The Vision
On game:
TBH, I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with the discussion right now and contributing. I think that we could use some sort of clarification and summary of all of our early goals. There is a difference between "earliest Astro = best" and "relatively early Astro would be a strong move on this map". If we set earliest Astro as a primary goal, stuff like early Caste/Pac and grabbing most beakers with Oracle obviously seems attractive. If we wanna expand and grow aggressively at the same time, it doesn't appeal nearly as much - we need Slavery, Colossus and Alpha/Currency more than anything, IMHO.
I think that we're still trying to decide upon those goals by bringing information to light, by demonstrating what's possible with test runs (particularly what we can get from the Oracle), and are coming up with possible Lightbulbing strategies towards getting Astronomy.
My feeling is that the general consensus is that we want to get Astronomy before the game is over, but not necessarily before we start our first war. There isn't any sort of consensus on WHEN we will get Astronomy, but I think that most of us are in agreement that Galleons are better than Macemen, in that we'd rather fight with pre-Macemen land units out of Galleons than to fight with Macemen using Galleys. Please correct me if you disagree.
I do not think that there is any consensus on what to get from the Oracle. However, my current take is the following:
1. I like mdy's aggressive Great Person approach. In particular, I support the idea of taking Meditation instead of Polytheism with the plan to grab Philosophy.
2. I would like to take an "easy to get" tech with the Oracle, as I would rather get "some" tech than no tech. Worse than just missing a free tech would be if an AI were to Oracle a free tech like Monarchy, trade it around, and then we might see an early Feudalism date. Yuck.
3. Despite the thinking that Barb Galleys might not appear yet, as their research isn't multiples of 3%, I believe that getting early Triremes is important. So, I'm in the "Oracle Metal Casting" camp. I don't see a need for early Machinery and in fact, not researching it allows us to run more Specialists (an Engineer in one City) during Slavery.
4. Since I am in favour of Oracling Metal Casting, that means that I am in favour of using a Great Scientist to Lightbulb Philosophy. We can't Lightbulb Metal Casting with an early Great Scientist, so since I want both of these techs early on, using the Oracle on Metal Casting seems to be the way to go.
5. I, personally, think that it is worth grabbing Philosophy with our first Great Scientist, as opposed to, say, building an Academy with it. We probably won't have a better Religious Civic that we'd like to run for a while. GPP for your first few Great People are generally the most valuable part of early Specialists, regardless of whether you have The Pyramids for Representation. Our current situation is that we will build several Cities that can only work a few "good" squares, meaning that several Cities can benefit from hiring Specialists. An Academy in the capital can wait until we get our second Great Scientist, since I believe that adding 50% Flasks to a City that isn't working a lot of Commerce squares, while useful, and still something that we will want to get, won't be as useful as adding 100% GPP empire-wide. Besides, running Pacifism means that our second Great Person comes equally as quickly as our first one did, so it's a good investment in general, and particularly on this map.
6. I like the idea of getting 5 Great People, with 1 for Philosophy, 1 for an Academy, 2 for Astronomy, and then 1 for one of Machinery (Great Engineer), Civil Service (Great Merchant), or Optics (Great Scientist).
7. Early Pacifism may mean that we can potentially ignore Caste System (or at least delay it for quite some time while we abuse Slavery) and focus on running 2 Scientists in 2 (or more) Cities for most of our Great People needs.
8. Having the flexibility to get a Great Engineer (by not Oracling Machinery) or a Great Merchant (by being willing to self-tech Optics if we get a Great Merchant) allows us to run more than 2 Specialists under Slavery. We'll have to "play the numbers game," in that we'll ideally keep getting Great Scientists, so that we can keep running these other Specialist types--if we were to get a Great Merchant early, for example, we'd have to stop hiring Merchant Specialists for future Great People, since we would not want more than 1 Great Merchant.
9. I'd like to be willing to later on, once our empire is a bit more established after some REXing, switch into Caste System for a limited period of time (30 turns was mentioned as good target number of turns to use, but this amount of time could feasibly be shorter if we have been running Pacifism for a long time prior to this time period).
10. Once we have our Great Person needs met, then I think we can switch back into Slavery and whip ourselves an army of Galleys and Axemen, which we can sail to a border City as close to an AI as possible. We can then finish off research on Civil Service (either using a Great Merchant to research most of it or else self-teching it with our Academy-powered capital). Then, research can be shut down and we can start paying to upgrade our Galleys into Galleons and our Axemen into Macemen. Feasibly, we could have started attacking before upgrading, in order to get the momentum going as well as to start getting City-pillaging Gold to use in upgrading our Galleys to Galleons while waiting on Civil Service before we'll be able to upgrade our Axemen/Swordsmen.
11. I am NOT picky about the Oracle's location. In fact, I think that we only really need 2 decent Great Person Farms and possibly 1 auxilliary one. I DO NOT think that the capital really needs to be one of these Great People Farms. In fact, I am of the opinion that the capital would make a POOR choice for a Great Person Farm, since it's one of our Cities with the most "good squares." Also, unlike the Gold City, these squares aren't "almost all-Food based." For me, Gold City, Pig + Magical Fish, and possibly 2-Clams would be our Great People Farms. As such, I am strongly in favour of building the Oracle in our capital, since it is our best production location (including whip overflow). Doing so greatly reduces one of the bottlenecks on grabbing the Oracle (production), leaving the only remaining bottleneck as research (up to Priesthood and probably also Masonry).
So, in summary, here is my vision:
- Oracle Metal Casting ASAP
- Build the Oracle in the capital
- Keep the capital as our REX-based Settler-pump
- Use our first Great Person to Lightbulb Philosophy, then run Pacifism
- Stay in Slavery for as long as possible, while using Pacifism to make up for the fact that we can only run 2 Scientist Specialists at a time
- If we get enough population points, we can consider whipping a Forge in one Great Person Farm and a Market in another one, so that we can increase our Great People Point production with the potential of being able to use a maximum of 1 Great Engineer and 1 Great Merchant
- Ideally, we'll have 2 Religions, such that the capital will have a DIFFERENT Religion from our 2 to 3 Great People Farms. In this way, the Oracle's Great Prophet points won't be doubled and we can even consider building another Wonder in the capital, such as The Colossus, without worrying about accidentally generating an unwanted Great Person
- Early Metal Casting will allow us to build a few Triremes; Triremes are not invulnerable, but I think that teams which don't do so are going to be in for a world of pain, at least until they can manage to REX and spawn-bust sufficiently
- Use our Great People to Lightbulb most of the way to Astronomy, such that we'll:
a) Try to trade for Iron Working, Math, and Calendar
b) Will manually research Compass and manually research at least one of (possibly both of, if we get a Great Merchant) Optics and Machinery
c) Will Lightbulb Astronomy and possibly Lightbulb one of Optics or Machinery (if we do not get a Great Merchant). If we do get a Great Merchant, it will be used to Lightbulb most of Civil Service, which, on paper, slightly delays our Astronomy date, but in practice may speed it up by allowing us to stay in Slavery longer while generating some additional GPP from Merchant Specialists
- Note that by Oracling Metal Casting, we're free to chase after techs like Code of Laws, Alphabet, Currency, etc, as soon as we're done with Priesthood, Masonry, and Writing
That's how I currently feel. I'm certain that there will be points that many people will disagree with, but it's at least a starting point for you to work from by agreeing/disagreeing with certain parts of the plan.
), and if u 'd like me to use it.
I went back to my tried and true methods from my pre-klarius days of testing. First I opened a game and started hitting enter. The barb galleys spawned on T150. 
By then, there were so many owned coastal tiles that there would be a max of 8 galleys, per the theory, spawning 3-2-1-1-1. That's exactly what happened. BY the way, I checked which AIs had Sailing every so often and for a long, long time, only Vicky, Izzy, and Joao had it.
