This is the starting position.
Additionally, settler 8-8-8 and 8-8-9 are forests, but I'm not 100% sure about the terrain, see screenshot from Lewwyn on page 1. Looks like plains to me. In any case, the forests there are not taken into consideration until round 40 by me. Of course all of this is obsolete after discovering copper somewhere, so as this is subject to reassessments, it's just a discussion mainly for fun and comparison of different philosophies.
We were/are briefly discussing the pros and cons of founding on sugar vs. founding on the plains hill. It appears that sugar allows us to stall Hunting until Bronze working is finished. We can then use the excess of food to whip the second worker (4>2) and chop the settler (working corn and rivermine). Because the game hasn't started yet, we assume wheat-6 as the only sensible location for the settler, so the optimization is done in this regard (see above - all of this is highly hypothetical). I will try later to chop the worker and revolt into slavery after he is finished to chopwhip the settler.
Another point of debate is the number of warriors we can produce. As I'm described as a cowardly player by my german Kameraden, I want two warriors before the second worker/settler to confirm this sentiment. This would cost us more or less one round of foodhammers but you can't stand on one leg, can you?
By round 40 it looks like this:
Notable decisions:
- The worker builds a plains hill mine instead of the grassland one, because that way we can reduce the food overflow to zero when growing from pop3 to pop4 and receive instead an extra hammer. I think we want to have rather more hammers than more food when two of the three food resources are not modernized yet. Growth in the capital will be almost assuredly no problem in the future.
- After the mine, the worker builds for one turn the road at capital-2. This is because a) Bronze working needs two remaining turns and b) we want a road there for the settler so that he can reach the city location at wheat-6 in one round (there is forest).
- The second worker finishes this road tile and then moves on to chop wheat-6. Obviously, he should mine copper when in the Fatcross or he could hunt the deer or the elephants instead (albeit after 2 waiting turns before Hunting is finished - Hunting finishes EoT 31). I'm not convinced by chopping a regular forest, because we don't need that much overflow > the capital should grow after the settler in order to work the modernized strong tiles as soon as possible. This way we trade some worker rounds for 10 extra hammers which would disappear otherwise.
- At turn 33, the settler moves to location, the forest there is chopped, the capital builds a boat and after a saving turn for gold, researching Fishing starts and will finish at turn 39. By that time, the boat will be easily ready. The worker who chopped the settler hunts the deer and will then chop the forest at capital-8 for the future project (worker/settler which we have to decide at turn 40).
- After the fishing boat, another warrior will be produced while growing to pop4. I feel he will be needed to fogbust/scout neighbors. The elephants need 2 more turns.
- Keep in mind this is not necessarily the best start but rather well-rounded. Oh, and we didn't discuss it yet
Emperor with a huge map and this kind of starting position....and that's apparently an issue. Tech costs are the same for all players, so bad starting positions and bad civs keep being...bad and bad, regardless of the difficulty. But yes, a game at Monarch will be over much fast than one at Immortal...
