[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[Ioan76]

Maybe we should try to go for the Fertility Rites pantheon to get the extra Builder?

This would be great and my first choice ( I'm wondering why this is banned too! ).
However, I feel that we need little more exploration before deciding for second city-placement. Indeed, this City State so close looks like a mixed blessing & annoyance

Would we consider to occupy it in future? On Prince-difficulty this is not so hard to achieve...

[Kaiser]

Maybe we should try to go for the Fertility Rites pantheon to get the extra Builder?

This would be great and my first choice ( I'm wondering why this is banned too! ).
[...] Indeed, this City State so close looks like a mixed blessing & annoyance

 
I think the current consensus here is that it is a good pantheon but basically worthwile the cost of 1 Builder (so roughly 58 at that point of the game) and there are other pantheons which are powerful throughout the game (for example the two pantheons giving additional for pastures or plantations respectively). For us it has extra value as it helps with city growth which will be a concern for the capital but normally is not that important due to the housing cap coming into play relatively early.

Would we consider to occupy it in future? On Prince-difficulty this is not so hard to achieve...

Given its close proximity to our capital this is definitevily an option as it presents a strategical weakness very close to our core. This will also depend on how difficult it is for other players to capture and if we can keep the suzerainity of this city state.
I hope that we might lead the culture in this game, so keeping the suzerainity should be possible if we focus enough on it, if somebody else pulls away in culture this becomes much harder.
If we try to keep it we also need to keep an eye on Apanda and Kilwa Kiswani but we can probably also consider taking the Bologna if somebody fights us for suzerainity. The bonus is quite nice by giving +1 GPP for buildings in their respective district. I believe Brazil would really like having access to this city state.

However, I feel that we need little more exploration before deciding for second city-placement.

I fully agree here, I just have the time to analyze right now and fire away any ideas and conclusions I can find
Thank you again for dedlurking me, this is very helpful in keeping me engaged. My wife is also sanity checking my decisions in the background though she is more of a King/Emperor level single player type

Currently I really dislike the 2 northern light blue dots as they need roughly one builder to work acceptable tiles (4 yields in this case) which then are food heavy.
Both locations lack production until construction for Windmills, Coastal is a bit better off due to the PHF in first ring and it being closer to the fog (where we can only hope further good production tiles are) but as stated in the CIV analysis, I do not think we want to settle coastal and protect against naval attacks from either Brazil, Phoenicia or England.

I think we have time to circle South with the Warrior and even check the area South of our Capital for other 2nd city sites but I will do a deeper analysis later, including how we want to develop our capital (especially regarding the low food income we have)

Kaiser
Due to working a culture tile we lead the culture column, I guess the others also have 5 yield tiles to work so either +1 or +1 over us. We will be able to see this in 4 turns (5 tile), 5 turns (4 tile), 6 turns (3 tile)

My test games showed that this is actually wrong, it should be:
- 5 tile: growth in 3 (so next turn)
- 4 tile: growth in 4
- 3 tile: growth in 5
- 2 tile: growth in 7 (that will be us)

I believe it is important to quickly get to 3 or 4 pop and then effectively manage your growth (you can reduce your pop by buildings Settlers) to avoid wasting food into the housing threshold. Starting with a high yield will help getting there quicker and managing your growth by working tiles with less than 2 :

That being said, we currently have a cultural advantage which lets us choose God King or Urban Planning roughly 7 turns earlier than the others. We should be able to try for either a first pantheon or a advantage with urban planning (which I have used so far in my calc sheet, please let me know in case you have any questions on the sheet)

[Kaiser]

That also brings us to the question how we want to develop our capital. As stated our capital seems food poor and will grow slowly.


Formula
The basic formula here is that each pop will eat 2 per turn, the remaining food will be accumulated until you reach a threshold for growing the next pop in your city. The threshold is 15 / 24 / 34 / 44. Important to remember is that your city always works its city tile for free without needing a population. Positive Amenities give a 10 % boost on food surplus.

Ed Mercer has a 2 city center and can currently work only a 2 tile as its best tile so we get to:

Food Surplus at size 1
[2 + 2 - 2 food consumption] * 1.1 = 2.2 surplus

To grow to 2 pop we need to store 15 surplus, fractions will be transferred
2.2 surplus * 7 turns = 15.4 total surplus


Ed Mercer situation
The bad news for Ed Mercer is that we do not really have better food tiles, the best we can achieve in the near future is farming the PWheat to be 3 (but only 1 ) which would be  a 4 yield tile.
That means we can work at size 2:
1 PHSheep and PHJCoffee for 2.2 surplus
1 PWheat and PHJCoffee for 3.3 surplus (loosing 1 , additionally 4 turns later 2 in comparison to the PHSheep (a 5 yield tile when improved)
2 PWheat for 4.4 surplus (loosing 2 and 1 (PHJCoffee), additionally 4 turns later 3 in comparison to the PHSheep (a 5 yield tile when improved)

This gets a bit more attractive when at 3 pop as we can then work the 5 yield tiles (PHSheep and PHJCoffeee) and PWheat for better growth rates.
At 4 pop we can work all of these tiles for that reason I compared the different options up to this point originally in my spreadsheet, we also will loose the amenity bonus at 3 pop.


Calculation and Options
After thinking a lot about the results of post 46 I continued the spreadsheet to turn 50. Growing slows down considerably after pop 3 due to the increasing thresholds and our even lower surplus income due to needing additional amenitites.

To keep/further increase our surplus we need to:
- connect the coffee at pop 3 and another amenity when we reach 5 pop/7pop.
- build a watermill in Ed Mercer (+1 +1 +1 for both PWheat) increases our surplus to 5.5 when working 1 PWheat and to 7.7 when working both bringing us back into an acceptable region for the range up to 4 - 7 pop (55 / 66 / 78 / 90).
- farm the Sphinx tile to create a triangle at Serfdom (first Sphinx and replace it later with a farm at Serfdom, no district)
- research Exploration for +1 on the pasture
- research Scientific Theory for +1 on the plantation


I believe we will need all these for our capital to develop to a mediocre population limit, the last two boni come in relatively late and are marginal and it would cap out at 10 surplus before amenities.
We definetively need to keep the PWheats and build a Watermill quickly if we do not find a high food tile to the South of Ed Mercer. Another option would be building a Granary for further 1 and the increased housing but buildings are a heavy investment as there are no multiplier cards so we have to see how quickly we can get one in.

The best case scenarios for us would be a flood on our river increasing the yield of the the PWheat and the Sphinx tile, let us hope for a little luck here


Strategy suggestion:

In order to optimise our low food start, I am currently tending into the direction of building a quick 2nd Settler in order to reduce pop size and thus also reduce the surplus threshold necessary to reach for growth
We would reach turn 50 with 1 pop lower in Ed Mercer but have a 3rd city quicker and utilize the production tiles to good effect. Optimally we would doe this from 5 pop to 4 pop in Ed Mercer to be able to work all our 5 yield tiles as well as the 2 PWheat.

We can switch the Warrior in a bit earlier to be less gready lossing a bit due to neutral amenities but the build plan I prefer looks something like this:

Builder turn 9
Settler turn 17 -> 2nd city turn 21 / 22 can build a unit or Monument
Builder turn 23 (can be #4, I need to check if we arrive on time for the campus chop)
Warrior turn 26 (can be #3)
Slinger turn 28
Slinger turn 31
Campus turn 36 (chop without anything in queue to get it into the district)
Settler turn 43 -> 3rd city turn 47 / 48 or a bit longer depending where we want to settle
Warrior turn 45
Slinger turn 48
Watermill

We need to consider if  we want to build the Government Plaza and Ancestral Hall in the capital or one of the other cities, especially as the latter needs a strong production site to come into play early enough.

[Kaiser]

New turn



I should have moved the Warrior SE as I did not uncover any new tiles and now might be blocked in case Bologna does not move its Warrior.
Also it looks like there might be a passage to the NW of Bologna as I believe I see a coastal tile (adjacent tiles have charming appeal and a lake or river would only bring 1 appeal) in the fog NE- NW - NW from Bologna.

On international news:
- no score increases for anyone, so nobody worked a 5 tile from turn 1
- CMF probably met a cultural City State (assuming CFs Theory is correct, he should be behind me due to lower score in case he would just work a 1 tile)

[Ioan76]

Do you prefer to go past Bologna instead of circling our capital ( and going SE if possible )?

[Kaiser]

If we would have started with a 2nd unit (Scout or Warrior) I would probably have gone past Bologna, this is one of the disadvantages starting Builder first. The region looks not to interesting though with the desert and the coast (I need to check this next turn, my wife mentioned it could be a lake as well) ==> checked it, it should be a lake as the SW tile is adjacent to a mountain and the water

With just one Warrior available we want to keep him a bit closer to our capital. Right now I intend to go South and then East in direction of the coast, we have 13 turns left until the Settler is finished. We need to find a decent spot we can protect with our Warrior, else the early Settler might not pay of.

For the moment, I really dislike the Northern light blue spot for our 2nd city, I hope we are still to find better alternatives in the Southwest/South of our capital.

My wife brought up a very good point, she asked me why I build a Sphinx if I do not work the tile. I will do another post regarding other development options for our capital tomorrow including heavier use of the PWheat tiles and the Sphinx tile.
Also I realised that I did not yet include the Governor options, the last game taught me that Pingala with culture and then science per pop is nearly mandatory as an opening. Sadly this does not maximise with my currently intended strategy of going wide (resulting in a lower pop capital)

[Kaiser]

Next turn



Ichabods empire score tells us that he was working a 4 tile and grew this turn. I would have picked growing turn 5 over 4 as well, at least we got 4 out of it as well.



His new score of 8 shifted the positioning around, I am relatively sure by now that cornflakes guess for ties is correct:
Tiebreakers seem to be Score -> Turn order. Reading this means that only CMF and us have found a CS so far and nobody is working any or tiles besides us.

Ichabod surpassed Woden in Science and Culture due to his additional pop giving him 0.7  and 0.5



This city spot already looks magnitudes better than the light blue dots do. It has at least 2 4 yield tiles in first ring, one of which can be improved and brings us an Eureka. It also can potentially share the PHSheep with the capital if we work different tiles there (Sphinx or PWheats for quicker growing).
I actually have developed a new strategy but it comes down several times to close situations so i can just hope that my spreadsheet is correct. I will do a detailed update on this new plan later.

Regarding Scouting, we get the PHSheep tile next turn, which will reveal the adjacent tiles. This means we can go SE - SW with the Warrior next. From there I suggest we head further South and then turn East passing in sight of the Mountain SW of the PHSheep.

I also have good news on the barb front, my wife correctly pointed out that Bologna is fog busting barbs for us, that means barbs can only come from the North or the South, where we have our Warrior. Playing a greedy opening got less risky due to this as our only bad case would be a barb scout arriving from the North.

[Kaiser]

New strategy suggestion:

After my wife correctly mentioned that I plan on building a Sphinx but not working the tile we discussed some more about this and my pre-game analysis. In the end we have picked Egypt for its early game bonus and the Sphinx is an essential part of it. With the given terrain it is a harsh decision to work the tile, as it means that we are only grwoing very slowly for a longer period of time. However, ot should allow us to reach PP relatively early and I think we should try to got for it.

Order of events:
T01 work PHJCoffee
T08 Animal Husbandry, Growth to 2 pop, work PHJCoffee and PHSheep
T09 Builder
T10 Code of Laws -> discipline, urban planning
T11 Pasture PHSheep
T13 Pottery
T14 Farm PWheat (Irrigation Eureka)
T17 Settler (remain on 2 pop), Plantation on Coffee, Irrigation, Craftsmanship -> Agoge, Ilkum
T21 Settle 2nd city
T22 Builder, Mining
T23 Sphinx
T24 Foreign Trade -> Agoge, Urban Planning
T25 Warrior -> explore North
T26 Growth to 3 pop
T27 Slinger -> support North/protection, start working PSphinx, PHSheep, PHJCoffee
T28 Warrior (partly for 1 turn, to get the Slinger to finish on the right turn to be able to chop directly into the Campus on T31)
T31 Slinger -> Support 2nd city/protection, chop forest into empty queue, place Campus, Writing finishes T31 without Eureka, Switch State Workforce for Early Empire
T34 Monument in 2nd city
T35 Switch Early Empire for State Workforce
T36 Campus , State Workforce ->  remain Agoge, Urban Planning, research Military Tradition, Pingala in Ed Mercer
T37 Switch Early Empire for Military Tradition
T38 Warrior in 2nd city
T39 Early Empire -> Colonization, Agoge/Discipline, Pingala culture upgrade
T41 Pingala established in Ed Mercer (+15% science and culture, +3 culture)
T44 Political Philosophy (if we can get the inspiration)-> Autocracy, Urban Planning, Ilkum, Agoge, Discipline, start working PHSheep, PHJCoffee, PWheat
T46 Settler (remain on 3 pop)
T52 Watermill (would help enormously to grow afterwards, is it worth it?), Settler 2nd city

The 2nd can finish a Settler with Colonization in T51 or something else, maybe the Government Plaza if we decide against working another Settler. I rarely build this many Settlers before Ancient Hall.
The capital has an open build queue from T36 to T39 (including) worth unmultiplied 41
Our Pantheon will be reached T51, which is very late. We could push for an earlier pantheon with God King and Sphinx but we would slow down the production of both cities. This would result in a slightly later PP due to the monument in City2 finishing later and the state workforce inspiration coming later.

The biggest challenge in the planning is getting the inspiration for Early Empire due to our abbyssimal growth rate. For that reason we have to switch around the civic research a lot and will get relatively late our first governor.
The Inspiration for PP itself would be very handy but is not guaranteed. Without the inspiration we could get PP at turn 49.

[Ioan76]

Next turn
This city spot already looks magnitudes better than the light blue dots do. It has at least 2 4 yield tiles in first ring, one of which can be improved and brings us an Eureka.
{..}
I also have good news on the barb front, my wife correctly pointed out that Bologna is fog busting barbs for us, that means barbs can only come from the North or the South, where we have our Warrior. Playing a greedy opening got less risky due to this as our only bad case would be a barb scout arriving from the North.

Why on blue dot and not directly on stone?? I'm missing something here?

Your wife is really clever - indeed, we have less to worry from one direction.

[Kaiser]

The Stone is the better city center but it is also 1 turn further away from our capital and cannot easily share the PHSheep with the capital.

But you are right that we should scout the potential of that site as well to have a better information basis.
I suggest we scout 2 to 3 tiles further SW from the stone to better understand the lay of the land and its quality before turning East.

What is your opinion on the strategic options I tried to describe?
Would you prefer:
- using our production for quick settlers to keep our surplus threshold low
- trying to grow tall on the two PWheat
- going for early Political Philosophy