How to found World Congress on Diety

I always see recommendations to be first to found World Congress on diety. But this requires you to first rush to Astronomy, for ocean crossing and meeting everyone if on continents, and then, to Printing Press, to become the founder, right? Because I find pulling both of those off on Diety before the AI does to be a pretty tall order.

Forgive me for asking but why would you WANT to found the World Congress?

The chances of hitting PP and meeting all the civs before any AI, on Deity, are so small. Even when I had a dream game with Sweden and got many wonders and the earliest tech lead I've ever had on Deity, I still lost out on Printing Press. Many peaceful civs beeline it, I think.

The one extra vote matters not, I think. Leaning Tower is nice, but far from necessary for any VC.

If you really want to found World Congress, you are actually better off researching Printing Press before Astronomy. (Indeed starting a Printing Press beeline right after you finish Education) Most AIs research Astronomy way before they research Printing Press. By getting Printing Press first if the AIs on the other main landmass research Astronomy and send a Caravel you have a better shot than if you first researched Astronomy.

However, I note that the human has the tie breaker on resolutions and so unless an AI has already built FP and a different AI is the initial host then the Human will be able to propose resolutions anyway, and in addition the usefulness depends upon victory type.
(For science victory, you really want science funding, but that's extremely unpopular with the AIs early and only becomes popular much later.
For diplomatic victory, building the FP which would require early Banking, will do more for this victory type than being the very first host.
It's really only cultural victory that what the AIs want in resolutions for the first two congresses match up well, but cultural victory is a lot less popular on deity level than lower levels.)

It's certainly not worth wasting any resources to achieve. Researching astronomy prematurely is often at the expense of more productive beelines. If its part of your natural plan to get those two techs and to have caravels out asap, then fine, but I wouldn't specially deviate from your course just to get it.

A reason to go Astronomy right after Education is to unlock Rationalism. This is especially true if you have a coastal map with sailing etc. already researched, or if you have GW(s) standing by to unlock social policies once you hit the renaissance. Observatorys can further increase tech lead

Acoustics is a quicker path to Renaissance. It's also required for ST, which Astronomy is not.
If you have mountain cities though, then of course it's a good idea to tech astronomy.

59saintdane said:

Acoustics is a quicker path to Renaissance. It's also required for ST, which Astronomy is not.
If you have mountain cities though, then of course it's a good idea to tech astronomy.

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Unless you've already met everybody (Pangaea and also ironically enough Tiny Island & Large Island maps also tend to fall into this category), getting the Caravels to meet the other civs (preferably via upgrade of the cheaper Triremes) is more important than Acoustics.
Of course with this starting as a Deity level thread, it's quite a bit more likely that the AIs on the other landmass will do that themselves to come meet you than on lower levels.