I played through a sim run after playing T43.
It is trivial to get the furs city down around T65 (actually earlier is not a problem). I can't see any options I'd consider viable, other than Oracle>Monarchy, or the rush to the Furs. Below is how we can get the copper/deer, overlapping deer/drycorn/plains sheep (future HE? city) and the furs city down.
The main advantage of this, is we can prechop and road the forests for the copper city granary chops, which we need to get the settlers to the north quickly, and we'll have 4 workers to do all the roads, hooking the deer, chopping the barracks at the middle city and then hook the furs. I've not detailed the worker micro, but sufficed to say that the warriors we build in the first 3 cities can cover the entire entire area via fogbust easily enough, or guard the specific tiles. The timeline for hooking the furs depends on how we want to micro the workers to get the barracks and hooking the deer, but I think we can get everything improved by T70 with no difficulty (other than barbs being pains).
City 5 (copper city) can work the improved copper on founding, so reaches size 5 (as furs should be hooked) as fast is possible (literally, every food resource hooked and worked at the earliest opportunity, and copper is hooked about 5 turns sooner). Copper city can just sit on the copper, two grass cottages and two plains cottages for the capital, or we can swap the pig and the deer around much quicker than we could if we went to Oracle Monarchy.
We would be able to settle the northern island by T75 with no difficulty (double forest chop galley in furs city). We would have half of the starting area covered by cities, so if horses popped in outer borders, we would still likely be able to get them hooked quickly as well. We are not chopping any forests at city 2 for this either.
I've ran sims for both Oracle and the Furs rush. The Oracle plan is good, and we would have more than enough warriors to get the capital working 10 cottages. The problem with this is we would be delayed to getting an island city (city 4 on the coast has been neglected in this post, because I'm keeping options open, but there are no good islands down there that we can see, and Sailing would get delayed past AH). We will not know the location of horses until around T68-ish, more likely T70 even if we landed Monarchy. We will struggle to give the copper city the pigs if we are trying to grow the capital towards size 10, meaning that horizontal expansion would have to come from cities 2 (no granary, no forests) and city 3 (no granary, no forests, 1 food resources and few 2 food tiles to work). We are gaining 480 beakers towards a tech we are going to want anyway with this happiness situation though, but just because we have those beakers doesn't mean we can neglect getting Sailing, Archery, AH or HBR.
The advantage of the furs rush is that we will cover all of the above weakness, but with one major downside: we can't get the capital past size 6. OTOH, we can work 4 cottages with the copper city, 1 cottage each from cities 2 and 4, and the capital can work 4 with no difficulty, so the cottage growth is not the problem, we will just have to wait for the opportunity to grow the capital. I think this is actually a safer play, given OH is ahead of us in expansion, and tech towards Oracle, and would benefit from GP points as he has a religion to shrine. We can't get a religion out of that tech path now.
It is trivial to get the furs city down around T65 (actually earlier is not a problem). I can't see any options I'd consider viable, other than Oracle>Monarchy, or the rush to the Furs. Below is how we can get the copper/deer, overlapping deer/drycorn/plains sheep (future HE? city) and the furs city down.
- We get a settler from city 3 at size 3 with a one pop whip and one chop, and improve the grass hill. Work the lake at size 3 (not available at size two as requires capital borders to pop). This is the furs city settler. Build a warrior during growth, and use two workers to hook the corn. This is pretty straight forward and doesn't require any real work to achieve.
- Capital micro remains the same. Whip the settler for city 4 at 92/100, overflow into the granary and then grow straight to size 6 (into unhappiness) on warriors (complete 2) and triple whip the settler. This gives the middle city. The capital can then regrow to the happy cap at size 4 before it gives the pigs over to the copper city, just as the copper city gets the granary down.
- City 2 builds the copper city settler. This is no different than what was expected: overflow from the current warrior into a worker, whip after 1 turn, regrow to size 4 (just into unhappiness) dumping overflow into a warrior (build two during growth to overflow 5 hammers into the settler. Then double whip the settler T56, settle the copper city T58 with 4 workers in place to mine the copper on T58, and then hook the copper T59 and get the granary chopped with the other 2 workers.
The main advantage of this, is we can prechop and road the forests for the copper city granary chops, which we need to get the settlers to the north quickly, and we'll have 4 workers to do all the roads, hooking the deer, chopping the barracks at the middle city and then hook the furs. I've not detailed the worker micro, but sufficed to say that the warriors we build in the first 3 cities can cover the entire entire area via fogbust easily enough, or guard the specific tiles. The timeline for hooking the furs depends on how we want to micro the workers to get the barracks and hooking the deer, but I think we can get everything improved by T70 with no difficulty (other than barbs being pains).
City 5 (copper city) can work the improved copper on founding, so reaches size 5 (as furs should be hooked) as fast is possible (literally, every food resource hooked and worked at the earliest opportunity, and copper is hooked about 5 turns sooner). Copper city can just sit on the copper, two grass cottages and two plains cottages for the capital, or we can swap the pig and the deer around much quicker than we could if we went to Oracle Monarchy.
We would be able to settle the northern island by T75 with no difficulty (double forest chop galley in furs city). We would have half of the starting area covered by cities, so if horses popped in outer borders, we would still likely be able to get them hooked quickly as well. We are not chopping any forests at city 2 for this either.
I've ran sims for both Oracle and the Furs rush. The Oracle plan is good, and we would have more than enough warriors to get the capital working 10 cottages. The problem with this is we would be delayed to getting an island city (city 4 on the coast has been neglected in this post, because I'm keeping options open, but there are no good islands down there that we can see, and Sailing would get delayed past AH). We will not know the location of horses until around T68-ish, more likely T70 even if we landed Monarchy. We will struggle to give the copper city the pigs if we are trying to grow the capital towards size 10, meaning that horizontal expansion would have to come from cities 2 (no granary, no forests) and city 3 (no granary, no forests, 1 food resources and few 2 food tiles to work). We are gaining 480 beakers towards a tech we are going to want anyway with this happiness situation though, but just because we have those beakers doesn't mean we can neglect getting Sailing, Archery, AH or HBR.
The advantage of the furs rush is that we will cover all of the above weakness, but with one major downside: we can't get the capital past size 6. OTOH, we can work 4 cottages with the copper city, 1 cottage each from cities 2 and 4, and the capital can work 4 with no difficulty, so the cottage growth is not the problem, we will just have to wait for the opportunity to grow the capital. I think this is actually a safer play, given OH is ahead of us in expansion, and tech towards Oracle, and would benefit from GP points as he has a religion to shrine. We can't get a religion out of that tech path now.