1) Would you accept a three special spot as your capital even if they weren't trade specials? ie game, ox and a coal. Yes i know later engineers can transform them into whatever.

2) Do you think it's better to hit the three special pattern or do you take two of them and build on the river bed instead?

3) In DP games, do you ever build you capital in a forest that insn't on a riverbed?

4) Is there ever an advantage other than being on a small island to build your city in the very first spot, even without specials?

5) Should your capital have access to water, or is it alright for one of your other cities to be the port for trade and ships?

2. Riverbed. I can put down a second city to use the third special, or I may find an even better spot.

3. I would if it had access to whales or another good special. I'm no DP expert, though.

4. Yes - rivers can almost count as specials; if you're lucky enough to have some rivered forest, you can get both shields and arrows.

5. I think it's a disadvantage to have your capital on the water. This leaves it vulnerable to diplo sabotage and barb pirates.

2) Depends on what the specials are. But, most of the time, I would probably build my first two cities with overlap so I can be flexible on how I use them.

3) Yes... all the time if it is in range of a whale.

4) Only if you are an ICS'er. I will always look a little bit, and then be pissed when I don't find anything good.

I am having a hell of a hard time trying to use dp to my advantage.

One more question, do you get both the defensive bonus for the forest and the riverbed if you build on one of these or is it just one or the other?

River/forest or river/swamp is actually better than hills (bonus 2.25 vs bonus 2). I've seen people report rivers running through mountains on created maps; the defense bonus there would be 4.5!

I will build cities on gold, iron, or 1-food river specials in 1x production. Not one of my first few cities, since it will never grow very much, but it can provide a defensive stronghold that supports its own units and provides some trade arrows or extra shields.

Dave, in dp games, one can put his second and third city on a gold or wine, and be the first to Monarchy. From there one can expand expand expand.

However, this may not work for most of you, as i tend not to win too many MP games

I wanted units strong enough to eliminate any rounding of small bonuses. In each case, each Marine attacked his adjacent city. I ran the test 5 times. The Marines won all battles. However, their damage was significantly different.

Against the river/forest city, the Marine ended up:
.5 yellow, .2 red, .5 yellow, .3 red, and .3 yellow.

Against the river-only city, the Marine ended up:
.5 green, 1.0 green, .7 yellow, .9 green, 1.0 green.

The best Marine result against the river/forest city was more severe damage than the worst Marine result against the the river-only city.

I disagree that it is necessarily bad to build your capital where you will have a lot of shield production instead of a lot of trade, even in double production. If you follow a strategy that is not quite so used, for example if you don't insist on getting HG or MC, you can probably make darn good use of those shields. Especially if you have a good food resource to go along with it.

If you're playing on a large enough map, so science is slower, you may even be able to get MC or JSB by making good use of these resources. Just try yo build your second city by trade resources or by the sea so you will have some good trade. Send out two explorers from each city to try to find some decent trade resources near by while cranking out a lot of settlers from the shield and food rich city. You may be able to grow fast enough this way to catch up in the race to MC even if you don't get philo first, and are a bit late to Monarchy. And those shields in your capital will help you build the wonder also.

In one game I played I didn't have any good trade resource, just some fish for one city, and good shields for another. My first wonder was the lighthouse, and I was nowhere near in the race for MC. But I had managed to expand incredibly fast. And I wound up stealing Monotheism from the player that got it first, and then dip raped the city he had building it. I'm not sure which, but one of us got MC, and the other JSB. But I had control of about 80% of the land in a three player game.

2) Go for the riverbed.

3) Don't do DP, but build in forest all the time on 1x, if another advantage can be derived.

4) Reason to drop a capital on first turn is to get science started. So go for early drop if trade help is available (e.g., river or roadable grassland and two settlers).

If you have been given production specials... find a way to win with them. If you have been given food specials... find a way to win with them.

The trick is to not get locked into a set strategy that use every time.