I just meant that a spiritual leader can switch in and out of slavery as needed, to reduce the risk of a revolt. Whereas nonspiritual you basically just have to lump it.
No that is false arguing. If you switch out of slavery, you have to wait another full 5 turns (like everyone else) before you can switch back in again. And if you are in slavery, it's because you want/need to whip your cities and keep whipping. Now you are going to miss your optimum whips because of trying to evade a revolt chance?
Agreed that the golden ages hurt it a lot though. Cristo redento hardly matters... how often are you switching after that thing is built?
Cristo hardly matters? You
HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!
I don't think we are playing the same game here... or someone is missing some obvious fundamentals of it.
If I am gearing up for a late-stage war, the optimum switch is
EVERY turn!
cristo is key on marathon and spi here has a bonus(dbl prod. speed) - you can switch each turn instead of every 5 turns which is great. The most abusive part being - have a big neighbor with whom you have good relations and who directly competes with you in space: 1 turn of barbarism, tribalism, etc., switch him to those civics, switch back next turn. Obviously he's gonna switch back to more decent civics, but that'll cost him 5-6 turns of anarchy at that size of the empire. So instead of a kamikaze attack to raze his capitol since he researched and launched faster then you or sabotage his parts - you have a very cheap and safe method(it's cheaper to sabotage a sec. bureau and pay for 5 civic switches then sabotage a sec. bureau and a part of his ship - significantly cheaper).
That being said, I think it's still the best trait in bts too - maybe not so hot anymore on normal speed, but on marathon where you have the same 5 turns limitation for switches(you can potentially do 3x switches in a game, and it'd be wise to abuse the feature) and GAs are comparatively shorter... still best trait, hands down.
I remember trying to exploit this way back when Cristo was first introduced. Unfortunately it
DOES NOT WORK. The AI gets immunity to anarchy from you, and I think this was intentionally done to prevent this exact game-exploit. Unfortunately they don't tell you about it, so you have to learn the hard way, like everything else with Firaxis.
I believe, you at least used to get the first turn resulting in anarchy from them, but then the immunity kicks in. After that, you can flip them for over a thousand years, and they just get free-civic switches at your expense.
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Turns 0-10
No screen shot because there really wasnt anything worth noting. That area to my East-South is just a dead-end cut off by water, so no room there. I then began to move my warrior toward the West to see what was down that wing..
-ni
Turns 10-20
Got one workboat out, now time for another... and then possibly a third. Because of the location of the clam to the south, it looks like putting a settler near the stone may be a feasible idea. AFTER I get TGL up and operational. I see a lot of amateurs go settler first.. thats great WHEN IT WORKS, if it doesnt they just re-roll. But we are playing straight-up for our life here...not some HoF gambit for POINTS.
Turns 20-30
I have been getting hit by quite a few animals at this point, but in good shape due to proper terrain moves. Anyhow, we timed our hut just perfectly here. And we popped.... MINING! Ahah. Id be so pissed if I was forced to pop it on my last research turn on mining, (that always happens).
Turns 30-40
As you can see, I indeed did decide to go after 3 workboats first.
And so far, I started scouting down the West-South. It seems I havent met any enemy scouts or workboats yet. I may be isolated here. That can really be a problem if I need Astronomy, to link up with everyone. It means, this whole TGL plan may be practically for nothing. Perhaps I should just abort it here... but I had already researched techs for it...
Turns 40-50
Well, I decided to just pray, and hope for the best that I could make contact without Astronomy. So I continued with the plan for TGL. Besides, even if I cant use it to its fullest at least I can prevent another AI from being able to.
This is from turn #51 but since I dont have any other shot, this will have to do for now.
As you can see, deity barbs always try to cause problems with wonderbuilding. They just refuse to give you a frieken break unless you get the Great Wall. But then, youll end up missing out on the Lighthouse anyway. So what can you do...
Turns 50-60
Well, a little bit of a delay compared to our normal speeds, but turn #55 we put the last hammer into our first wonder. Slavery helped shaved off 3 turns here, so I was grateful for the food. Of course, I wasnt so greatful to the barbs who tried to make sure my wonder building was delayed as much as possible. I guess things could be worse.
But they will eventually come to a hault, since I was able to get horses. I actually felt pretty sure horses (or metal) would pop in that spot, and its part of the reason I didnt want to risk moving my capital on that tile. The terrain generation in this game is just getting too predictable/obvious.
It may look rather silly working un-improved tiles, but like I said... barbarian problems.
Turns 60-70
Here we are, Pyramid city. I decided it was best to get Mids in a sister-city, since the capital had so much food around it would be better to put it to use for other smaller builds.
As for Pyramid city, I COULD have settled on the stone hill, but after doing a lot of thinking and judging, I decided to settle here, and in fact I even had the clams hooked up on the same turn (God Im good). This lets me work 3 decent capital tiles from that city, while the capital works the food farther back.
Of course, this is from turn #71, because I have no shots from the 60-70 turnset again.
Turns 70-80
My capital is showing the ill effects of whipping, but so be it. And here I Am trying to get another settler out. I already have a UU out guarding the West, which is rather busy running down those pesky barbs who keep trying to run into my capital. The warrior barbs have already turned into archers, and soon they will turn into hordes of axes coming. But my UU shall prevail. Though I will have to plan on building quite a bit more very soon.
Notes:
On turn #76 I got a notice ToA was built far away... If only I had marble I could have gotten that!
Turns 80-90
I wasnt sure what to call this city, so I named it Wine-Coast. Now my front got a little stronger, and my chariot(s) can heal a lot more quicker. Soon well be trying to push it farther into barb-land. Barb-land, because we still havent met anyone else yet. Looks like we just wont be doing any power-trades for quite some time here.
Turns 90-100
Well, well, well. 475BC and no one took the Pyramids yet, looks like it is ours. But just to be sure, Im going to whip it to completion here. Looks like those critics were wrong about not being able to nab mids on deity, (we even got another settler out AND built another world wonder at the same time!).
Of course the critics who say it is possible, will tell you it will lead to your death. Hmm. Now time to see if THOSE critics are also full of sh!t. We shall see...........
In other notes, looks like someone just completed Temple-of-Solomon. Who that is, is a good question. I still dont know who the other 6 players are. And without my foreign trade routes, my lighthouse really isnt doing much. I also had to self-research math and everything else now, so my teching is really not going that well, but Rep will at least help to dampen some of the bad luck in that department.