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So we successfully landed Pink Dot - yay! OK, time to decide where the next city goes. 
Here's my doodling that turned into a dotmap of sorts. I marked our current two cities, with the usual green lines indicating 21-tile radius. I believe that we have two real choices for the next city: the red and blue dots indicated above.
Red Dot: This spot is placed where it is mostly for strategic purposes. It stakes our claim to the narrow region between the peaks in the southeast, and along with Pink Dot, will completely seal off our part of the island. (I marked the level 3 borders/100 culture expansion in light lines to demonstrate.) The location has so-so land, with a rice and cattle resource, plus a few grassland tiles. Nothing to get excited about, obviously, but we could make it into a decent city - probably a production/commerce hybrid. This is more about staking a claim.
Blue Dot: This location has superior terrain, and is a better overall city spot. On a river, with cows, clams, and a floodplains tile. I think it goes without saying that this is a commerce city, where we cottage most of the land tiles and use the whip for most production. The big downside is that the expansion is away from our opponents, and we can grab this spot whenever we want. If we feel it's important to take a coastal location early on, however, this is the place to go.
I believe that red is the better place to go next overall. With such a small continent, pushing toward our opponents is the way to go, IMO. (It seems to have worked so far with Pink Dot...) If we are going to attack one of the neighbors early, as has been floated here, we want production cities to get going first instead of commerce ones - and we want forward bases from which to strike. We definitely do NOT want Imperio moving in on our doorstep (although their early cities are much more likely to go in the east). We can tell the Templars that we are moving our third city in the direction of Imperio, because we are worried about their buildup or power (or something madeup like that) to justify the situation. The sooner we can seal off our territory from wandering quechuas like we have now, the better.
As for the other stuff on this map... I like Yellow for a future city location, around the time we get Iron Working. I'm reasonably sure the Templars won't try to settle there until they can chop jungles, and we'll beat them to that easily. I then filled in some white dots behind it in logical spots. We can get a dozen cities peacefully if all goes according to plan - not bad! More than that if we don't choose to act peacefully too.
The white circle in the east is the fertile valley that the Templars and Imperio *SHOULD* be competing over. Instead, both civs are still farting around in their capitals, with no settlers produced 45 turns into the game!
Whatever. Anyway, their logical paths of expansion are along the colored arrows I drew. By placing our cities in these aggressive spots, we force the Templars to be thinking Eastward in terms of their expansion, which will inevitably bring them into close contact (and tension) with Imperio. Pink and red dots allow us to dictate the terms of the engagement. And so far, we've definitely be able to do that.
Please post alternate ideas for settlement, other (better) dotmaps and more of the like. I'll also mention here that I'm basing all this on the assumption that we will start building another settler very soon; I personally like going max shields at the capital when we hit size 4, then producing a second archer (2 turns, at 13 shields/turn) and then a settler (8 turns). We could get red with this settler, and then iron with the following one, assuming we don't already have it. But that's probably getting too far ahead.
Here's my doodling that turned into a dotmap of sorts. I marked our current two cities, with the usual green lines indicating 21-tile radius. I believe that we have two real choices for the next city: the red and blue dots indicated above.
Red Dot: This spot is placed where it is mostly for strategic purposes. It stakes our claim to the narrow region between the peaks in the southeast, and along with Pink Dot, will completely seal off our part of the island. (I marked the level 3 borders/100 culture expansion in light lines to demonstrate.) The location has so-so land, with a rice and cattle resource, plus a few grassland tiles. Nothing to get excited about, obviously, but we could make it into a decent city - probably a production/commerce hybrid. This is more about staking a claim.
Blue Dot: This location has superior terrain, and is a better overall city spot. On a river, with cows, clams, and a floodplains tile. I think it goes without saying that this is a commerce city, where we cottage most of the land tiles and use the whip for most production. The big downside is that the expansion is away from our opponents, and we can grab this spot whenever we want. If we feel it's important to take a coastal location early on, however, this is the place to go.
I believe that red is the better place to go next overall. With such a small continent, pushing toward our opponents is the way to go, IMO. (It seems to have worked so far with Pink Dot...) If we are going to attack one of the neighbors early, as has been floated here, we want production cities to get going first instead of commerce ones - and we want forward bases from which to strike. We definitely do NOT want Imperio moving in on our doorstep (although their early cities are much more likely to go in the east). We can tell the Templars that we are moving our third city in the direction of Imperio, because we are worried about their buildup or power (or something madeup like that) to justify the situation. The sooner we can seal off our territory from wandering quechuas like we have now, the better.
As for the other stuff on this map... I like Yellow for a future city location, around the time we get Iron Working. I'm reasonably sure the Templars won't try to settle there until they can chop jungles, and we'll beat them to that easily. I then filled in some white dots behind it in logical spots. We can get a dozen cities peacefully if all goes according to plan - not bad! More than that if we don't choose to act peacefully too.
The white circle in the east is the fertile valley that the Templars and Imperio *SHOULD* be competing over. Instead, both civs are still farting around in their capitals, with no settlers produced 45 turns into the game!
Whatever. Anyway, their logical paths of expansion are along the colored arrows I drew. By placing our cities in these aggressive spots, we force the Templars to be thinking Eastward in terms of their expansion, which will inevitably bring them into close contact (and tension) with Imperio. Pink and red dots allow us to dictate the terms of the engagement. And so far, we've definitely be able to do that.Please post alternate ideas for settlement, other (better) dotmaps and more of the like. I'll also mention here that I'm basing all this on the assumption that we will start building another settler very soon; I personally like going max shields at the capital when we hit size 4, then producing a second archer (2 turns, at 13 shields/turn) and then a settler (8 turns). We could get red with this settler, and then iron with the following one, assuming we don't already have it. But that's probably getting too far ahead.
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