[BTS] Three questions: Korea/founding religion, Sumeria isolation, see city count before writing

[sylvanllewelyn]

Three questions.

1/ Suppose I did not install any gameplay mods. Just generic Civ4-BTS. How do I see the number of cities that a rival has before the "writing" technology? I don't want to declare war just to see the diplomacy screen.

2/ Suppose I play Korea/Wang-Kon. I can try to found Buddhism or Hinduism. What is the earliest that a rival can found Buddhism or Hinduism on immortal and deity difficulties? Presume I am either next to an oasis, or I can settle on top of a riverside resource that generates 3 commerce.

3/ Suppose I play as Sumeria and found myself fully isolated. What is the ballpark for number of cities before astronomy?

 

[a pen-dragon]

1) Ctrl+click on the leader name on the scoreboard opens the right window. clicking on them in the diplo screen should work as well.

2) I would say the AI takes at least 7 turns, but it can take much longer. IMHO the early religions are too contested (buddism, hinduism, judaism) to be consistently viable for the human player. It might work, but it is more likely to be a waste of early-game , which is more important for worker techs.

3) typically 4, more can be justified with great land.

 

[pmarc]

3/ I wouldn't put a set number, but instead just focus on settling the best commerce sites (river or coast with food) first. Maybe in some cases you also need one food-hammer rich city if your capital is a bit weak on the settler/worker production side, and there some other situations, such as grabbing a happiness resource, that need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Then a good rule of thumb for whether or not to add one more city could be: Is this city going to be mature (growing to happy cap working commerce tiles) by 1 AD?

A CRE leader will usually get more good sites due to being able to reach ocean fish.

 

[soundjata]

On question 2,
Here is the answer from a spectacular avatar: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/monty-island-deity-isolation.677190/post-16284991

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Q1: thank you.

Q2: by turn order, if I can get Buddhism by T9, and Hinduism by T11, then it's fine. Try Hinduism to be safe.

...

Q3: Normally 4-6, but how does the Ziggurat change the math?

 

[a pen-dragon]

but how does the Ziggurat change the math?

IMHO, barely.

It still has a relatively high hammer cost and working tiles is usually not compatible with working tiles, which is what you want to be doing.