My most disgusting game this year....

[kivanc]

I am nowhere near Deity yet. I am still working toward winning consistently at Emperor. I find that a Spiritualist leader like Ramesses needs to get religion -- either by conquest or by teching -- at a fairly early point in the game in order to take advantage of the Spiritualist trait. It doesn't make sense to try to beat the military civs at their own game long-term. But once in awhile I do that by playing Ragnar just to improve my military skills. The rush/no rush decision depends on the availability of Horses and whether I have enough decent land for expansion without getting into an early war. That is the most important early decision for Ramesses.

i haven't succeeded deity yet neither. need some more experience on that level.

I don't find SPI trait that much useful. Because switching to military civics just when the enemy is in your borders seem so late for me. i prefer a rather active and continous military approach.
for a shrine economy you just don't need SPI trait neither. Any guy starting with mysticism is ok.

Availability of a resource gets much more of an issue in high levels. So you need to build your 2nd city early enough or pick leaders with UUs requiring no resource. For the second city, you should place it just the tile near the resource, you don't have time for culture pop (unless u're CRE)

 

[kazapp]

Next time you decide to postpone your chariot rush, remember to write off your chariots. Immediately.

If you don't use them right away, don't count n them doing more than scouting and garrison duty until you can upgrade them to Knights.

In that game, once you decided to hold off, you should have started to build catapults.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

Next time you decide to postpone your chariot rush, remember to write off your chariots. Immediately.

If you don't use them right away, don't count n them doing more than scouting and garrison duty until you can upgrade them to Knights.

In that game, once you decided to hold off, you should have started to build catapults.

Well, that depends on the relative military strength of the opponent. He had only Archers defending all his cities at the time I attacked, and I was on the verge of capturing his capital when Mehmed gave him the magical Elephant.

If I had waited to tech Math>Construction and then built Catapults, he would have had Feudalism by then and I would have been fighting Longbows and Cats with WCs and Cats. That is a losing proposition.

 

[Ramesses-Rules]

i haven't succeeded deity yet neither. need some more experience on that level.

I don't find SPI trait that much useful. Because switching to military civics just when the enemy is in your borders seem so late for me. i prefer a rather active and continous military approach.
for a shrine economy you just don't need SPI trait neither. Any guy starting with mysticism is ok.

Availability of a resource gets much more of an issue in high levels. So you need to build your 2nd city early enough or pick leaders with UUs requiring no resource. For the second city, you should place it just the tile near the resource, you don't have time for culture pop (unless u're CRE)

I agree that switching to military civs at the last minute is not much of a benefit of SPI trait. The SPI trait was designed to support those aiming for Cultural Victory. The ability to build Temples fast is an advantage in the early game (for happiness/culture) and late game (to get your Cathedrals built faster). After all, if you are going to build 3 or 4 Cathedrals in 2 or 3 of your cities targeted for Legendary status, we are going to be building 9-15 Temples and 9+ Cathedrals. That is a lot of construction, and so it combines nicely with Ramesses Industrious trait, because I can also build Forges faster than other civs in those cities that need the production boost.

The "no anarchy" of SPI is especially helpful in the late game when I have Pyramids to switch civics on the fly.

P.S. I totally agree about the need to place the 2nd city next to the critical resource (Horse, Stone, etc.). At the higher difficulty levels, you just have to learn to accept the fact that some of your cities won't be in their best "dot counting" locations. In fact, I now just "eye-ball" where to place the cities, and that's more often decided by larger strategic issues such as blocking or resources than anything else.