Now the interesting part is when I tried on Viceroy. I founded Hinduism and Buddhism on turn 13 and 27, was building Stonehenge when suddenly, on turn 38, China founded Confucianism!!! That's 28 turns before Monarch!
Conclusion: for India, Monarch is easier than Viceroy.
See?!
See?! I'm
not crazy!
Okay, so, I ran five tests today, just to get an idea of the range of times that religions can found at the Viceroy level. I didn't compete for religions; I just founded Dilli and diddled around researching things like Horseback Riding while letting the other civs go about their business. I let things run for 80 turns, on the assumption that even the most incompetent human player can discover at least 3 religion techs by that point. Note also that each of these results came off of a different initial start, rather than reloads from a saved turn 0.
Game 1: Hinduism (never founded); Buddhism (turn 61); Judaism (turn 42); Confucianism (turn 46); Taoism (turn 66)
Game 2: H (59); B (67); J (45); C (45); T (69)
Game 3: H (41); B (67); J (42); C (46); T (69)
Game 4: H (37); B (58); J (53); C (46); T (69)
Game 5: H (61); B (61); J (57); C (45); T (69)
I leave it to Steb and ThurinEthir to say whether the Stonehenge strategy could have gotten them to Confucianism first in any of these games.
Note also Hinduism's proclivity for appearing early, which renders Judaism rushes problematic. Now, if better players than me know how to squeeze more research out of an initially founded city (one where there are no civics, no specialists, and no buildings to goose things), I wanna hear about it. Me, I only know to work coin tiles and food tiles (preferring both to hammer tiles) if making a knowledge rush. (This means, for instance, preferring a 2F1C tile to a 2F1H tile, and preferring a 3F1C tile to a 2F1H1C tile; it also means
Don't build workers or settlers, most especially if you don't have techs that will improve the land yields.)
Now, if there is no faster way to squeeze out coin (and barring lucky hits on huts), it appears to me that a Judaism rush will only get you Monotheism by turn 39; given that, Hinduism can be got only by turn 48. If so, note that in two of the above games, a Judaism rush would have cost me Hinduism.
Or maybe not. I thought maybe a player could at least minimize wasted time by starting a game, letting it run to see when the religion pop times were for that game, and then either restart if the deadlines were impossible or reload the initial turn and exploit his foreknowledge, but it turns out that won't work. I did a reload of game 5 (turn 0), and instead of popping on turn 57, Judaism popped on turn 49. So, whatever magic works inside the game to set religion pop times isn't carved in stone during the launch.
EDIT: Curiouser and curiouser, said Mxzs, who by this point was so discombobulated he had quite forgotten how to speak correct English. I launched another test game and used WB to keep an eye on Chinese tech advances. In this game, Confucianism didn't pop until turn 54. I guess it's not a surprise it should appear so much later, considering what came before.
Turn 20: To his initial stock of Mining and Agriculture, Qin had added Hunting and Archery.
Turn 30: He had added Bronze Working
Turn 40: He had added Writing and Animal Husbandry.
Turn 54: He got Mathematics
And he did all this while working only two tiles that generate coin. He also had time to build a worker and an archer and a settler and found a city.
Is this to be expected? Is the AI getting a leg up? Or am I just not a very good player because I can't even come close to recapitulating these achievements when
I try playing China on Viceroy?
Well, maybe we could make it a challenge: On Viceroy, can you recapitulate Qin's game? By turn 54, you must have made Beijing a size 4 city; you must have founded Qufu (on the silk 2 squares SE of Beijing); you must have built at least one archer and at least one worker; and you must have researched Hunting, Archery, Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, Writing, and Mathematics. I would add that you are not allowed to work more than two tiles that generate coin, but since I was only dipping in and out of WB, I can't say for sure that he was working only two coin tiles during the turns I wasn't peeking.
