Research:
the plan to research Agri first and then go for Mono and use the Oracle for Theo is surely a unusual plan, if not for an AP victory. The only, but not little counter i see is that the AP is very expensive to build at this stage of the game.
As I said, gifting Christianity is one way to get the Apostolic Palace built for us. The Culture from that Wonder compared to its high cost is not very efficient for a Cultural game.
Owning it would help us a bit in terms of being able to propose resolutions, as we'd be certain to be one of the Candidates for the Apostolic Palace Resident position.
However, if we let a nearby AI build it, then that religion will be available to us (as opposed to an overseas AI building it in a foreign religion), so we'll still get the production bonus from building Temples and Monasteries of the Apostolic Palace's religion, without the up-front cost of the expensive Wonder. We'll also very likely be able to be a candidate for the Resident, since we'll actively spread that religion to all of our cities, making us the competitor against the owner for the position of Apostolic Palace Resident. We might even choose NOT to use that religion as our State Religion, if we want to reduce the Apostolic Palace's spread around the world but want to get as many AIs in the same religion as possible (more for a Diplo game, but can also be used in a Cultural game--in a Cultural game, you normally just spread Missionaries domestically, but we could spread a few of our chosen religion's Missionaries to AIs that really dislike other players strongly due to differeing religions, such as Isabella).
Also, by not owning it, we get the chance to get +2 "You voted for us" later in the game for a Diplo win. We simply vote another AI (the owner of the Apostolic Palace) in as its Resident. If we OWN the Apostolic Palace, by learning Mass Media (the tech that gives us access to The United Nations), Apostolic Palace Voting will be disabled. However, if another AI owns it, then the Apostolic Palace's voting does not go obsolete and we can vote for that AI (again, as long as we have at least one city with the Apostolic Palace's religion, otherwise we won't be able to cast a vote) to be the new Resident, gaining us a small positive Diplo modifier, which would possibly help to get that AI's vote in making us leader of the world via the United Nations! Neat how that works, eh? So, in reality, the best bet for the Apostolic Palace is to control which AI will get it by doing all of:
1) Researching Theology early, both for Christianity and to gift it away
2) Trading Theology to 1 AI that we want to build the Apostolic Palace (and in that trade, we can get another nice tech or two)
3) Having a strong chance that no other AIs will research Theology for a while, since the corresponding religion was already founded by us
4) Having a 100% chance that the AI we trade it to will not trade it away until at least one other AI manually researches the tech, if we pick an AI that doesn't gift techs away easily (I can check the XML coding of the AIs that we have met, when it comes to deciding on whom to trade Theology to)
5) Trading Theology to an AI that is running the religion that we are happy the Apostolic Palace being used for
So, that would be my plan: research Theology early (via The Oracle is a good way, but an early Great Prophet is a possible alternative) and then gift that tech to the AI that we want to build The Apostolic Palace, so that we'll get the Hammer benefit and the benefit of being able to vote for an AI to be the Apostolic Palace's Resident near the end of the game, giving them more incentive for them to vote us as Leader of the World.
The reasoning behind Oracle = Theology is that if we are following a Religion-chasing strategy, then we'll need to beeline Monotheism. By beelining Monotheism, it is too risky to take most other techs from The Oracle, as we'd need to wait a long time to research the appropriate pre-requisite techs before we could complete The Oracle, risking us losing The Oracle to another Civ.
But the aim is to deny religions to the AI, so it can be a good plan.
And CoL? we need that one pretty soon to bulb Philo with our first GS.
Why not research Poly first so we can have a monopoly in 5 religions out of 7?
Certainly, we should do the math before deciding whether to completely dismiss the Polytheism-first approach. I'd rather see the numbers that show us how much of a difference that delay will cost us.
Here are 3 test game paths to try (using a test game that mimics the starting save's surrounding area, please, NOT by using the starting save itself!). Also, in your test game, if there are other Resources in the fat cross besides the 2 Corn Resources, do not use them, as we can't count on having them:
A] Polytheism (complete this tech for our test, but note the Hinduism date if we don't found Hinduism, just so that we can get a feel for the greatest delay to Agriculture) -> Agriculture; Worker -> Worker; Worker Mines the Plains Hills River square; Work a Corn until the Hills square is mined and then work the Hills square for better production of the 2nd Worker
B] Agriculture -> Polytheism; Worker -> Warrior; Worker Irrigates the 2 Corns; Citizens work only the Corns, but if we haven't completed Polytheism by the time that our city is Size 3, complete that tech and have our citizens work whatever other squares you want--just say which squares they are
C] Polytheism (complete this tech for our test, but, as with Test Path A], note the Hinduism date if we don't found Hinduism, just so that we can get a feel for the greatest delay to Agriculture) -> Agriculture; Warrior -> Worker; Worker Irrigates the 2 Corns (part of this test confirms that Agriculture will be researched in time to do so, and if it isn't, by how many turns we need to wait before we can begin Irrigating--if it is many turns, then build a Mine first with the Worker); Grow to Size 2 before building the Worker (if the Warrior is not complete, build something else, or if the Warrior will be complete well after reaching Size 2, consider building something else like a partially-built Obelisk if we're going for Cultural or a partially-built Stonehenge for Hammer->Gold conversion if we're going for Diplo, so that we can switch to building the Worker immediately at Size 2); A citizen works a Corn to grow while building the Warrior and 2 Citizens work the 2 Corns when building the Worker
Run the numbers for the test games and give us some useful data before we decide.
Useful data to capture for our initial turnset's test game:
a) Where you settled (I'd say in-place for all of these tests)
b) Which turn number each Tech was started
c) Which turn number each Tech was researched
d) Which turn number each Unit/Building was started
e) Which turn number each Unit/Building was completed
f) Which turn number each Worker Improvement was started
g) Which turn number each Worker Improvement was completed
h) Which turn number the city grew
i) Which squares are worked by the city's citizens, along with the turn number: provide this info for the initial turn and whenever the citizen assignments change (including when the city's size grows)
Agriculture vs Polytheism first
Founding an early Religion is NEVER a guarantee, BUT: if we miss the religion, it just means that we'll get to Agriculture that much faster, as a PPP that has us starting with a beeline to Polytheism will have a "contingency plan" of
switching to Agriculture immediately if Hinduism is founded before we complete research on Polytheism. So, while missing Hinduism sucks, by missing it, we get to Agriculture faster, making the delayed Agriculture not be as big of a deal. In the worst case, we get to Agriculture 1 turn faster, by having missed Hinduism by 1 turn, but we're more likely going to get to Agriculture 5-6 turns faster if an AI gets Hinduism early on or else we'll likely found the religion, which may or may not make up for the cost of working a Mine instead of an Irrigated Corn (that's what test games will tell us).
Seeing exactly how many turns of delay we have on Worker turns is part of our testing.
One thing i don't like is to delay Alpha and waste turns in worker techs. If we wait too much researching it, we'll find nothing to trade for.
Alphabet Beeline Strategy vs Religion-chasing Strategy
What is our strategy for this game going to be? One option is to beeline Religions. Another possible strategy is to beeline Alphabet and to trade away every single tech as possible, letting the AIs build most or all of the Wonders but keeping the Global Tech Pace as high as possible, even if it means that it takes us a bit longer to get other techs in trade, since we'd rather give away Math and Iron Working and then be required to manually research Metal Casting before we can trade for Aesthetics, rather than making many of the AIs waste time manually researching Math and Iron Working by trying to "save up unsold techs" like Math and Iron Working in order to hopefully trade the both of them for a more expensive tech like Aesthetics. Sometimes the latter strategy fails, as an AI will get one of Math or Iron Working and then grab Aesthetics, so a true "Trade it All Away" Strategy would have us trade away most or all techs as soon as we are able to do so.
The early-Alpha "Trade it All Away" strategy is a different type of strategy that has potential in many Diplo and Space games, but is less likely to work in a game like this one where we are not allowed to have the AIs be in Free Religion. That technique works better for a game where you want the AIs to research the odd tech for you (such as Scientific Method or Printing Press) and where you want some of those AIs in conflicting religions to switch to Free Religion so that they are more likely to vote for you. Thus, although that strategy is a neat one, I don't think that it will apply as much here.
What I believe will happen in this game is that at least one AI will have Free Religion as their Favourite Civic. Teams that "use up" their 2 "AI punching bag" war declaration targets can get stuck with being unable to use war to influence a 3rd AI Civ that likes Free Religion. Espionage can help, but the AI would be free to switch back to Free Religion after 5 turns, so it is ideally best to keep the AIs' tech rate low enough that switching to Free Religion isn't even a POSSIBILITY for them.
In terms of the "Guarded Trading" strategy--being the first to Alphabet but not trading away Alphabet itself, that strategy is probably what BLubmuz will claim that he was talking about. However, in my experience, on Emperor level and above, this strategy is best implemented either immediately (pure Alphabet beeline) or else only after you have researched all of the early Worker Techs, Wonder Techs, and in our case, Religious Techs that you believe you will want in the early game. Alphabet then becomes for filling-in techs that you get slightly after the early game, such as Math and Iron Working, and in BTS, Aesthetics.
You can't hope to grab a Wonder on Emperor level if you have to get the relevant tech in trade--although doing so is POSSIBLE, it is a complete gamble. The only way to have a very strong chance of getting a Wonder on Emperor level or above is to manually research the tech. Minor exceptions to this "rule of thumb" are if you have a Great Engineer handy, if the AIs that had the tech before you are at war, or if you completely beeline Alphabet at the cost of any other techs so that you can trade for the Wonder techs ASAP after they are learned by the AIs AND if you get lucky enough that 2 or more AIs learn the relevant tech about the same time as each other AND if you get lucky enough that neither of those AIs starts building the Wonder right away OR else if they did start to build the Wonder you have plenty of Forests to madly chop right away.
Since I think that we can all agree that a "Trade it All Away" Strategy isn't going to work here, let's consider that possibility to be out.
Since I think that a "Guarded Trading" Strategy is best implemented either as an Alphabet beeline (which you are free to argue that we try to implement in place of our current overall strategy) or after we have taken the time to research all of the techs that we will need (Worker Techs, Wonder Techs, and Religious Techs), then my strong suggestion is (unless you want to beeline Alphabet) that we don't worry about getting many early game techs in trade unless we absolutely do not need them for a while, such as Archery. Plus, many advanced players will tell you not to even trade for semi-expensive early-game techs like Archery, let alone the cheaper ones, due to AIs stopping to trade with you as early as after 5 tech trades received by us from ANY AI.
Thus, BLubmuz, try not to worry too much about early Alphabet unless you want to beeline it--we will get it soon enough for it to be of great value, but not so soon as to jeopardize our overall strategy and short-term goals.
Our first build is strictly tied to our first research: Worker if we start with Agri, Warrior if we start with Poly.
That sounds good in theory, but let's wait until the test game's test results are in before drawing this conclusion.
No much diplo to plan in the initial TS. I don't think we'll steal workers, do we?
Although any point of our strategy is up to debate, I do not think that any of the strategies discussed require us to steal a Worker. Even Unclethrill's suggestion of an early war for a land grab goal did not incorporate a Worker steal. It's pretty dangerous to Worker Steal in a game where we are unable to wipe out an enemy. That kind of a grudge will last for the rest of the game, and we'd be foolish to declare war for a Worker and then later have to fight cities that are entrenched with 4+ Archers each, when by not stealing that Worker, we could fight the same war with most of that AI's cities having maybe 2 Archers each, possibly a Wonder or two, and certainly more settled cities to be able to steal. Note that we can only steal as many cities as the AI has built minus 1 city, so the more cities that our war-targetted AI builds, the more cities we can capture from them!
So, not much else to discuss, but where to settle. If Irgy is right and that "thing" SE+SE is a peak instead of a hill
I don't know about you guys, but I think that a little World-building could tell us. A Peak should already be visible, since it "towers" over Forests and Hills and thus should already be visible to us within a 2 square radius of our units. But, since I have been wrong before, a World-built test of putting a Peak there should confirm whether or not the Peak would become visible by the Settler. IF when you change the test game to have a Peak in that location to the SE+SE, the Peak does not become visible, it might just be a "refresh" issue--so, your best bet would be to move the Settler to the Warrior's location and then move the Settler back to its original location. If a Peak being in the SE+SE square becomes visible, then we know it's not a Peak. If it doesn't become visible, then you can at least see if fog-busting of that Peak looks anything similar to fog-busting of either AlanH's screenshot or your CAREFUL fog-busting of the official game itself. Isn't that a simple way of checking?
About the rules, i already invited Dhoom to propose his variations or additions.
I thought I had mentioned many suggested changes in the message that I linked. Do you need me to provide you with word-for-word changes? I didn't do so because I thought it was unnecessary for me to provide that level of detail, but I can if you request it.
You could say that I'm a typical American who expects to get by on English alone (which works surprisingly well). I'd contend that I'm just too lazy to learn another language. I now baby French from high school and that's about it with respect to languages... unless you count Fortran, Basic, C, Assembly, etc.
