[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Gavagai]

I actually forget to answer Bacchus why I want to settle the eastern corn later. The reason is that this city needs a lot of worker and military support. We won't be able to provide it between T60-70 as all our resources would be dedicated towards settling and improving city #3. On the other hand, city #5 doesn't require any additional worker or military support: it shares a lot of tiles with the capital which we would want to improve anyway and won't need any garrison for quite a long time.

[Bacchus]

Easter corn would require workforce, but not really any extra military commitment — there is no convenient line of attack after we settle in the floodplains, any move will be spotted by us well in time to divert the necessary forces as and if they are required. In fairness, though, they probably won't even know that the city is there. As for barbs, we'll have visibility off the copper hill almost down to the coast, and the trek is across flatland, we can move-settle in one go.

Regarding the workforce, we'll have to see — it's quite possible that the floodplains region will be just too hairy to build improvements other than in the backline. There will be Egypt counter-action, after all and we won't have units spare to guard improvements (we need two to garrison the city, two to camp the copper, and then a couple for some open field duties).

The problem with your 5, as with 4, is that these are very dull cities — we need the clam in the capital, and the second clam doesn't come online until after monument, and it's all slow and depressing. Eastern corn city is viable and actually fairly well placed for protection, the stream of barbs that we can expect to come from over the northern mountains will just give us a pleasant flow of experience. Plus, we'll actually get working on cottages that would be relatively safe from Egyptian pillaging.

Also, shouldn't 5 be settled 1N of the pictured location? Less ocean, more coast and three shared hills, which we can use to actually get some infra up.

EDIT: Talking of extra military commitments — the ivory city would certainly be one such, as if we build it, Egypt could then threaten both the floodplains and the ivory city with a single army placed on the hills between them.

[Gavagai]

It is true that clam city would become useful only after border pop and lighthouse. This is the reason to settle it early actually: I would like to be able to use it as a settler pump at about T90. Whether we would want Ivory city early would depend on how desperate we would want Ivory. In some of my scenarios we will need it quite early.
Actually, I'm thinking about a different idea: settler #4 will be ready to move forward from the corn city at T69 (may be I would find a way to speed it up by a turn). What if we use it for city #3 and just skip a settler in a capital which was earlier earmarked for this task? Instead, we can build there a worker (we will be short on them) and then - a library.

[Gavagai]

As expected, Serdoa has got a score increase this turn. He has settled his second city.
I expect most people will settle in the following few turns. We are in this pack, having slaved a settler this turn.

[Bacchus]

It's not bad going for a seafood start. I'm still not sure about stagnation at 2 for the copper city, though. How many turns off growth are we when we give the cow over to the third city? There is, after all, a flat forest to work, which will net us something like 25 hammers over the turns 55-80. And then we can either whip that pop down, after we chop the forest, or throw the pop straight onto the farm, once that comes online. Is there any space to get the corn online slightly faster, so we can move to it, whilst the third city is still at 1-pop, giving the cow back to the copper city?

[Gavagai]

It's not bad going for a seafood start. I'm still not sure about stagnation at 2 for the copper city, though. How many turns off growth are we when we give the cow over to the third city? There is, after all, a flat forest to work, which will net us something like 25 hammers over the turns 55-80. And then we can either whip that pop down, after we chop the forest, or throw the pop straight onto the farm, once that comes online. Is there any space to get the corn online slightly faster, so we can move to it, whilst the third city is still at 1-pop, giving the cow back to the copper city?

We will be able to work the cow for one additional due to corn coming online one turn before growth. But we still are going to lose 14 hammers by working a grassland forest instead of working a grassland mine. Also keep in mind that most of grassland forest hammers will come late (via whip) while time is crucial for our plans. Another disadvantage of this plan is that we won't be able to chop this forest early (and I intend to chop it).

Edit: Second city will grow on T54, third city will be settled on T53. Second city will have 21 food in a foodbar at T53, so it will be able to grow on a copper mine in one turn.

[Bacchus]

No-no, my idea was to grow to 3, and work the grass forest in addition to, not instead of a grass mine. But if we only get to work the cow for 5 turns before we have to give it away, there isn't much space to squeeze a whole new pops out

[Bacchus]

I've thought about the floodplains city placement again, and you know — there is no way, even with academy and the prospective founding of confucianism and what-not, that we will be able to keep the northern cow in our culture, in the second ring. We will once and if we absolutely destroy Egypt, but then again, if we do, we can settle the floodplains region in a more SP, spread out fashion by founding 1SW of the picture. We get one more river tile into the BFC, settle the desert, rather than the grass hill, etc. With cottages only, there will be enough surplus to work all the river tiles and all grass hills, still leaving two extra, and what more can one ask for. Up north, we can have the city perched atop the plains hill. Long-term, we wouldn't be sacrificing anything, and short-term it's less of a pink dot, more defensible and less pressed by yellow culture.

[Bacchus]

Egypt founded their second city, just two turns ahead of us with a pure seafood start. Not bad, although we did have to chop a forest. Even better is that with Meroknight, Sian and Dazedroyalty to play, no-one else has founded. Our demos after whipping are hideous as expected, we have half the population of all the others and are last in crop yield and MFG. Crop yield is about to be improved the turn after next with the third clam coming online, to sooth the pain slightly. We will also reveal ourselves as the crazy sods who opened Mysticism-Meditation, by adopting Buddhism.

In actual good news, egyptian warrior is nowhere to be seen:


Which means that we will have copper, before Egypt even see theirs. Well, not quite, but close enough to stretch it for dramatic effect.

@Gavagai: Dusty (Warrior) can probably go and fogbust from the hill 1W of the ivory? Prospectively, we can get onto their copper on T45, at which point they would have had BW for 5 turns only and no chance of having completed a metal unit. But they do have 5(!) warriors, so probably not worth it. Amusingly, on reverse C&D, our completion of Hunting coincided with the release of the Warrior, so it looks like we built something real on the graph. Depends on how closely they are watching civstats.

[Gavagai]

I think we should keep the warrior at place for a few turns. After that we should check for Egyptian sentries in the north to be able to plan a way around them for our first metal unit.