(November 15th, 2018, 15:50)Rusten Wrote: If the problem is a lack of food techs then simply go agriculture before pottery. Pottery is not required that early -- especially with river mines available. You gain the arrow bonus on pottery this way too.
Monarchy with the Oracle as mackoti suggested sounds like a good solution to the lack of happiness.
(NB. the problem isn't just food techs, it's warriors to cover everything as well, we are relying on city 2 to provide warriors whilst growing and that is also a limiting factor).
The micro to reach the settler eot30 is pretty much sound: it does not involve any tech beyond BW and uses 3 forest chops; 2 are for the settler, the third is to position both workers to then improve the plains sheep.
The second phase I've written down is basically Third worker>Fourth Worker>Settler>overflow out granary hammers. Agriculture before Pottery doesn't change the timings that much; yes the overflow out is pushed back, but the capital just sits at size 3 for a bit longer whilst the third settler gets built. It'd probably go Third worker>Fourth worker>settler>settler>granary. We're still going to want that granary and we do not want to fall into the trap of a neighbour starting to push us, and we drop the granary to focus on more immediate needs (Zulu PB8).
We can roll straight from the third worker into the third settler. That would give the settler eot38 (one chop) with the capital at size 3 and it would take until eot45 to get the capital to size 5. In this instance the mines are worthless until then. If we do this, we have to keep both warriors close by to cover the settlers.
Or we could instead grow to size 4 and then 5 first, but it's not that pretty as we have to work the unimproved flood plain and grasslands to make it in a reasonable number of turns, 7 in total, plus another turn to dump the chop hammers into a settler. If we just mined both remaining river hills (one has to be chopped, then on T40-ish we would have the capital at size 5 working everything, so the settler would be due eot45-ish as well (that chop hurts things).
These paths save 5 forests at the capital. But I don't think that matters for Oracle: If we can pop borders at city 2, then there are 6 forests to chop for Oracle (I take it as read that if we don't find a pre-Calendar happy res that we are rushing for religion and Oracle).
One thing I am wary of, is that we can easily expand too much if we do this, we need to get those cottages down.