A 100-Gold Question

[ramses II.]

Level: Deity.
It's 4000 B.C. You open a hut and find 100 gold.
No doubt that you rush a settler after founding your first and only city - it won't be disbanded.
But what about the 2nd settler?
Wiill he found the 3rd city - or will he be used for roading, mining and digging for hidden specials?
My strat ist that I connect the two existing cities with roads, build some roads to another location and found my 3rd city.
What's your opinion - do you think it 's better to keep the 2nd settler?

[rjmatsleepers]

I found 4 cities and then get a settler from each to link them with roads (if possible) and to irrigate as appropriate. After the initial batch of improvements, the settlers go of to found more cities.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Bloody Monk]

Early Cities Favored Over Roads

Found a city is a better choice than roadbuilding. Not only do you increase your productive base but you also increase your total trade arrows, speeding your research...especially if you employ the three-arrow strategy of city site choice.

I usually wait to build roads until Trade/camels is researched, preferring to quickly get a core of cities in place first.

If you keep the supported Settler around you will slow its home city's growth (-1 food). If you keep the NON-Settler you won't get any Nomads from Huts. This question has been discussed previously BTW, usually from the angle of 'Best Use of the Beginning Second Settler'; but, I don't remember the exact threads.

Monk

[ramses II.]

There seems to be a difference between Gold and 2.4.2.
With 2.4.2, I found up to 10 None-Settlers during the game - sometimes up to 3 on a small peninsula.
Must say that the huts were close to AI cities.

[debeest]

Yes, you can find lots of NON settlers -- but did you find them at times when you already had NON settlers?

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by ramses II.
There seems to be a difference between Gold and 2.4.2.
With 2.4.2, I found up to 10 None-Settlers during the game - sometimes up to 3 on a small peninsula.
Must say that the huts were close to AI cities.

Re: "close to AI cities"

All, repeat ALL, Nomads from Huts are NON, even if they have come from a Hut right next to one of your cities. Proximity to AI cities does, however, determine support for mercenary units. Perhaps you were thinking of this.

Received wisdom has distilled this question through quite a lot of game playing experience and not a little testing. It holds that, in general, you are limited to one NON from any continent and two overall, at any given time. Thus, if you already have one you will not get another from a Hut on that landmass; or, if you have two, you will not get another, even from the very reliable polar-ice Hut.

(That last bit is based on game experience where I have repeatedly fished for Nomads when I already had two NON's and over 100 cities. Samson's excellent test-thread, "A Study of Hut Outcomes", has a different finding. He says that, in 2.42, you can have one NON for each eight cities you have. My results were in MPGold, so perhaps there is a difference in that aspect, depending on version being played.)

There is at least one exception. This one is based on the fact that the game does a tally of your units at the beginning of your turn, and that tally holds for the entire turn. Therefore, if you find yourself with one or fewer NON Settlers at the beginning of the turn and you find a Hut-rich river system, it is possible to get multiple, successive NON's from Huts on the SAME turn. There was some speculation in that test-report thread that being offshore, on a continent with an AI, might increase the likelihood of this result.

For more on Hut Outcomes see Samson's thread. There is much about that thread to recommend. See...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=1505145#post1505145

Monk