What to do with Taoist missionary, and need advice for what's next

[SquidInk]

Playing Peter on a map where everyone is quite far from me. It's AD1 and I just bulbed Philosophy. Will get Civil Service within 5 turns. Difficulty is Emperor. I am thinking Space Race victory.

I am running a specialist economy (grabbed the Pyramids) as many of my cities have nice food output, but I have some nice cottages. I am about to expand with 2-3 cities in the near future... Any advice on this?

What should I do with the free Taoist missionary I just got from discovering Philosophy first?

Thanks for any pointers

 

[lymond]

I usually use the free mish for scouting. You seem to have a good bit of scouting done. I guess you could send him W though to scout out - what I think is - Hannibal's land more. Not sure if these landmass are connected or not. Or send E if that is connected. I may eventually gift it to one of the more religion or culture focused AIs as they will spread it around like Sal or whoever is Egypt.

You seem to be doing ok here, but I think you should have expanded faster. I can't see all the surrounding resources, but seems a lot of land here and you should have more cities. Maybe have built a few Swords to nab some of the barb cities, or raze them if crap.

Why are you building an Archer?

See if you can trade or beg for gold to finish out CS.

Make sure a couple of workers are ready to chain irrigate after CS, probably best from the spot just W of the wheat and then carry forward from the wheat to Moscow's corn.

 

[Gumbolt]

Scouting is good. That or spread it to an AI. Looks like Zulu's in war mode. At pleased you could well be a target. Phants? Scout out Shaka for a stack and see where it is heading,

No point wonder spamming. Use for fail gold.

I agree about more cities. 5 by 1ad seems slow. On a good game 4 by 2000bc is quite possible. All that forest to chop to the east!

 

[Fippy]

Sometimes you also want Tao in your cap for another Monastery unlocked.
10% research boost can be fine with Bur.

Otherwise it's indeed just a scouting unit with 2 moves

5 cities can be fine, no doubt imo. For many "rushes" you can keep costs low and use only productive places.
Actually this helps with progressing towards deity, where you are often boxed in.
Forest cities can sometimes be helpful cos it's hammers lying around, even if they have no food.

In Civ "optimal" play always results from asking yourself what you actually need or want for certain goals.
Cities with 1 food resi can whip units, each pop = 30h. When do you want that? Would more cities (taken from AIs) help for Space?
Does a wonder help you progress? Which units are dominant?

 

[SquidInk]

Cheers for the replies. I could have expanded faster but I chose to kept my upkeep low stayed on 5 cities for quite a while. I should have re-started settling after Currency.

Thanks for all the input.