Upon opening the save, I checked the bleed, and noticed that the tiles to the north of the hill where I planned to move the Scout were forested, so were not going to give much vision. Decided to move the Scout NW-NE instead. Revealing.. nothing much
So, as planned, I moved the Settler 1E and settled
Research set to AH. Depending on where I see horses, I might go Pottery before Mining-BW. I know it sounds crazy, especially in an AW game, but with this terrain, I want a lot of cottages, and I want to start working them early. Not sure about it - just writing down my ideas, even if they're stupid
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Looked at the scores. Confirmed that everyone settled T0. Moved the Scout. Saw something interesting
Suspect I know the direction where I'm going to expand early. Also suspect the idea of Pottery before Mining is not under consideration any more
Demos look quite typical for early game, but one number caught my attention
The strange number is the 6 in rival best crop yield. Spent a few minutes scratching my head, but could't think of an unimproved tile with 4f yield. Means that either someone had a farm near the starting position and moved towards it to settle (don't think something like this passed unedited), or someone had 2 food resources next to each other and settled on one of them (perhaps on dry rice? that or sugar, nothing else makes sense). Will keep an eye on that