Adventure Forty-six: Children of the Gods

Subtle move: The right scouting move is to first move the settler to the NE hill, since thanks to the roads he can still move back to the starting tile this same turn. Then the warrior can move to a northern hill. That done, there appeared no reason not to simply go back to the original tile. Two food resources, plains hill city, metal, flood plain, and a to-be-scarce town.

Thanks to the cow, the capital can build a worker in a mere 8 turns - but of course it doesn't need to. I guess a scouting warrior should be the first move. As for research, we don't need worker techs and we start with Mysticism. I'll try a religion just for the heck of it.

That was unexpected! Not only did some AI go Hinduism first, it must have been working a town or something. Ok, never mind Polytheism and just go straight to Bronze.

14 turns in, here is what we have found. (Yeah we can scout really quickly with premade high hammer tiles to build warriors and roads to speed them.)

Well, there's one way to discourage a zerg rush. Make the closest neighbor Protective, on a hill, behind a river, with metal in the BFC. Not going to try to warrior-rush that, we need real units. All three early resources are available if we want them - the pasture is a horses giveaway, and I don't think all three mines would be the same type of metal.

Also, that is turn 16 for Judaism! Wow, somebody must have some really good commerce tiles. At this rate, the AIs will make Feudalism before long, so if I want to do any rushing, it must be right quick.

Who do I want to rush? Berlin has gold, but otherwise doesn't look so hot. But a better prize might be Carthage (capital of Egypt? What happened there?) Three flood plains towns, three wineries, and must have a food resource in the fog.

So I thought for a while, undecided on what to do with this game. Space? I like the idea of a space victory without worker micromanagement - but eventually I'll get frustrated at so many cities working so many dull forests and farms.

Culture? I guess that's the best option. Should be able to find three city sites with a good set of tile improvements. Not Seoul itself - this is actually one of the worst capitals for culture I've seen. Only four cottages, and no hill mines for any hammer production. Seeing this map at the start, I was a bit annoyed that we waste a bit of potential of the idea. We've got lots of plains farms -- precisely the most boring type of tile that exists.

So, given a culture decision, my next decision is to put my first settler waaaay the heck over here.

This is by a large margin the best site I can find for a Legendary city. It possesses no fewer than 11 cottages and 2.5 food resources. And it will control a truckload (four) more happy resources going out to fourth ring. Not only that, but having a culture city dominating a whole region of AI cities should be fun. It missed the gold (I didn't see it until I settled) but that's okay. Seoul sent over an axe right away (already completed in the screenshot) for defense.

And the plan is to build the Oracle in this city, as soon as it possibly can, probably by a large whip.

(If I had been paying attention, I should have adopted Slavery while the settler was on its way. Forgetting that will cost a turn on Pyongyang's ultimate legendary date.)

City three came over here, at the next best site I could find. Three big food resources, six cottages (five villages, even). Great Artist farm, plus it has choppable forests just outside the BFC to help for the Nat Epic.

So that's two legendary city sites, but Seoul is not good. And I pored over the map for a good half hour, looking for a third site to turn legendary, but the best that could be found was no more than about four cottages and half junk tiles.