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We've all been having some spirited discussion on Discord, and I think I'm finally ready to make some decisions:
First of all, I don't think anybody has contested that the best spot for city #2 is in the south by the pig. What we have been debating, though, is if there is a way to skip Animal Husbandry and then just settle the wheat spots first, and then pick up the pig & cow spots only after AH comes in. And the answer I've found to that is ... nah, it doesn't really work. I like the idea, and it's something I've done in prior games, but here you would settle spot 3 in the map above and then there's nothing to grab until AH comes in. So you really have to get AH ahead of BW still, or delay your 3rd city until t50, and if you're picking up AH ahead of BW then there's no point in delaying AH for Mining at all (what do we have: 1 hill that we can mine?).
Plus when I try to make city #2 be southeast of the wheat it ends up slowing down the work boat for the Fish (partly because of losing the wheat hammer to city #2, and partially because I had already made a small optimization for city 2 being the pig which cost us a few hammers), and that in turn slows down the settler for city #3 by 2 turns. Point being it compounds, and here we want to snowball in the positive direction.
So process of elimination means we stick with going for AH next and city 2 goes in the south. Next is city 3, and that originally was going to be placed 1 tile SW of the north-coast pig, so it could also grab the wheat and be a strong city in its own right. I think this is a good plan except our settler for c3 comes out eot41 and at that time while we have 2 workers they have just finished pasturing the southern pig on t39 and there just isn't enough time for them to road that far north. Making it worse is that c3 won't have a connection by coast so the road really is necessary. (This was what prompted a lot of the "delay AH" ideas, seeing how far off we would be from being ready to grab this spot. So instead we are going to grab a more modest city 3 southeast of the wheat. Workers will have plenty of time to move north from the pig on t40, and then make the necessary roads t41 & 42 while the settler moves to the tile on 42 and plants on 43. The workers can then immediately start farming the wheat the turn the city is founded. City 4 then grabs the double-pasture spot in the far north: a bit of a stretch but I'm not expecting much competition in the north due to all the jungle.
Cities 5 & 6 are Hitru's suggestions and I'd have alternatives except I haven't really found any I like better. Eventually we'll put a filler spot in by the calendar resources, and getting a city by the southwest Cow would be a nice spot for defense, but that would be city 7 at best. Also, we may just find something in the fog to the west that changes this so I'm not too invested in it yet.
As for tech, Fishing will be done eot26. AH then finishes eot36 (eot35 if we find a second person with AH by t29). Then Mining t41 and BW t50. The biggest challenge here is we won't be able to whip until after t51, so that will change a lot of the timings on growing vs workers & settlers. One way is that I plan on going worker as the first build in city 2: the worker comes out right in time to help make the pasture for the pig. Then city 2 grows and hits size 4 on t49, right in time to take advantage of the future slavery revolt.
It's not the most elegant plan and perhaps doesn't leverage CRE the best, but it does a good job of sticking to working bonus tiles and getting a good growth curve underway.
Another concern is it is a bit unit-light, so barbarians could possibly be an issue early on. When that settler comes out for city 3 on t42 we're only going to have 1 warrior out (though we'll shortly have a few more coming after).
