Japper and Alhambram go bongo bongo in the Kongo [Spoilers within]

[Alhambram]

About naming schemes, just do what you like, I don't mind anything.

We already have dyes, but that another dye resource can be used for eventual trade with other players for other amenity that we lacks.
Location do indeed look good, also mountains for potential 2nd campus to trigger inspiration for Recorded History.

Settle second city one tile NW of grassland horse? Or do you spot better locations?

[Japper007]

Moar goodies!



Another dye and another food source! We could theoretically put a city up on the hill the warrior is on right now to eventually claim all resources, but I think it's better to settle so we have the two horses in first ring of city two and then settle something up here later. Let's cram this river valley as much as it can be crammed.

[Alhambram]

In order to claim both horse tiles at first ring, you need to settle one tile W of grassland horse spot, that mean losing out a forest for potential chop.
However I can live with it if both horse tiles are improved asap with God of Open Sky in place to gain extra culture early. Also that spot grab 3 plain hill rainforest in second ring, ready for chop-mine, so it is a strong spot, definitively settle there.
Also there is some 21 rainforests for Mbanza's too in 2nd and 3rd ring.
Food might a bit slow, it can be solved by creating farm triangle east of two horse resources (farm rice, harvest marsh and farm it, finally farm tile east of horse tile), both Mbanza Kongo and second city can trade that farm triangle to which city needs food most.

[Japper007]

It might be worth settling on the grassland instead of removing the forest, even though it moves one of the horses into second ring. I'll decide once I get more vision on what is on the eastern side of the river. If it only brings in more flat grasslands I don't really see the point. Cornflakes really opened my eyes on just how important the first ring resources are in our pbem7 thread. If we settle on that forest we'd have a 3/2 bananas, and two 3/1 horses without needing any border expands and we can improve upon that by getting a quick builder there as you said. Maybe we can go Builder as third build in the capital and then go Rice-move to second city-Horse-Horse? We'd probably have to purchase the rice to pull it off quick enough.

[Japper007]

Wow that's a lot of early hammers:



With the free envoy in Brussels we could consider a monument in the capital and expand since we get two extra hammers towards it.

[Alhambram]

Yeah, early hammers for both units and buildings, not bad.

Early monument build isn't my favorite thing, I rather buy it with gold. However that military city state is Valletta, suzeraining it allows us buy buildings with faith:
120 for monument, 130 for granary, 80 for ancient walls and 160 for watermill. Something to consider for it, however walls are better done with chop combined with powerful 100% Limes card.

One more argument against building monument: we are planning to get God of the Sky, right? That would be our pseudo monuments for a while, so I prefer settler over monument here.

And suzeraining Brussels means 15% discount for wonderbuilding. What is request for both Valletta and Brussels? We might start an wonder when we put 3 envoys in Brussels which mean little detour to grab mysticism after when we grab Pantheon.

[Japper007]

Oh I agree we should get the expand out first, then maybe monument after.

Current capital build order idea:

finish slinger (3 turns)

1 turn into Builder (as we somewhat awkwardly hit pop 2 one turn after the Slinger now due to Valetta hammers)

Settler

Finish Builder, then he goes farm-horse-horse

Valetta is utterly useless to us since we have 0 faith income outside of God King with Kongo...

What I could see happening is that we make Brussels and Valetta our third an fourth cities, if the terrain is valuable enough. We can quickly crank out Warriors and Archers with Agoge soon.

[Alhambram]

Oh I agree we should get the expand out first, then maybe monument after.

Current capital build order idea:

finish slinger (3 turns)

1 turn into Builder (as we somewhat awkwardly hit pop 2 one turn after the Slinger now due to Valetta hammers)

Settler

Finish Builder, then he goes farm-horse-horse

Valetta is utterly useless to us since we have 0 faith income outside of God King with Kongo...

What I could see happening is that we make Brussels and Valetta our third an fourth cities, if the terrain is valuable enough. We can quickly crank out Warriors and Archers with Agoge soon.

The build queue sounds good.

We do have 1 per turn now thanks settling upon dye! And there is two more dyes in NW, improve it and save up faith as true stingy Dutch person and reach enough faith in 40 turns to buy monument!

In all seriousness, Valletta is good candidate to be taken by Ngao. Brussels at other hand, can't we suzerain it for one early wonder if possible to gain inspiration for Drama&Poetry. It can be done fairly early if its request is easy one and then put envoy from Mysticism in Brussels.
However if Brussels comes with highly unreasonable demanding request, don't bother to put Mysticism envoy there and take Brussels.
In case that it request is easy one, go for wonder to finish Drama&Poetry. After finishing Drama&Poetry I don't care about Brussels anymore and you can take it as well.

[Japper007]

First barb camp, right on queue to get our slinger there and get us an Archery Eureka.

[Japper007]

Grew to size two, switched off the Builder (now 5 turns from completion) to the Settler (9 turns)