1 vote for settling the GP in the capital. Especially if you switch to rep. This capital just screams wonder whoring
and with the extra hammers from the GP that would make it a lot easier. The extra gold and beakers will also bring in more then theology if you ask me. Justinian has buddhism so you could save it maybe for the shrine but then you have to conquer him.
Under consideration. Although the shrine will be built for me, so no need to worry about building any shrines myself.
I don't understand at all why you thought farming pigs is better than farming wet corn. The number of worker turns is the same, the commerce is the same for most turns because you can work the unimproved pig, and the food is 2 less for the next 11 turns! The only reason you might consider farming the pigs at all (but after the first settler!) is if you planned to avoid AH to get the Oracle techs faster, which you didn't do. The point of BW before AH is to build chop and/or whip your first settler out at size 2 or 3 (Aren't you IMP even? I forgot about that in my other post. IMP makes BW before AH a no-brainer if you have somewhere good to put the second city that doesn't require AH, and maybe you should grow to size 4 for a quick 90 hammer 2-pop whipped settler).
Initially the plan was to completely ignore Animal Husbandry. I did tech Mysticism and the Wheel after Bronze Working, after all. Then somewhere along the line, I changed my mind... especially when I saw the cows 2W of the copper. Obviously I was gonna settle the gold site, and the fact that the cows showed up there with no seafood nearby meant that the decision to settle my 2nd city where it was placed was made so that the city has an extra tile of food resource in a commerce city that isn't particularly rich in food. And I'd rather work the cows than to work a farmed floodplain tiles, so that was the reasoning anyway. Also initially, I wanted to work the riverside grassland mine. The travel time to move the workers from one end to another is a resource in itself.
Also, I was swamped with barbarians from every direction in the early going, so I had to churn out warriors for a while and it delayed my 1st settler. I only posted one screen shot of the barbarians, but it was worse than that. Everyone deals with barbarians obviously, so I feel that it isn't anything major to report, though the jungle area and the western area spawned tons of barbarian warriors and archers.... without fogbusters, which a few of them died, it might have been worse.
But yeah... my play wasn't the most optimal by any means. Your point well taken.
Other than that, your situation looks great. Stonehenge is a strong wonder if you can actually secure it, and you were lucky to get a late Oracle (again) plus relatively early Mids. Your second city is definitely in the right spot assuming that you can manage the barbs without first-ring copper, and it's fine to build cottages there since the city has cows for food. The only thing I don't understand is why you care about Aesth--I think you should be putting beakers into Alpha to secure a MC=Alpha+IW trade. I thought you wanted to Praet stomp? It's somewhat to your advantage if the AIs that you attack get MC because some of their cities will come with forges when you capture them. You might need to settle a city for iron so it will be much more important to figure out where that will be instead of building a library with only 3 cities.
Completion of Stonehenge and the constant replacement of warriors delayed my Oracle obviously, but nevertheless, it kinda worked itself out. I wasn't particularly concerned with the copper being in the 2nd ring, because at that time, I had units to fogbust the area to ensure that the city wasn't gonna be threatened with barbarian problems there... it was Rome that was always in constant conflict with those pesky buggers.
Why Aesthetics.... hmm... my reasoning were:
1. I found copper and later horse, so obviously barbarian problem is addressed.
2. Upon further exploration, there still is plenty of land to grab without having to go into the jungle, in addition to the fact that AIs are still too far away to wage war in the early going, which bumped down the importance of cranking out early Praetorians.
3. Like sinimusta mentioned below, I can always use Metal Casting to trade for Alpha and/or Iron Working. I said I was holding onto Metal Casting for a while, but that was primarily because I knew that I was gonna end my turn set, and I didn't want to do any trades before ending the turn set. I saw no need to put beakers into Alpha, when I know for sure that Metal Casting alone can get me Alpha plus something like maybe Poly, which I skipped but would eventually want. With my current rate of research, I felt that it might take way too long to partial research Alpha to a point where an AI would be willing to give it up along with Iron Working for MC alone.
I also don't understand the reluctance to trade away MC. I usually use the oracle tech (if I build it) to be able to trade for alpha earlier than I otherwise would.
Instead of putting some beakers to alpha I'd trade for it immediately and then seek if alpha-IW trade is possible.
Something like that, yes. I just wanted to end the turn set first before making any trades though. I was also hoping that Lizzy would get Alpha soon, so that I can see what she has, but apparently she's been slow at getting it.... hmm.
Yeah the main purpose of oracling isn't to get one free technology, it's to get 4 or 5.
Still going oracle seems like a very silly move for a IND/marble/stone civ. Much better to run the top line of the tech tree (which is already trade bait) and build mids, parthenon, glib, etc.
The other choice is just to war everyone with praets (which is always tempting). Oracle can play into this, so you can set up MC and possibly (though i dont approve) do a theo bulb. But if you go this route then the mids don't make sense.
I think you've set yourself up in a position where you won't utilize the mids to their full effect, if at all, and then you will come off with the judgement that the mids aren't good.
At this level of difficulty, I don't think it is all that bad. I feel that I can still leverage the power of the Pyramids. Going Representation just for the happiness bonus alone is a boost to begin with. Whipping the Forge and applying the overflow into the Pyramids was awesome, and the hammer boost from the Forge afterwards sped up the Pyramids a bit further. If I want to war, Police State would give me extra production for producing units, and along with the Forge, a Praetorian would be merely 30 hammers a pop to produce. With Rep, I could even trade the gold away for something else in return, since happiness bonus alone from Rep is more than sufficient for now... (Too bad no trade routes are established just yet though). Given the diplo situation where converting to Buddhism looks very desirable, eventually running Organized Religion looks attractive. I think this situation gives me more options to consider and tinker with, and for me, that is fun! ^_^
Warring is not an immediate priority right now... rivals too far, not close enough, and too much jungle between me and the closest neighbor, Lizzy. Still too much good non-jungle land to settle... etc.
If you had to pick just one on this map at the very turn where the stone was found, would you have preferred to go for Pyramids and scrap the Oracle?
Also why the heck are you building stonehenge >< Going for fail gold this early makes absolutely no sense imo. You were slow in settling cities, you could have used more spawn busters, heck even a barracks could be useful for inevitable praets. I don't get why people go for fail gold before they even need to move the slider from 100%. Especially in this situation where you have an early gold city -- and most importantly you're about to get stone/marble hooked up, where your fail gold will become much more efficient. There's a lot of advice about snow balling and getting things sooner rather than later, but having 100g sit in the bank before doing anything for 30 turns doesn't qualify.
There was no wonder you could use though to even attempt at fail gold, other than the Stonehenge.... and not for a long foreseeable future. Great Wall went by extremely early, so I had no chance at that one. Oracle and Pyramids I wanted for myself, so what's left? I get what you are saying in that it isn't all that important to bank on gold too early in anticipation for not being able to research at a higher beaker rate, but I fully expected the Stonehenge to be built very early. And then I played sloppily and didn't notice until the darn thing was near completion, surprised that nobody had built it yet! That and the constant annoyance with barbarians from 3 directions slowed my expansion. Not very optimal play at all, I admit... could have been done a lot better!
Also I think it's weird that you're seemingly going an early war approach (with oracle and MC) but haven't researched IW yet. You seemed really engaged with where copper and horses popped up, but who cares, you're Rome. I know I will get lectured by the guys that say IW is a crud tech to self-research because you can get it for trade -- but those are the same people that ignore this line of reasoning completely when going for oracle, and then believe you only get iron in 80% of the games and reload or start over when it doesn't pan out. The only way you really should lose as rome is if you don't have iron, and the only way you should really not have iron is if you don't find out where it is until almost the ADs. Also (big secret) it is highly rumored to be experimentally possible to trade IW to the AI sometimes!
Not necessarily early war approach. You always are interested in grabbing horses and copper early, but that doesn't necessarily mean I am looking to wage war early though. It also makes city planning a lot easier. Granted, I don't have Iron Working yet, and I even thought about putting beakers into Iron Working instead, but then decided that too much good land in between myself and the AI haven't been settled yet, so IW wasn't an immediate priority. If I saw no horse and no copper, it would have been a different story because I'd be sure that having none of those 2 resources anywhere near me would almost ensure that iron would be near me somewhere unless the map is completely screwed up. I don't plan on not knowing where iron is until I hit the ADs... that is too late of course.
I like your point of view with your statement about Iron Working right there though. Something to keep in mind and an approach that feels very fresh, rather than a rehashed statements about how some techs just aren't supposed to be self teched because it should always be traded for.
Agree. If you have stone and you don't have marble and you have to choose between those wonders you'd try for mids. Of course you can also do something else.
If it were you, at the very turn set where the stone was founded, would you have scrapped the Oracle entirely for the Mids? If you had to compare the payoff between the two wonders, how would you grade them?
And oh... I'd love for you to come visit my "Ultimate Evil Map" thread if you haven't already. Drew has made a nice showcase on the map, but it would be nice to have at least one other player who can provide a different perspective.
Mids 50
per forest = 10 forests. Oracle 30
.
, and MC+priesthood is 510 
