The way to take the cultural pressure off of Memphis is of course to capture St. Irritant. But if we build a Jewish temple, could we hold off the culture for a while? I'd have to review how much culture a holy city generates without a shrine. Can we get open borders with Cathy and go exploring? Nice if we could wait til she builds a shrine for us, but I wouldn't wait too long.
My favorite thing in all of civ is to watch spearmen wipe out chariots and horse archers. So chariots defended by spears is a nice army. Do we need axemen? Well, great for defense in forest and hills, but otherwise, a war chariot vs axe is a standoff, so no particular value for axes at this time on offense. So we only need to make a few for defense (with one exception I suppose, I don't suppose we can CR promote the war chariots, so maybe attacking axes makes sense for this promotion).
Connecting up the copper will give axes to barbs, won't it? Keep that in mind for homeland defense.
I figured that SH was superfluous with the creative trait. Can we do oracle at this time without marble? I'd like to really push for Mids since we have the stones for it
(Imagine that ... Hatty having the stones for pyramids
)
Can I assume that everyone is happy that I went right for the copper with our second city? I know it is kind of far, and maybe a lot of maint, but I thought we just had to get the resource.
dV
OK, got a look at the save. Tech choices seem like religion path to oracle, or not? Need three techs to get to Priesthood, then construction time without marble. Being spiritual, is Mids more useful than the free tech? If so, I'd say skip Oracle.
If not that, then either writting - hunting or hunting - writing. Hunting first if we want to rush Cathy ASAP. Writing first if we want quick OB and get some exploring WB out on the seas before we kill Cathy. Writing first would allow library in Memphis to keep cultural parity. So if we are not in too much rush to attack, maybe writing first is the way to go? Then Cathy gets to build more before we take over, and we get to multi-task by sailing WB around her coast (although I guess we can sail them during the war, but then we are vulnerable to galleys).
Regarding culture in Memphis, it is notable that the two land tiles south of it are only 51% Russian. So it appears that we might be able to expand to own those two soon.
In Memphis, do we want to work some hammers until the copper is done, then work copper until granary is done? That way we get gran before the next pop, and save some 16 food? If we only forgo working the clams for 8 turns or less, we give up 10 net food to gain 11. if we have to forgo the clams more than 8 turns, then maybe not worth it.
Doing the math, growth in 6 turns, 33 f to pop2, so we keep 16 if gran is done first. That's the same as 8 turns of working clams. We are 33 H into 90 H for gran. Working the clams, only H is the city tile and gran is 57 turns away. If we work the copper now, net food is +2 and pop2 is in 11, with gran in 29 (2H). In 3 turns mine on copper is done. In those 3 turns, we add 6 H to our 33 to have 39. Still 51 away from gran, but now 5 H per turn gran comes in in 10 turns. but we have forgone the clams now for 13 turns, 26 food not harvested, all to save 16. Not to mention the 26 commerce also forgone.
If we still work the clams, we get pop 2 in 6 turns and the second pop can work the mine while we still work the clams, which seems the better choice. might make sure that the gran comes in before pop 3, as that might just mean skipping clams for one or two turns, if at all.
So work the clams!
When Memphis gets the cows, it can be a nice hammer producer with all the hills, and could also make commerce with a couple of cottages and the coast tile after lighthouse. Kind of a mixed city.
We could put science back to 100% for about 10 turns, just enough to finish writing I think. Writing, hunting, sailing, alphabet?
Looks like we could shift our warriors around to completely fogbust the island. Unless we want to keep a small section in the fog to spawn barb units to fight to level up our troops, or to spawn a barb city for us to capture.
Nice work C63
dV
It might depend on copper location and Cathy's access to it.
) So maybe their perfect little diplo world is going to fall apart, like ours did. I thought I had 8 civs lined up to vote for us when I handed it off to C63 with 5 turns to the UN, and we know how that turned out 
)
