Unfortunately, it wouldn't HELP just yet, since no other cities existed to have trade routes with!I had something of an opening plan: I wanted to go for Hinduism. With all the seafood at the capital, we'll be building work boats for quite a while, so workers and worker techs can wait. And with Sid's Sushi food, the cities will grow rapidly, so we'll need to push the happiness cap sooner rather than later.
The other half of my pregame plan involves the fact that Sid's Sushi HQ is a regular world wonder. This means it makes Great Merchant points, and I'll have my first Great Person on turn 50 or sooner. This is a slingshot in the making, although a Great Merchant can no longer slingshot Civil Service early in BTS. With the Mathematics prereq for CS, that always opens up Currency which is higher priority for a GM.
So, what could I actually slingshot? Well, there's this plan: if I build the Oracle to pop Metal Casting, and avoid Mathematics to block Currency, my Great Merchant can lightbulb Code of Laws. Neat, that's like a double Oracle!
Unfortunately, I didn't make it to Hinduism (Brennus got it), so I aborted Polytheism research halfway through and headed straight for Slavery instead.
The starting build order was two work boats, then whip a worker letting the overflow go onto a police warrior. After Bronze Working and revolting to Slavery, Sailing was next while building more work boats. I double-whipped the lighthouse trading post right away, then researched to The Wheel to get the gems connected.
After four work boats and the lighthouse, Nidaros had +18 food, just absurd. I later intentionally worked a lower-food tile to miss completing the settler by a turn, so that I could get 17 food of overflow converted into hammers for a replacement police warrior. That's like getting half a whip without any anger penalty.
City two came in 1920 BC, at this location. In a normal game, this would be a very weak site to start, with no food bonuses -- but we've got a corporation to take care of that. Its real purpose is to grab the Stone short term, and to become my commerce capital long term. This site can work 14 towns plus gems.
But I ran into a pair of snags - first, the $50 cost to spread the corp, and second, that I hadn't explored a trade route between the cities yet. Okay, Nidaros started on a third worker in order to make the overland road connection. And fortunately that hut by Uppsala popped 56 gold!
It was apparent by now that we were alone on our continent, which was fine with me. With no competition on the land grab, I could have my cities concentrate on the critical wonders first, and fill in the settlers later.
Nidaros did the fifth work boat next, and I let it grow way past the happy cap for a few turns, until this happened:
Building the Moai Statues right away in my capital sure seemed like the right move. This would add 5-10 hammers to the capital starting immediately, and get a great jump on the expansion curve.
Meanwhile, I researched to Priesthood and had Uppsala do the Oracle, since the capital would be busy for a while next on the Great Lighthouse.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't HELP just yet, since no other cities existed to have trade routes with!
And I got my Great Merchant presently, and would save him for a few turns to lightbulb Code of Laws as planned after Writing research finished. This of course founded Confucianism, lifting my happy cap nicely, and even coming with the free missionary to spread it to my second city. It picked Uppsala as its holy city; I'd've preferred the capital, to stack the shrine with the corporation and Wall Street later, but this was a minor detail.
Nidaros trained a settler for city three (which would actually GAIN me money upon founding thanks to the trade routes), and whipped a forge and courthouse next. The Colossus could wait a bit, until we got copper hooked up -- it's in the fourth ring of Uppsala and that city will hit 500 culture soon from the corporation.
So with the clock at 575 BC, time was ticking on the first scoring checkpoint. It seemed likely that I could get a fourth city in the south, with three seafood and the corporation, by 1 AD. Uppsala had to start training the executive to do that, while Nidaros built the work boats and the settler.
And actually, even after founding and incorporating Birka, I was still just about researching in the black at 50%, and another couple population growths at the capital would get there. So I could even expand the corporation to a fourth city (my third founded city) before 1 AD. To do this, I needed to hold off a couple turns on founding my fifth city (even though the settler was in place) and building fishing nets at Birka (to avoid increases in corporation payments.) So in 50 BC, the last possible date to do so, I triple-whipped the executive in my capital, so he could arrive in Haithabu in precisely 1 AD.
So I _just_ made that under the variant rules. Then I founded that fifth city and built the rest of the work boats at Birka, here in 1 AD.
That's four Sushi cities for 20 points, and ten Sushi resources also for 20 points.