haphazard1
Dancing Bear
I disagree somewhat with the beeline and others, especially since there is not any emphasis on which order to pursue them. A great deal depends on what (and when) we can get in trade.
Civil Service we definitely want, and it is not yet known to any AI so it will also make good trade bait. So this is our immediate target. But what to research after that? Metal Casting and Machinery are already known to two AIs -- researching these ourselves seems wasteful. I would prefer to research Liberalism after CS, up to 1 turn (or a fraction of 1 turn) remaining. No AI currently knows Education, or even Paper (I believe), so we have a window to research the tech and then see how far we can get before any AI is close and how expensive a tech we can take with the freebie. And the time spent on Liberalism will hopefully be enough that we can get Metal Casting and Machinery in trade.
We also need to keep our bulbing path in mind -- Gunpowder will open Chemistry to GS bulbing, which then opens Biology. Useful techs, and we may want to go that way, but it would be a significant diversion from our beeline path.
Additional non-beeline techs to consider/trade for: Drama (for Globe Theater in PigFish), Constitution (for our UB for happiness and EP)
As Sleepless has noted, we would like Mehmed as our opponent, but there is no guarantee this will happen. I think there is a decent chance -- Mehmed has a lot of land and more still available to expand into, so he should be large enough in population to be our eventual rival. A lot depends on the Justinian/Tokugawa war.
But let's not just write off Mehmed and (especially) Isabella. It will be difficult (or worse) to get either's votes, but not impossible. If we have to choose between them and someone else, we should definitely favor the other (more likely to vote for us) AI. But we should do what we can to improve relations -- resources, Open Borders, etc. We might get lucky with them asking for help that we can give, giving us a chance for some +diplo points.
Does anyone know the exact rule on this? I was under the impression that short periods spent in other civics would not significantly impact the shared Theocracy bonus, once we switched back to it. We may be able to use some brief periods in Free Religion, or Organized Religion.
As I said above, if we get a chance to improve relations with either that does not cost us with other (more likely to vote for us) civs then we should take it.
Getting +4 with Zara is likely to be difficult/expensive. The "free and fair trade" bonus is affected by the number of turns you have known a civ, and we have known Zara almost from the beginning of the game. If we can gift him something known to everyone (or almost everyone) else, great. But we should not give away anything too valuable, especially anything useful in war.
Keep an eye on hammer decay for the longbow and spear.
I do not think Sankore is useful for us -- we have no state religion, so it would be purely for the GPP. Better to run one more scientist rather than spending all those hammers. Sistine should be considered, as ianw1610 mentioned, just in case we end up needing to fall back on a culture victory.
Also, I do not know if the grassland farms are needed. Our happy cap is not so large that we could work all those tiles and the specialists the extra food would support. We will probably just work the river-side farms (FP and grass) and the grass copper. All other pop should be scientists.
As with HorseCopper, I do not think we need the grassland farms. Work the food resources, the cows, and (maybe) the lakes. Everything else should be scientists, as our happy cap allows.
Why another galley?
The floodplains (off the river) should be farmed, as it can support itself plus one specialist. But again the grass farms are probably not worth it at this stage.
The grass farms not on rivers are not an urgent priority, I think. They can be worked on, but over time -- there is not a huge rush to complete them, as we should be running Caste scientists from our best food tiles rather than marginal grasslands (taking 3 pop to get 1 scientist).
I don't understand why you think Justinian will roll over Tokugawa? I forgot to check -- does Toku have iron? He has Machinery, so if he does he will have Protective crossbows which should give Justinian plenty of trouble. Toku also gets cheap barracks and free combat I for his melee units. He should not be an easy target.
As for wars...even better to win the vote with Justinian/Saladin/Tokugawa/Zara voting for us.
Maybe even Isabella, since she will hate Mehmed. Wars are costly and take a lot of time/resources. If we can avoid fighting, all the better.Privateers would require Chemistry along with Astronomy, which would take us off our beeline by a good bit. They could be useful, so we should keep them in mind. But unless we get them before anyone else has Chemistry/Astro, they will just be sunk by frigates.
Stealing techs takes a lot of EP, well more than any AI should be able to manage at this stage of the game. Unless someone gets a Great Spy, of course -- we should watch the turn updates carefully in case anyone generates one, and check our EP ratios. If we get infiltrated, it will be obvious in the EP ratios.
Some spies could still be useful to guard our cities against poisoned water, etc. They cost hammers and unit maintenance, though. Short term I would like some more military, especially some longbows, to boost our power rating and give us something resembling real defense.
Building Sistine somewhere just as a backup plan is a good idea. We will be running lots of specialists, and the extra culture could be useful for tile control and defense.
2-to-1 pop advantage over Tokugawa could be trouble, although protective longbows and crossbows should make taking Japanese cities difficult. Even if he does not take any of Toku's cities, Justinian will almost certainly be our UN rival unless we fight him ourselves. Figures that our strongest ally would be our rival. 
Should have noticed that.
