Terra Cotta + Holy warriors

Just thought I would tip the board about this interesting combination. Terra Cotta duplicates ONE of each TYPE of military land unit you have. That means you want to try and grab one of every type available one turn before you complete Terra Cotta. Here's the cool thing: an archer and a composite, those are two types. So if you have 2 composites, after you complete TC you will have 3. But if you have 1 archer+1 composite, after TC you will have 4 altogether. Same principle works for warrior+sword, chariot+horse. You can then pay money to upgrade your lower-tech units--AFTER you complete TC. Which leads to the next thing:

You tend to run low on money with TC --and that's where it turns out Holy Warriors helps. And I'm not even spending that much faith. I bought my catapult and spearman; then got two of them. That's 4 respectable military units, for the price of about 1 1/2 missionries. No delays waiting to hammer build, nothing. TC came out right on time. And I still have faith to spare--the most expensive part was choosing the belief. That let me spend my hammers to build barracks in my second city instead of units, which means +15xp for those four units (obviously you spread your religion to your second city and faith purchase there). At this point, I didn't even need to faith purchase more. I'm done. So now I've got this Holy Warriors belief I'm not using, but I'm happy; it served its purpose. At half price. And with a little more planning, I probably could have pulled off Heroic Epic as well.

I am just wondering, how exactly are you going to get religion, make cities, build buildings and units and get terracotta army at the same time

On higher difficulties, trying to get a religion is pretty damn hard as other things are important. Terracotta Army is waste of hammers. If you want to grab an early wonder, Temple of Artemis (+10% food (before the citizens eat it) in all cities) is way better.

I pulled this off on Immortal with godly start. And on emperor, too, but on Emperor I was even able to get trebs. I.e. i ended up with 2 trebs, 2 cats and I upgraded. That's the point: with holy warriors you ARE able to build an army and all those other things. Shrine start, desert folklore. While faith builds, get second city out, first city builds TC. Second city makes the faith purchases. You need about 550 faith total: 25 for desert folklore, 225 for GP, 300 for units. Building the settler doesnt slow TC, because you havent researched construction yet by then. The second city insta-purchases, so it could be pop 1 and it won't matter--you just might want enough time to crank barracks out. I found that not to be a problem, because you're waiting for the first city to finish TC.

Terracotta Army can be beastly if you manage to snag a valuable advanced unit through ruins.

An early Trebuchet (Catapult upgrade) or Knight (Chariot Archer upgrade) or Crossbowman (Composite Bowman upgrade) can be exceedingly strong in the Ancient or Classical era. Getting a second through Terracotta is extra goodness.

I am not following the logic behind faith purchasing in second city rather than capital? Or is the trick to be faith purchasing two units at the last turn possible?

I'm playing around with it some more and it looks like the TC does not clone xp--instead the new units get whatever barracks, HE, arsenal is in the capital.

Also it looks like TC is awesome on emperor--you can easily make your hammers back + another 400 in units. On immortal, though, it looks like the real power is in holy warriors+barracks/arsenal/HE combo--not Terra cotta. If you only clone 250 hammers, what's the point? But yeah, you can supercharge your faith (with desert folklore, planting your second and third prophets, etc.) and divert your hammers into barracks structures instead of units, and holy warriors rocks.

I'll bet this TC would make an Emperor byzantine game fun.