Executing adwcta's Guide to Playing Small on Deity (featuring Piety) certainly had some problems. Plus, I'm sure I didn't (and still don't) understand exactly what the guide was trying to convey. This ended up similar to a typical economy + science push game. Except, even at max science, I never broke 1000 beakers per turn. I have my doubts as to whether this strategy of getting the tech discounts "should work" on lower difficulties, but perhaps it was my lack of execution. While I was growing during the medieval era, a couple of techs were discounted. I'm sure I had some discounts in the renaissance too, but it felt like I was leading the way for the most part. Espionage didn't work at all - 17 turns in Persepolis, so I switched. Never found anything even close to that fast again. Carthage was slower. I had completely eclipsed Alexander. Berlin was slower. Checked Persepolis again - it would have taken about 45 turns for one tech. Plus, no one was trying to steal techs from me.
The World Congress was founded by me on Turn 210. Darius was my pawn for proposing the World Religion, and he conveniently had the Forbidden Palace already (so he got the second proposal). For the industrial era congress, I didn't have enough city states yet (Darius was aggressive with city states but never complained about be getting to close to them), so he remained host naturally - I voted for him anyway, of course. Darius finally proposed the World Religion on the third round. He could have proposed World Ideology at that time, but that would have worked too (didn't need to, but I ended up switching to Order). In the end though, it didn't matter - I way overshot Globalization while still waiting to vote on the third round proposals (three great scientists spawned plus four faith scientists).
Having an active religion was certainly fun - and it allowed four faith scientists. The fifth cost 6000 faith which looks like it would have been the same turn as the World Leader vote (i.e., one turn too late if I didn't already have globalization). Pedro founded the second religion. The next two were overseas (Alexander and Haile). Dido has a pantheon and Darius got very late pantheon, too. Eventually, Dido founded via Hagia Sophia. Later, I successfully spread to Bismarck and had a prophet on the way to convert Casimir too, but that one had to turn around and help out in Persia again.
Religious wars - me vs. Pedro for Persia. I won!
(That screenshot is a bit misleading since the vast majority are late city spams by Dido and Darius. For the relevant portion of the game, I had about 17 cities or so.)
It seems odd that there's no gold follower belief. Tithe is good founder belief but can't really spread like Pilgrimage does. Final religion was one with nature, pilgrimage, mosques, feed the world, itinerant preachers, unity of the prophets. I chose feed the world (+1 food shrines and temples) rather than swords into plowshares (+15% growth rate if not at war) because it was more immediately useful for my expansions. Plus, I figured that might be better for city states to let them grow more (and thus, more science for me when allies). No idea which one would have been better though.
Diplomatic relations with Darius and Pedro were good for the entire game (at least, it was after I gave gifts and spread religion to Darius). Dido was less certain (she was jealous of some wonders and city states), but it was mostly good. Relations with Bismarck went well, too. Mostly continuous research agreements with Darius and Bismarck - those were useful. A couple with Dido and a couple with Pedro (could have had more with Pedro, but those were worthless).
Ultimately, even though I never really saw the benefits of the tech discounts, I still think this "play small from behind" strategy has some merit. If you have bad land but a source of faith, this might help to stay out of the Deity AI's way to survive long enough and win. I haven't figured out a way to win with bad land, so I'm looking forward to trying it out on some random maps.
Turn 200 Screenshots: (Cities and Literacy - Oxford in Osaka the next turn for Industrialization)
Turn 310 Screenshots: (land and demographics)
. In the beginning I thought there was only me and Darius in the peninsula so I took advantage of the samurai to take his cap. Unfortunately I didn't have enough happiness to afford his other cities so I decided to sim city from there on. Besides Persepolis was already kindabad
