Questions on my current game

[Hero]

I thought my latest game (Mali, Prince, Fractal map, Standard size, Marathon) was off to a good start when I popped Bronze Working from my first hut. Turns out I'm isolated on a small continent. Oh well.

Anyway I built Oracle and took Metal Casting. I wondered if other players would have chosen something else like CoL or Alphabet. I took MC because I figured hey I'm Mali so I should take advantage of the Mint as soon as possible. I didn't have any luxury resources but I did strike Gold later from one of my mines so that was a bonus but I wasn't thinking of that at the time. Also MC speeded my on my way to getting caravels but again I admit I wasn't thinking that at the time.

With no luxury resources, maybe it would have been better to found Confucianism to allow higher population in my cities. I already had Hinduism in all my cities and I did get CoL first anyway, but I couldn't count on that at the time. And later when I popped a Prophet from my Oracle city, I had the option to grab Theology or build my shrine. I had about 8 cities at this point. Don't know the precise date but sometime around 500 AD I think. I built the Hindu shrine to boost gold and keep research high since I have no trading partners right now, but again I could have grabbed a religion and with the temples could have boosted population by another point in every city. So would grabbing religions that would allow higher population with Temples have been better choices?

I'd appreciate any advice or critiques. I really enjoy reading these forums and they're helping me improve my game. In this particular game I missed Great Lighthouse by only one or two turns. Normally I would reload an autosave and whip it, but I decided to keep playing when I thought how disgusted some people here would have been by this behavior .

 

[Cam_H]

The common response to an isolated island start is that you can go generally one of two ways;

(a.) head pretty well straight for Astronomy and aim to get a foothold on another continent as soon as practicable by waging a decimating war on some unfortunate offshore nation, or

(b.) go for a cultural win - clear the land of Barbarians, if you can snag three or four religions in the process - great, and work on a Great Artist Farm plus loads of cottaged cities.

I think that it's important to be clear early on as to how you intend to win from such a position, as this will help you address your strategy for the mid-game.

Your lack of happiness may be addressed by Hereditary Rule - whipping units for happiness!

I question whether The Great Lighthouse was such a big loss here - you've not got that many coastal cities to trade with, and they'll all be domestic anyway. I would suggest that lightbulbing Theology for Christianity would probably have been a better move than the Shrine if you have a cultural win in mind.

I certainly wouldn't criticise Metal Casting as your Oracle choice, regardless of whether you intend to go for the cultural win or not. It's a big technology leading to the Malinese unique building (as you note) which is a goodie, boosted further with access to a Gold mine resource (an extra ), and as you also suggest, The Colossus is a very handy pick up for an isolated Financial leader. Whichever win-type you want, a lot of commerce with this isolated island predicament is very handy.

Best of luck with it!