Thank you for the wonderful thread Funak! I have a couple of questions...
1. How do you use your first missionaries? I feel that getting my religion in the strongest nearby civ's capital is a good idea, but so is spreading it around my own empire quickly, or spreading it to city states that want it.
It does depend on the first follower-belief I pick. Is it something that I can make work of in my own cities (any non-building) I generally do spread it to my own cities first. If I go for a religious building as a first choice I tend to spread the religion to my neighbors first, hoping that they will keep spreading it.
It also depends on if I settled a city after founding the religion, since that city isn't going to have access to my pantheon I tend to prioritize spreading to it.
2. I know it's an obvious question, but do you build a scout first in most games? I am starting to think it's not worth it compared to rushing monument/shrine, since one can scout sufficiently well with just the warrior, at least for city locations.
This really depends on map, civ, setup and so on. On a pangaea or an oval map (the types I usually play) going for a(or even two) scout(s) first is usually worth it, early discovery bonus for meeting city-states and ancient ruins tend to make up for any lost time working on the monument/shrine (either by hammers from ruins or by investing from gold gained).
On island-based maps going scout first probably isn't the best idea (unless you're polynesia or maybe shoshone).
Some civs tend to need more or less scouts, for example playing as shoshone I usually build 3 pathfinders right off the bat, hoping to earn the investment back with superior ancient ruins (also getting the extra pathfinders up is easy since you can go for hammer-ruins). Playing as iroquois I usually feel the need to build an extra scout mostly because of the reduced vision in forest/jungle. Playing as America I'm fairly split, on one hand you really don't need more than 1 scout because of its absurd sightrange, but on the other hand investing in more scouts means making better use out of the extra sight.
If I'm playing as Aztecs I tend to neglect scouts in favor of Jaguars.
