Turn 1

[Maniac]

Is there an endturn?

[PJayTycy]

If there is forest on that rice tile, we need bronze working before we can farm it.

[PJayTycy]

I rebuilt the tiles in the world builder. Below is a transcript of possible first actions. I went for bronze working and chopping a settler, although I could try again with pottery as first goal and building cottages after the farm.

3960 : city founded
Worker (12 turns) Bronze working (15 turns)
3520 : worker finished, start warrior to grow, build farm on rice
Warrior (8 turns) Bronze working (2 turns)
3440 : bronze working researched, b-line to pottery
Warrior (6 turns) The wheel (8 turns)
3360 : farm finished, move to forest to chop
Warrior (4 turns) The wheel (6 turns)
3280 : city grows to size 2
Warrior (1 turns) The wheel (4 turns)
3240 : warrior ready, start settler
Settler (13 turns) The wheel (2 turns)
3280 : forest chop finished : +20 hammers, start road to next city location or mine a hill (until pottery is researched)
Settler (9 turns) The wheel (1 turn)
2840 : settler born, start warrior (to guard 2nd city), move worker to floodplains to start cottages
Warrior (4 turns) Pottery (1 turn)

[Maniac]

Huh, you want to build cottages on flood plains? In my limited experience, 3+ nut tiles are a rare blessing in Civ4 and should be exploited to the fullest. Even if we build cottages around most of our cities, we still need some high food surplus bases to get some great people, or to be able to work mines for wonder production.

So I'd suggest we farm all possible tiles around our river.

[ForesterSOF]

Yes; becoming a food exporter will help politically/diplomaticly and economicly along with general ppl wanting to come to us.

[SebP]

i don't know about this. we are financial. i would consider a cottaged capital as playing to our strengths. and because of the flood plains we would STILL have some excess food for important gps like an early scientist, or a great engineer for machinery, when not working mines

[Maniac]

Originally posted by SebP
i don't know about this. we are financial. i would consider a cottaged capital as playing to our strengths. and because of the flood plains we would STILL have some excess food for important gps like an early scientist, or a great engineer for machinery, when not working mines

But when not working mines, we are not using our second trait to the fullest: Industrious: better wonder building and cheaper forges!

This is the problem I noted when testplaying China. Our leader's traits don't really fit together... Regarding our terraforming strategy they create a contradiction instead of synergy.

To make the best of both, we could perhaps use the probably few cities with lots of food and hills as production bases with a farm/mine combos, and build cottages everywhere else?

[Senethro]

I've never been very impressed with the results of farm/mine cities. I've always preferred cottage spam +1 mine.

The point seems moot anyway. We can cottage spam everything in that city location, have 2 mines and still have surplus food. I'd be opposed to doing anything else. Financial is the broken trait in this game and we should play around it.

[N35t0r]

Senethro is right. With the city square + rice + 2 cottage floodplains we've got enough surplus to work a couple of mines, and eventually replacing some of the mines with windmills will enable us to fill the cross.

As for the floodplains, we could irrigate one now to get an extra food, but it eventually will have to be cottaged. Basically we want to avoid on doing anything but cottaging any tile adjacent to a river (windmill it if it's on a hill). The reason: we automatically gain the extra gold. Cottage-river = 3 trade, while cottage-non-river + irrigation - river = 2 trade.

we should build a couple of production-heavy cities to pump out all the units and wonders, but even on a regular city we should be able to get a wonder if it's got a couple of forests to chop...