I was reading through this thread over the weekend and thought I'd give it a try. I've just recently switched to Deity play from Immortal, and had a couple of near-misses in my first 2 tries w/ Incas. This game I set to Large size (probably made it a bit easier), as the transition to standard from my old Huge map style wasn't going entirely smoothly, so there were 10 civs in this game.
I played as Inca and got a desert start. There were only a few mountains near the capital, but plenty of hills, so I decided to give Petra a shot.
Tech Order was Pottery > Beeline Currency > Beeline Construction > Beeline Philosophy.
Build order was Scout > Scout > Settler (more on this later) > Temple of Artemis (I missed by a good 6 turns but put the gold to good use) > Granary > and then I think it was time for Petra.
City #2 Build oder was Granary > Caravan > whatever
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I stepped on an early culture ruin and went Tradition.
Also stepped on 1 growth ruin.
I found what would be the last ruin at turn 17 and blocked it from a Polish scout with my warrior and scout/archer (the Incan UA came in handy in those hills) until turn 20 and got lucky enough to get faith, and obviously took DF. 2nd religion, and I went Tithe, Swords into PS, then Peace Gardens (4 river cities and screwed up the 5th and didn't settle it next to a lake), then Religious Texts.
I had marble and 2 incense in the capital, but no tech to utilize either until after researching Currency. Stole 1 worker from Poland and 1 from a CS, but they were around turn 25 and couldn't do anything but make farms until I got mining and then terrace farms (didn't help in the Petra build).
I got Petra at t72. 2 other desert start civs were Morocco and Persia (both way up north), but neither had the quality of (unimproved) production tiles I did. At this point, I've built zero infrastructure and am 10th in every demographic category.
I got a 2-city NC at turn 104 then built a third city (detoured to sailing for the extra trade route to build this one up fast for university), then a 4th after getting my 4th trade route.
I built PT at t174, which surprised me because the other two wonders from Architecture went 8-10 turns earlier and tech leader Bismarck had 3 branches of rationalism when I finally got it. Happiness was an issue throughout, my army is puny even with the help of two friendly militaristic CS.
Oxford went on t184 (delayed 2 turns to get biology), my only Observatory went t182 and I'm still sitting # 6 in tech, kicking out 366 BPT (which is low but will go up fast once Research Labs are finished), 75 GPT and 66 CPT.
I saved the game here to post, walk the dog, etc
. My whole 5-city empire is on desert and I only got one stinking oil deposit, so my air defense isn't going to be too much, but I did go Patronage after Tradition so I may be ok here.
I'm not liking my chances, but it was a fun experiment and my capital is now one seriously sexy city (size 20 as happiness issues slowed growth), even with the coastal start and lack of an adjacent mountain. My conclusion (which I may change if I pull out this win) is that it's not a good percentage play at all to go for Petra. The idea of building a 2nd city early just to feed the capital worked out well, but the sacrifice of infrastructure rendered me reliant on good luck in diplomacy to keep from getting steamrolled by my very strong neighbors (Poland, Austria, and runaway Germany). Germany went Autocracy, so I'll probably follow suit to remain BFF with them.
I'll try to post the screenshot here if I can ever figure out how to do this.
