The Morale trick isn't opportunistic if we can use the Morale unit fruitfully afterwards, I think, and I'm sure it's more effective throughout the game than you might think because it's somewhat esoteric; but I do favour creating two NavII galleys. Chandragupta is on his way north, in any event, but I'll take care not to reveal the guy to Savant.
EDIT: And before that goes under -- I like the Sword Navy SEALs plan to capture TGLH...
It's T74, not T75, but here's the promised screenshot dump:
16/30f, granary 58/60h
Cottages. The one 3 of Rhapsody was erected by four workers on this turn. Two of these will go on to chop the grass hill forests into a settler; two others will cottage another grassland for size6, then improve the furs for Westward Ho! and happiness.
Benching 10hpt makes our MFG look tiny, but cottage growth is more important -- Rhapsody doesn't have much left to produce that we'd really benefit from, except for a library.
18/26f, library 23/90h
Sicil wishes it was as large as Harmondale, but we'll get there. In the short term, this city will produce one or two units for garrisoning our northwestern cities against Savant. Size4 would bring MP unhappiness, but we can stuff two chariots into this city on the next turn, which is good, because Savant's sentry chariot is still scouting our cities.
Anyone's Guess is 1t from a mine that allows this city to produce 10+ hpt, i.e. 3t chariots, which I think will be important, but maybe that should have been a cottage (23). The 78 mine was just finished; we'll move the worker onto the grass cow on T75, where Whitehall's culture picks it up on T76.
15/28f, spearman 32/35h, culture 7/10
The spearman has decayed a bit in the queue. We could whip for lots of overflow, but I'd rather grow our cities at this point when possible. Three workers supply this city right now; one is on the "3t cot" tile, one each on the second-ring forests. CML has retreated all his axes inside Atlantic City and elected not to finish the chop, so the copper tile is safe from his units -- a chariot couldn't reach it. The vanilla forest is covered by four axes, probably overkill, but I want to be insured against any surprise chariots killing our units and sniping our worker. Fortunately, CML doesn't seem to have any.
Vermin will keep producing units, but at a slower pace (i.e. without whips). The copper will be important to hook up. Our workers finish chopping on the turn that borders pop -- not wasting a hammer. What will we chop, actually? We could chop out the 45/100 settler still in the queue, freeing up the workers at Rhapsody to do other stuff. Or double-settle islands. More on that in a minute.
14/28f, granary 57/60h
It sure would be nice to hook up those clams. Library next; should take ~10t if we take the grass mine, ~14t if plains cottage (assuming no whips in either case; probably can spare 1 pop). What's better?
Could also build scout boat first rather than library, but I think a library is more important here (cottages will have grown by then; +4bpt isn't negligible).
7/26f, axe 0/35h, spear 5/35h, 15/100 GPP (GSci 100% obviously), culture 10/100
Ignis doing its thing. 1hpt and 2fpt doesn't build anything, so I'm just investing hammers into units to allow emergency whips. Chariot just needs 1h so we'll invest that later, to avoid hammer decay.
When we improve those whales, we can spend 1t on working them rather than one of the scientists, since we'll overshoot the target by 5 GPP and I don't see Ignis as our specialist pump after this -- food is just too low.
Forgot to take a screenshot of Whitehall.
It works its dry corn and the plains cow shared with Sicil. 12/24f (6 fpt), galley 5/50h (4 hpt), 6/10 culture (+2 per turn), library inside. Estimating -3gpt in maintenance.
Still in its larval stage; will add horses after growth. At size3, add furs. (Maybe swap horses -> furs earlier than that, to squeeze all our commerce lemons. We'll see)
Overview: South
Looking at the south-eastern jungle, settling on the banana is actually strictly better than settling on sugar, because the tile 63 of hill corn looks to be a forest; settling there will avoid orphaning the crabs, while settling sugar unavoidably orphans the jungled grass silver. (2 of crabs is a peak; isn't really apparent in this picture.)
We can't allow CML to settle those islands, by the way. He sent us another peace offer this turn, but I still see no reason to take it.
On the Hammerhead Peninsula, 66 of dry rice seems like a halfway decent filler city (two 4f resources, grass horses) that, more importantly, gives us a canal. It's also on a hill. Can you tell I like settling on those?
Overview: North
X8 has to go on the plains hill; the 3f center tile from bananas looks nice, but fails to pick up clams, and the ph plant will outperform the banana plant after IW + Calendar, which shouldn't be too far away (35t?). Library -> work boat -> granary? Can ferry over at least one worker right after settlement; perhaps two. Extant boat in position to improve fish on T76 (earliest possible date). X8 also blocks off Savant from the other island we can see, even with first-ring culture. The mainland spot is a joke; we cannot defend that against Savant if he gets serious about it.
Ignis' second-ring borders have uncovered dry wheat (...) on the long eastern island (which might actually be multiple islands, from fog-gazing). Not really appealing, but it's there. Maybe there's seafood we can't see; Westward's boat will probably explore a bit before improving whales. Didn't calculate when we need the happiness, though; plan subject to change.
Ironfist size6, Sorpigal size2 iirc, with corn improved on Savant's T73 (mouse-hovering no longer shows "requires farm")
MFG looks much worse than our actual potential, due to rotating out ~13hpt worth of tile yields in total for the sake of commerce, as mentioned. I'm amused by how we're #3 in CY with 1f off Rival Best. Fierce competition in this game.
