I feel like AH is needed here before pottery, anyway. If we're going to settle B, maybe even before wheel? And the next tech should be either Hunting->AH (for the 20% bonus) or even AH straight away. Like you say it's going to be pretty critical to know where the horses lie.
Next turn when we see copper will be pretty critical. I wouldn't end turn too quickly before having a good idea of the tech path (which could depend on the timing for the next 2 cities to settle.)
I think I might like wasting the worker turn and not chopping, but moving the worker off the forest on T16 and improving the copper immediately, because it's such a strong tile. You get this position:
instead of:
The settler is delayed by 1 turn, but you get 1 more forest to use later (for a faster third city), and the copper is improved.
As you saw, I agree that we should mine the Copper first, due to the fact that it is such a strong tile. I think our tech path should be The Wheel -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Pottery and that we should settle city site B, for the following reasons:
The Wheel allows us to hook up Copper ASAP, which is important with Egypt nearby. In addition, we need to road to city site B to be able to properly reinforce it in case of War Chariots.
Hunting is required to build Spearman, which we need to defend City Site B (I think we should try to get 2 Spears in it, in addition to the Warrior that will be with the Settler). We may as well get it before AH to boost our AH research and to get Spears faster.
Animal Husbandry is what will allow City Site B to grow fast (Sheep) while revealing horses. We can't really delay B's food resource for long, so.
Finally, Pottery will allow us to get researching faster and half priced Granaries.
Delaying Hunting seems like an option, but it really isn't one due to being a prereq for Spears IMO. After Pottery, we will probably need to go for Mysticism for border expansions, but that is too far away to truly say ATM.
City Site B seems to be the best mix of defense and long term planning, and copper at the capital means we can defend it enough in my opinion.
Yeah, the main issue with the B site is that it doesn't have a first-ring food resource until AH. (That and it's basically a declaration of war.)
If going for the B site there's Hunting -> AH -> Wheel to consider, or even AH -> Wheel -> Hunting (wasting beakers but getting the sheep, and seeing horses, very fast).
Wheel -> Hunting first is the path that gives a chance of survival even if Bandit has horses in his capital.
It's a tough call for me between the B and D sites. D is quite a bit stronger economically for a long time before the border pop, by virtue of having a 5-food resource and lower distance. Also between the hill and being four tiles away for reinforcements instead of 5 it's not obvious the hill is better though it probably is. I'm mostly playing Devil's Advocate.
I don't like delaying The Wheel much. Right now, all we can build is Farms and going Hunting -> AH will only let us chop, build farms and hunt the Ivory, so we won't be building a lot of useful stuff. In addition, I think roading to our city (Be in B or D) will be vital no matter what, especially since Wetbandit could wardec either way: We're 5T away from B w/o roads and 4T away from D, so cutting those in half via roads would be key since WCs are 2 move and thus can get to B in 2T and D in 2-3T (Depending on if the forest next to it is chopped), so reinforcing is hard.
Something else to consider is that if we settle D, the War Chariots can actually be positioned to be able to threaten our capital or the second city in 1T, while B is one tile too far away for this. In addition, D has a hill right next to it, which could be dangerous if Wetbandit includes a stack defending Axe or something, while B doesn't have this. I honestly don't think going to D will avert war if Wetbandit is considering it: it's only one tile, still quite close and doesn't actually get a defensive bonus. And I'm sure he'd still quite want to either have that site or B/A. We should just assume that if Wetbandit wants war, it is going to happen either way, IMO.
AH -> Wheel -> Hunting is totally unacceptable, Wetbandit can murder us with WC before we get Spears out and we'll have to settle B/D without any way to reinforce it quickly. Even if horses are at his second city, he'd probably get it hooked up before we got Spears up and they both are made and travel faster. I don't see enough benefit in the other tech paths.
Playing around with starts, an attempt using Wheel -> Hunting -> AH:
I'm sure it's possible to do better, but this gets 3 workers, 2 warriors and a spear on T36, and the option to whip another spear at Beijing as soon as T37, and also a road connection and improved ivory, copper, sheep, with a flood plains farm. Also a settler on T42. Given that some openings don't get a first settler until the late 30s, this is already pretty solid I think.
And given that Bandit has a slower start than us, I think that spear is plenty early enough, probably even if he has horses in his capital.
(If you want to try and beat this, I could post the sandbox file, or you could just use the one I posted before and add the copper in via world-builder.)
I'm sure it's obvious, but we're going to be wanting to watch Bandit's pop growths, whips and power graph quite carefully once we get them.
That looks pretty nice, especially since it can whip a T37 Spear, so it really has 2 Spear defenders if need be. The FP Farm should be nice to help grow. I like what we have there. Mind posting the sandbox file? Can't really get to it ATM, though I'll play my turn, but yes. What build order did you have on this?
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