@kossin
About trade route
The test you ran was close to the actual situation but only 1 thing different and that made the result totally different. In the actually game the water tile in Saladin's culture is 1SW of the revealed tile and that's not considered as adjacent. While in your tested game, it's 1N. Only N,S,W,E are considered adjacent. My opinion was that city could be coastal so that we need to reveal the water tile to enable the trade route with at least that city. We adopted NSR and that's a clear decision of OB with anyone immediately. We should OB with him immediately and don't care about the demand from Justinian. We need all those oversea trade routes anyway.
Nope, I'm still right with corner tiles:
In any case it doesn't matter now but we should have opened borders right away just in case. My conclusions are still good however, either that city isn't coastal or it isn't connected to his capital's network by culture+road/river. But we lost on some commerce for certain.
As for Isabella:
There's no guarantee she can see the cows from what we see - she needs a unit or more culture in the fog that we can't see. Anyway, going to the cows only takes 1 turn and the chariot can catch up to the galley as it slowly moves around the peninsula [6 or 7 turns to reach Vijay, Galley can't be done before 1025BC that's 5 turns, 5 more turns to reach the crossing point it's ample time to get the Chariot back].
We should leave a unit in the area for her border to pop otherwise.
About your plan
Your settling order makes me feel nervous. IMO the gold site oversea is the most important atm. If we don't hurry, there is high chance that Saladin will grab it. It has the food plus golds and is adjacent to Saladin's culture. AI will rate high on this site. I strongly prefer to whip a galley from Vij and send the settler to that site as soon as possible. This site is an absolute boost to everything including the net commerce income. Why don't we try to work on those gold as soon as possible? I have not looked at the save, but I guess Zara probably whipped his 3rd settler so that his 4th settler won't be ready for a while and the Fish/Horse site is not urgent and can be grabbed by the settler from Delhi.
Regarding your build in Delhi, I am not sure whether it's better to sacrify earlier settler and hammers to favor commerce. When a new city can pay for itself and get to work on improved tile, earlier settling makes good return like the snowball effect. Considering the safety and the actual gain from the new city, I think starting the settler at size 6 is better. I also prefer to work at the mine for faster ToA.
Yes, I agree more cities are better over a few cottage turns. I was just trying to push to see how we can grow Delhi. Bombay will produce another settler in 1050BC which is early enough to send on the boat. Meaning the settler from Delhi isn't that urgent unless we want to send him overseas as well. I really don't believe in my settling suggestions order, I just threw it out there for discussion. It's clear we can't delay going for the gold if we want it.
I don't think axe is necessary for escort for now. All the barbarians should enter Saladin's land atm.
Well, if there's a barb Spear waiting for us I'll gladly hand you the save over
You're probably right however, the area should be mostly safe.
It seems to me that you and dingding favor the cottages in Delhi much more than fast expanding. I has the same opinion when I play a deity game with average start since the cost of fast early expansion is high and the tech trade window is very narrow. However, when the economic situation allows, i.e. with strong commercial resources around and/or GLH available, the extreme expansion is the most efficient way to play the game even in deity. The earlier settling of the city, the faster the city starts to be profitable to empire. I'd suggest that you try to play BOTM29 of Inca to make a comparison. Even with a financial leader, my capital worked 0 cottage early on, but focused on wonders and whipping of settlers (it accumulated 6 whipping anger at certain point) to take the benefit of GLH. Without any bulb and golden age, I was able to complete Edu in 50BC with 13 cities and the free GA from Music as well.
If you can get both settlers and cottages without delaying new cities much then it's worth considering, no?
To be honest, I hadn't planned on building a cottage in Delhi before Bureaucracy was in but we have one now so if we can plan on using it sometimes it can be useful to reach CS faster.
I still think we should 2/3-pop whip Delhi for a long time as you did in BOTM29. As long as there are islands with food available. It's weak in production but strong in food and we whipped a granary on purpose early just for that.
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If you agree on delaying Chariot 1 turn, I think it's still a good idea for a pre-set to really know how many trade routes we're getting to really plan our binary research.
