Um the Muse
King
Huh. Ok, but is it worth doing a two-pop whip if you have to MM like that? Maybe TunaTown (once it relinquishes the cottages) has enough food for it to be worthwhile. Otherwise, I think I'd prefer the extra turns of growth.
^^ Well, I mentioned that I was considering turning my research slider off, but I guess it's not worth it. I don't have the Espionage cost formula memorized, but my only advantage would be the 50% reduction due to waiting. 50% empire-wide bonus versus 75% in your single best commerce-heavy city? It's hard to say which would be stronger. But then I got to consider that Espionage makes techs more expensive, too. I guess I should just straight out research things. That Academy really makes a difference!
if the other continent formed some religion based lovefest and looking at yours distribution (hind+budh) that certainly is possible, especially when your own continent is slow going thanks to the warmongers (imagine Zara+MM on the other continent with MM peacevassaling to Zara both running Juda... yuck).
That's why i don't like Seraiel's advice of self researching religion... you basically give the AI with the other early religion free card for free vassals and skyrocket tech.
From my experience you want as much hate as possible between AI's at highest levels and religion is your basic tool...
that's why I like to Oracle->CoL... you get free Conf mish and if you find AI without religion then you have guarantee of pissed AI's around... you for sure need to stay out of course ;-).
@Seraiel: oops, I type too slowly, didn't see your post. I think you're right on everything you wrote about this game.
The comment about knights was more desperation than anything; I went for guilds so I could have another valuable tech to trade around (to leverage my one big advantage).
I think this is the first time I've played as Joao on a non-watery map. I thought that his trait combo would work well with the gems start, but I know think that his traits conflict with each other too much for it to work. Ironically, it probably would've worked just fine if I had more production in the capital instead of gems. Maybe I should've allowed a second city to pick up the gems, letting the capital to really crank out the workers and settlers.
Oracle would've been good, too. I bet it's a lot more powerful on Deity than lower difficulties, due to faster tech pace.
Lastly, I was surprised to discover that everybody and their brother started out with gold nearby. The fact that I had some gems was only enough to keep me even with them.