Heck yeah! Lock in that sweet pantheon!
Yep Got my religion! Yes was well worth it despite all the good beliefs being taken.
Took Ceremonial Burial, Guruship, Religious Community and Religious Texts/
Although I was shocked to find that the free Prophet bumps up the price of Great Engineers & Scientists - I had no idea that happened, that's the first time I've used the Liberty Finisher for a Prophet
Anyway regarding strategy what I've learnt thus far is. This map gives you 2 things in abundance; land and gold - so maximise both of them.
For playing wide I suggest settling on the hill near the gems and working the gems initially entirely to build a monument (forgoing food), then scout then shrine (right after pottery is researched).
With no ruins to rely on culture every turn you delay your monument means your +1 production from republic and your free settler is delayed. This will greatly slow your development so a monument must be highest priority (more important than population)
Settling on the hill and working the gems ensures you get monument + shrine asap. Your early population will suffer but you can catch up on that later - I'd regard policies and a pantheon to be more important. With no ruins scouts are less important anyway.
I'd fill out Liberty and prioritise on building the Pyramids chopping the trees near the gems with a stolen CS worker.
Faster tile improvement makes it a lot easier to put plantations on all that marsh.
If you can get a pantheon I'd go Oral Tradition certainly. With the huge sized map it will take ages for AI religions to reach you so even if you don't get a religion you'll hold your pantheon for a while.
Faith is pretty hard to get so the Liberty finisher is probably the most reliable means to get a religion. Production beliefs are worth their weight in gold here.
You'll settle all the plantations nearby obviously for gold - even if they're production poor sites - i.e. sugar. After you fill out Liberty focus 100% on the Commerce tree to get Mercantilism and wagon trains. Now here's the crux, this map has pretty poor productivity so therefore gold is the most important resource.
With Mercantilism & Big Ben your cities will catch up very quickly due to the crazy amount of gold you'll acquire. But even before I had those 2 items at times I was earning about 90gpt (selling luxuries to AIs) so that's enough gold to buy a workshop every several turns - that really gets those production poor cities going.
Everything else comes much faster then and you'll catch up on size and population growth very quickly. Ideologies favor Order the most with SkyScrapers (60% discount on buildings - hello!). Late game you'll catch up with hammers with all the rivers and hydro plants.
The other great advantage with Commerce is Mercenary Army. As your production is so low you'll find it hard to build a big army so Landsknechts are perfect for defense if you need them.
So in my opinion so far is that Commerce outweighs Rationalism for a Liberty game. That said you will suffer in science so hopefully you can make good use of spies. If you can propose a resolution on the World Council I'd highly recommend 'Scholars in Residence'.
I recognized it was big but it exceed expectations. Oh well time to play Liberty people.
. I moved my settler East to the hill adjacent the gems.
.. So sink even more for museums & broadcast towers .. The happiness issue will not be fixed until my tourism output Catches up in a big way ..More hammers sunk into hotels and airports at the very least ..
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