Things look good Tachy
Re: silver city
I would work the silver mine (at least until currency is researched)
If you chop the forest after the road on the silver mine then the galley still finishes the same time I believe before we revolt back.
weird I thought there was a forest in silver city's big fat cross. I thought it was there in the real game but not the test game... doesn't matter chop the forest 2N2W.
Re: taoist missionary.
Depends somewhat on where it is founded...
If founded in Marble (a 1 pop city) or GPFarm, I think we have to use him to spread to stone city or another city that could build missionaries quickly (i.e. 2 pop whip them out)
However, I think we should save him until we switch back to slavery because we want to maximize our chances of getting a lucky auto spread of the religion. And I don't think we would have time to build a monastery before we plan to switch to slavery and organized religion anyways.
If it is founded in stone city (or a city we would want to whip for missionaries and could whip them)
Then I think we spread taoism to Trojan Horse. (but wait until the turn before our spy mission is planned (when we have 50% stationary bonus, since again we could get some lucky autospread)
The confu missionaries I think will come too late to change the possible location of taoism.
Re: trades
I tried the aesthetics for calendar trade in the test game. I gave the southern test game witches calendar and traded aesthetics for it.
The southern test game witches are worst enemies with the north and the west
strangely the northern witches didn't pick up any worst enemies diplo penalties and the west picked up 3 or 4 (depending on what turn I traded it on)
A risk of a diplo penalty of 3 or 4 isn't worth it.
I think the calendar trade is not worth the risk given that
1) the northern witches will get it in 2 turns and we can safely trade it from them (presumably unless the wonder building gets in the way)
2) If the wonder building gets in the way we can steal it from the northern witches eventually
I also think a construction trade can wait. The northern witches will trade construction and monotheism for code of laws. We would only want to do that until we bulb philosophy though on the off chance they have a great scientist coming.
Oh and once the eastern witches tech currency, you might be able to renegotiate the resource trades for a few gold. (they don't like us much so probably not likely...)
Oh and if the western witches bulb currency, you should be able to get some gold out of them with resource trades. Oh and maybe beg from them as well, that could really speed up currency
stretching for currency
If you are looking for things to sacrifice, I think cultural bridge can turn off its grass mine next turn and still grow. So work the mine this turn, but next turn run a scientist or merchant there.
When we switch back to slavery cultural bridge will likely whip the lighthouse, so no big loss if we lose a few hammers here.
gems city
I would rather start a galley then another spy in gems city
Oh btw, I really wonder what PD (Plastic Ducks) are up to? They have like 200 score over us at 250 BC. They went war, uh?
They didn't go to war if you look at their power graph. I think they may have gone for the oracle and then they expanded rapidly perhaps after getting code of laws with the oracle and they built the great lighthouse I'm sure. And they didn't give any cities away.