If u don't mind, I'd like to optimize PH start and you or anyone else could sim coast or GH start so we can compare and decide later. With all that fog it could be useless, but we can't help it right now. For all we know could be double wet corn and gems in BFC if we settle on GH.
One more thing, there is a small chance Copper/Iron is on that GH, so settling it wouldn't be so hot.
Just ignore China flag on my screenshots. I did start with Myst + Wheel in my sims, just too lazy to make a new WB file.
Tech was Hunt>AH>Mining>BW. As you can see BW due T42.
Worker goes Deer>Road>Road>Pigs>Road>Mine>Mine. Could save 1 worker turn if skip Road on Deer, but I've started 1st Mine right in turn Mining was researched, same with Pasture, so I don't think its matter.
As for early religion, are you sure we need one?
We are CRE so borders will pop well without it.
We are not FIN so we'll be teching slow and with so many basic techs we need ASAP its hard to find a room for another one.
We are not SPI so we'll lose one turn to revolt.
We already paint a big target sign on our civ (rush them before knights era kinda sign), are you sure we wanna make this sign even bigger with early religion?