[Spoilers] rho21 follows the works of Homer... D'OH!

[Garath]

I wouldn't worry too much about campus locations in this consideration - it's clear that both choices will have good ones. I wish I ever got mountain layouts this nice in my solo games!

Similarly, IIRC you get an extra hammer on the city centre for founding on a hill, so the argument that you can put on mine on the starting tile isn't persuasive - while the mine does get better than one hammer, you have to time-discount that value by a fair bit.

Given that the starting tile also doesn't have to spend gold on the dyes tile that is the only currenty visible source of amenities, I incline to founding on the starting spot.

[rho21]

Mm, great point. I'd forgotten about the extra because it only applies on a plains hill in Civ VI. Settling in place seems good then.

So, next question is what the starting build order should be. In single-player (with huts off) I pretty much always go for a slinger first as I tend to scout too far away with my initial warrior. In MP, I will endeavour to keep my warrior closer at hand, so it's worth considering a scout or a builder.

While a scout may not upgrade to anything, it will be useful for exploration for some time. And once it's done with that, it can sit on a border looking out for approaching troops.

A builder has the potential to start the snowball fastest, especially as there's a sheep ready to pasture immediately for an extra . I guess after that it would want to be improving the wheat and dyes. Not exactly urgent.

I had a look through starting builds for PBEMs 1-7 (except 5 which I'm ded-lurking). Here are the results, spoiled in case anyone cares about knowing the combined initial builds in PBEM7:

Game	Scout	Slinger	Warrior	Builder
PBEM1 (no barbs)	1	0	0	3
PBEM2	3	2	0	0
PBEM3	3	2	0	0
PBEM4 (naval)	1	4	0	1
PBEM6	4	0	0	0
PBEM7 (teams)	2	5	1	0

I'm leaning towards a slinger first as both Egypt and Aztec might aim for early aggression so the more units the better. Perhaps something like slinger-builder-slinger-settler.

[rho21]

And we are underway!

Initial GP:

Hannibal is the weakest of the generals (though still worth having).
Aryabhata is OK, but no Hypatia.
James of St George is a fun hole card to be able to play when suddenly at war or when planting a pink dot.
And Homer (not pictured) is the Great Writer

Founded Pythagoras in place and started work on a Slinger (6 turns). Growth due in 7 turns.
Everyone except Japper has founded on the first turn.

No screenshot right now as something went wrong with them mid-turn: I got one normal screenshot out, realised I'd forgotten to set research, went back into game and did so after which all screenshots were black. I'm sure it'll sort itself out before long, but right now I need to get to work.

The gist of the scouting information is: the river at the capital and the river in the west are connected and everything looks grassy and promising. There are 2 stone resources visible: SW-SW of the capital and immediately W of that.

Edit: here's a screenshot. They're still not working quite as expected, but I can work around it.

[rho21]

Turn 2

Scouting off to the west, my warriors find the end of our mighty river as it flows into the northern ocean. They prepare themselves rafts; soon they will brave crossing the river and explore the lands to the south where precious jade has been spotted.

I doubt I'll continue this purple prose for long, but there wasn't much to report this turn. Nothing untoward on settler view. Jade is a good find as it will allow me to tick off the Wheel inspiration (already have Masonry, Horseback Riding and Irrigation lined up). It also provides extra culture, but the tile is pretty awful. Might be worth settling on directly.

I'm going to spoil most large images from now on. Here's a view of the nearby terrain:

[Garath]

Wheel is 'mine a resource', yes? Settling on it directly won't do that.

I like the decisions forced by the mapmaker - both of the three-mountain Campus/Holy Site tiles have resources on.

I don't have much more to say at this point. Scouting a bit more of the nice western land to figure out the city sites is pretty clearly necessary.

What difficulty is this set to? That is, how challenging are the barbarians likely to be?

[rho21]

Yes, I'll only settle the jade if there's another resource to mine, and other good tiles at that city. In practice I think it's more likely I'll settle by the second stone so I can quarry that one and harvest the one the campus might go on. Stone is great for harvesting! That stone is the first tile the capital will grab, incidentally (assuming that doesn't change).

It's Prince. So barbarians will probably be fairly annoying, and clearing their camps is worth 50 gold.

[rho21]

Turn 3
Nothing new in the score, nothing on settler view.

I've added a very tentative city position (or 1W of there). It would rule out anything up at the mouth of the river, which isn't ideal. The industrial zone position looks excellent.

As I can't move the warrior two hexes next turn in a useful fashion, I'm thinking to move it W onto the hill for a view over the river valley. Then, barring anything interesting, perhaps over to the jade to start scouting out the area south of the capital.

That rainforest is only 6 rows south of the tundra. Truly the map is small.

[rho21]

Turn 4

The river valley is very dull. Another jade but nothing else of note. Nothing on settler view, nothing new in the score.

So let's talk early planning.

• After the slinger, produce a builder who will improve sheep, wheat and dyes at the capital for the cratsmanship boost. Note: requires a detour to irrigation.
  
• Get a second city down and get working towards 6 population for the early empire boost.
  
• Start a second builder as soon as craftsmanship comes in. Builder will harvest stone with a +50% boost to knock out most of the cost of a campus, then improve the second city.
  
• Possibly take a cultural detour to Military Tradition and start using Greece's free wildcard slot to grab the first general.
  
• Look into building a wonder at the capital (Pyramids or Hanging Gardens?) for the Drama & Poetry boost.
  
• Chop the forest with a +100% walls boost to get the acropolis built quickly.
  

[Garath]

Grasslands are nice, but that is indeed some pretty dull land. At least there doesn't appear to be a city state taking up all the good land there. He's going to turn around now and move more S to SE?

Craftmanship boost obviously great, and it does look like realistically that will indeed require Irrigation, even though getting the dyes early really doesn't matter that much. If that won't finish until well after the builder then it could perhaps be worth building a second slinger first.

I'm not convinced by that second city site yet (though as an aside, I didn't know you could put that much stuff on the map. Nice feature.) as blocking off a city at the mouth of the river seems like too high a cost, given the wheats up there. Still, there's plenty of time for more scouting before the decision has to be made.

Is it actually possible to harvest the stone from a tile into a campus district that you want to build on the same tile, given that therefore you can't have placed the district before doing the harvest?

[rho21]

I think a step SW with the warrior might be handy (just to expose as much land as possible for the settler view). Then either SE to the jungle or SW-SE if that's flat land. After that heading E in general to scout out the land south of the capital.

The pretty pins are a feature of CQUI. The base game ones have far less useful symbols.
I'm also not convinced by the city site. Hopefully something will show up in the fog. Having the stone in first or second ring would definitely be an advantage.

I understand that it is possible to harvest straight into the thing you want to produce, you just need to have the queue empty at the time. The harvest income goes into the overflow. This doesn't matter here: I intend to harvest into an almost completed slinger with Agoge policy in place. That gives the entire harvest a +50% modifier, which should mean the overflow provides almost the full cost of the district.

Now some longer thoughts on how quickly things can be completed:

There are three limits on improving the dyes.
Production: 6.3 per turn, goes up to 8.4 from turn 8.
Slinger (35 ) is done on turn 6, builder (50 ) on turn 12. Sheep pasture on turn 13, wheat farm on turn 15, dyes plantation on turn 18.

Culture: 1.3 per turn, goes up to 1.5 from turn 8.
Needs three tiles at approximate costs of 10 + 20 + 35 . That's *way* in the future, so I'll probably have to look at buying a tile. I think the second tile will be claimed at about turn 22. I don't think the culture cost changes when you buy tiles for gold, so buying the wheat ASAP would minimise the time. Will have 50 on hand very soon to do this.

Research: 2.8 per turn, goes up to 3.4 from turn 8.
Three techs required: Animal Husbandry (25 ), Pottery (25 ), Irrigation (50 ). Irrigation will be boosted by the wheat farm, so 75 total. I reckon that will be done at about turn 23.

So to take this route would cost 50 gold and get the inspiration on turn 23. Not at all convinced this is a good use of gold just for a dye tile. The only advantage of the dye is that it would jump me up from third to first choice of pantheon, barring religious city states.

Instead I think it would be better to push the settler up to third in the queue, getting the second city down quickly and improving a tile there. I believe that settler would be produced around turn 19 or 20. This plan is probably 5 or 6 turns slower as I'd be waiting for turn 22 to improve the wheat.
This is easy for barbs to disrupt, of course. Even so, I'd rather produce the builder before another slinger, if only because the pasture will produce an extra . Not the end of the world if the settler has to be pushed back for extra military, the inspiration for craftsmanship can wait a while if it must. Good to get ASAP though, just for the excellent production cards.