slaze
Deity
As far as tech, I'm not completely sold on Metal Casting. That advice was for an infiltration, throwing science out the window, focusing solely on production and expansion, eventually stealing from and overpowering your enemies. But looking again at your position, namely controlling the pyramids, that might not have been the best advice anyway.
At some point MC will be very usefull - you have two precious metals - but at present your happiness limit is relatively high, and 4 pop buildings are time consuming. I find then much easier to build with Organized religion.
Speaking of religion, it doesn't look too promising that your continent is getting one soon, so it might be time to start thinking about one. After all, you are Saladin and monotheism isn't that far away. I think research-wise, you do exactly that: mono while working on a prophet. It's so ALC-ish it makes sense.
However the only city capable enough to do this at the pace you need is Mecca, so you may need some back up plans if you pop a spy or engineer. Both could be settled, and you may want to rush the MoM in Najran.
Speaking of Najran, settling it where it is was a
move. 1S would have been so much safer. Zara built stonehenge so his city has probably had a stele since the turn it was built. He might flip ya.
Anyway, the path to mono goes through poly, so you may want to make that trade. The techs are about equal in cost; it really not that bad of a trade beaker-wise. As others have said, it's really not that hard for him to get it himself, I say you do it and put away your plans for war for a little bit.
Right now, your advantage is you happy cap - use that as much as you can. Your population ranking was really only due to Mecca, and even that is only on par with the AI capitols. Build farms to grow, espicially in Medina and Baghdad, and cottage them over later if at all. With Rep, just run preists and scientists. You might as well continue to cottage Mecca and acadamy/Bureaucracy it later. I'd cottage Gaul too. The unhealth will be too much too quickly if it's farmed.
Take chicago if it flips. it has river grassland which is good enough for growth.
Continue your expansion into the area south of Mecca, the barb cities, and thirdly, there are islands SW of etruscan. Although they are distant, the intercontinental trade usually makes them profitable right away. And just so you know you aren't connected to everyone with trade routes. You're only connected to zara with roads. Yes you have the trade symbol with everybody because they have sailing, but this only means you can trade resources with them. This is fine because you've saturated your routes with Zara and 2
is the max you can get until harbors or pop 10+ cities, although come currency you'll want to be connected to everybody else. (I also noticed something odd where Najran had no trade routes, not even a domestic one, even though it's connected. I don't know how to explain this.)
Spy-wise, put all your esp into whoever's teching Calendar. Everyone seems to be heading that way so it'll be khymer or zara. Or currency. After teching mono, then i might manually tech metal casting.
The south looks hard to dotmap but i think it should go like this:
The Iron will claim it (the south), the bronze comes after the barbs and the river much later down the line. It's not amazing land, but there's some nice drafting possibilities when the time comes.
But overall, I'd continue to work on expansion and most importantly, grow your cities. Your economy's fine - you have three more gold mines coming after Gaul. (Under-utilizing damascus was your other move). I wouldn't expect to see war until maybe 1000 AD.
At some point MC will be very usefull - you have two precious metals - but at present your happiness limit is relatively high, and 4 pop buildings are time consuming. I find then much easier to build with Organized religion.
Speaking of religion, it doesn't look too promising that your continent is getting one soon, so it might be time to start thinking about one. After all, you are Saladin and monotheism isn't that far away. I think research-wise, you do exactly that: mono while working on a prophet. It's so ALC-ish it makes sense.
However the only city capable enough to do this at the pace you need is Mecca, so you may need some back up plans if you pop a spy or engineer. Both could be settled, and you may want to rush the MoM in Najran.
Speaking of Najran, settling it where it is was a
move. 1S would have been so much safer. Zara built stonehenge so his city has probably had a stele since the turn it was built. He might flip ya.Anyway, the path to mono goes through poly, so you may want to make that trade. The techs are about equal in cost; it really not that bad of a trade beaker-wise. As others have said, it's really not that hard for him to get it himself, I say you do it and put away your plans for war for a little bit.
Right now, your advantage is you happy cap - use that as much as you can. Your population ranking was really only due to Mecca, and even that is only on par with the AI capitols. Build farms to grow, espicially in Medina and Baghdad, and cottage them over later if at all. With Rep, just run preists and scientists. You might as well continue to cottage Mecca and acadamy/Bureaucracy it later. I'd cottage Gaul too. The unhealth will be too much too quickly if it's farmed.
Take chicago if it flips. it has river grassland which is good enough for growth.
Continue your expansion into the area south of Mecca, the barb cities, and thirdly, there are islands SW of etruscan. Although they are distant, the intercontinental trade usually makes them profitable right away. And just so you know you aren't connected to everyone with trade routes. You're only connected to zara with roads. Yes you have the trade symbol with everybody because they have sailing, but this only means you can trade resources with them. This is fine because you've saturated your routes with Zara and 2
is the max you can get until harbors or pop 10+ cities, although come currency you'll want to be connected to everybody else. (I also noticed something odd where Najran had no trade routes, not even a domestic one, even though it's connected. I don't know how to explain this.)Spy-wise, put all your esp into whoever's teching Calendar. Everyone seems to be heading that way so it'll be khymer or zara. Or currency. After teching mono, then i might manually tech metal casting.
The south looks hard to dotmap but i think it should go like this:
The Iron will claim it (the south), the bronze comes after the barbs and the river much later down the line. It's not amazing land, but there's some nice drafting possibilities when the time comes.
But overall, I'd continue to work on expansion and most importantly, grow your cities. Your economy's fine - you have three more gold mines coming after Gaul. (Under-utilizing damascus was your other
move). I wouldn't expect to see war until maybe 1000 AD.
) So in addition to now having a border with all three AI civs, Baghdad is going to be under Creative cultural pressure and will probably lose some of its tiles (although no resource tiles at least).
I thought this would depend on the DemandTributeAttitudeThreshold which is set to CAUTIOUS for all leaders???
