[SPOILERS] Bacchus and India's many gods

[Bacchus]

Ancient quest is bad, get the Wheel Eureka. Not happening in our two first cities for sure, and we'll probably be into Classical shortly after that.

[Bacchus]

Seems our west is blocked off first by a mountain range and then by a desert. Maybe east will present greater opportunities. Warrior will move up to the flat desert tile and then make his way across these desert hills, circling back to south of capital. Barb scout is miles away from anywhere where he would pose a problem, can't see his camp either though.

The dyes are the fourth revealed luxury, we won't lack for amenities here. It's also the third Oral-Tradition eligible luxury, something to think about. OLORAM obviously also not bad. A city can go 1SW of the dyes given current dot-map. It's also potentially a good place to chop Petra.

Nothing interesting happened on the scoreboard.

[Bacchus]

Warrior wanders up to our borders and gives a contact and envoy for Brussels. The quest is very easy, trigger the Eureka for Irrigation. An industrial CS is underwhelming, but Brussels suzerain bonus is something to consider, +15% to wonder construction, in effect Corvee. In fact, should be used with Corvee, and perhaps with the wonder-building pantheon to give +45%. Even better with Ilkum, whereby you get +30%, then turn them into chops.

Western situation -- desert and more mountains. Interestingly, that's all the second continent, I assume the continent divide is runs something like through the middle, so effectively this natural boundary splits the Pangea in half. Suits me, I effectively become a peripheral, rather than a centrally-positioned player, I will only have to worry about my North, South and East

Scoreboard shows a big jump in score for Kaiser, I think that's him completing Code of Laws with the help of an early cultural CS, which more than doubles culture rate. Some weird stuff is also going on with Ichabod, he is now second in science, but that's not pop growth. Perhaps he found a scientific CS as well.

[TheArchduke]

2 CS and a natural border to the west. Cozy.

[Bacchus]

Nothing happened this turn. Warrior is wasting time walking across already revealed terrain, but there's no choice due to the solid mountain range to the south. Nothing on the settler overlay to the west either, so not much point in proceeding in that direction.

I am at two pop, and so is everyone except Ichabod. Ichabod also moved, and clearly has worked something less than a 2-food tile. Ouch. Maybe he was working something 1-3, but even that's rough. No-one else has a tech, no-one besides Kaiser has a civic. Slinger completes next turn. I will also get an extra tile on that turn, which lets me decide how quikcly I need a builder. I'm obviously hoping for the marshed rice, almost as good is the citrus, not sure what the worst option is. Hattusa is really handy, as it lets us pick up Animal Husbandry if we need it for the cattle.

[Bacchus]

Tile picker chooses the rice due south of Delhi. I would of course have preferred the marsh, but seemingly the higher yield doesn't matter for the tile picker, thanks Firaxis. My longer-term hope is that the tile to the south of both rices is flat, so that I can make a feudalism farm triangle out of two rice, that would make them great. I would then happily harvest the marsh and rice on the river for pop. Or maybe not.

In any case, grabbing the rice means that I will have the Irrigation Eureka, and the ability to improve whichever tile is picked next, so I set production to builder. To advance craftsmanship I will have to buy a third tile, but we'll see whether that's at all necessary.

Slinger completes and crosses the river to start scouting north. Warrior is plodding along the south.

[Bacchus]

Barb scout has made its way up to the borders. He won't actually see the city until/unless he enters. Hilariously, I have no idea where this scout's camp is. Initially our warrior ran into him on the way down to the desert, but there's no camp there! The most awkward position would be somewhere between Delhi and the Warrior. If it's anything else, I'm hoping that my Warrior will have time to intercept. Fortunately all units are close by.




In other news: Ichabod seems to have found a city state, he is now first in science. Rowain, Ichabod and Suboptimal all have extra sources of faith. Suboptimal seems to have found a cultural CS and jumped up in rankings. Or was it Rowain? One of them. No clues on neighbour positioning on the settler radar, and the Slinger's scouting reveals only dry lands. He will take a small circle round the northern plains and come back in case he needs to help repel a barbarian invasion.

[TheArchduke]

You are sure it is the same scout? Yeah, somewhere between Delhi and the warrior seems possible.

No contact with other players so far, which is good, let´s hope this lasts a little more.

[Bacchus]

Barb scout went north without spotting the capital, I think they have a rule for not entering borders too early in the game. Pretty sure it's the same scout because there is no camp from where another one could spawn. Anyway, this took the pressure off from the warrior to come back, so he is taking a more efficient reveal route through the south. Not much to report, lovely forested grass hills on a river, spots for cities 4, 5, 6 probably. Brussels warriors are kindly acting as a shield.




North has double coffee and tea, but ironically no fresh water, would have to consume them as leaves. Not really a problem for us because stepwells, in fact that's exactly the kind of marginal land India has an advantage in settling. Still not a priority, and the settlement on coffee, which is best, is frankly awkwardly placed. The new culture leader is indeed Suboptimal. The CS count so far seems to be something like 3 religious (Suboptimal, Ichabod, Rowain), 2 scientific (Bacchus, Ichabod), 2 cultural (Kaiser, Suboptimal), 1 industrial (Bacchus). I would bet that Rowain and Kaiser have also met more, but they may be industrial, financial or military. Probably not military actually, as I don't remember any early jumps in domination score (on which I am for some reason ranked at 1, has everyone gone builder first?).

Now, because the religious CS are far from me, that kinda makes holy sites attractive. If I suzerain anyone, I can probably contribute a lot to any defense with a single Varu. There are 4 religious CS in the game, which means that only one is missing from the map. Some of their suzerain bonuses are quite nice, the really desirable ones are Kandy for the early game (a relic every time you discover a natural wonder, +50% faith generation from relics, getting it to proc even once is OP), and Valetta for the later game (purchase Monuments, Granaries, Water Mills, Barracks, Stables and Armories with Faith, reduces faith costs). I frankly hope Valletta is the one not in the game.

[Bacchus]

T15

First, new stuff:

Slinger finds a natural wonder and a nice, but very dry spot to settle north of Brussels:



Overall the north is a waterless expanse, with no sign of neighbours of any kind.

In the south, still no sign of the barb camp that spawned the scout. Next turn I have a choice -- lose scouting efficiency and bust these two remaining tiles between the warrior and Delhi, or continue revealing the map.




I'm sandbagging techs a little, because I have no idea what order I will need them in, all up to the tile picker. Also, Civ doesn't really reward you for completing techs, it mostly just increases costs of things. Also increases harvesting yields though, so you kinda want to spike-complete stuff just before doing that.

Let's also do a recap. We have a world full of religious city states and apparently few financial, military and industrial ones (altogether this group numbers just 3-4, one of which is Brussels). We are positioned apparently smack in the middle of this world, with no sign of coast or tundra in sight, but also apparently remotely from everyone. I think I am centrish of the continent, which is split in the middle by the desert, there is someone else on the other side of the desert, and then people dotted around the periphery. We might yet uncover a proximate neighbour to the south-east though. Overall this positioning bodes badly for long-term prospects, I will have to play a very careful diplomatic game to avoid something like what's going on in PBEM2 at the moment.

We have a very powerful start, with 3 4-yield tiles without the need to build improvements, but in the medium term this is going to stall, as all resources the capital will be adding are food resources. We have an excellent second settlement spot to the west, which I'm going to push for pretty rapidly. In fact, I'm not even sure I should have built that builder before the settler. We also appear to have plenty of quality land to settle in the medium term along the south-western river. The geography so far even suggests that this region is uncontested -- it's cut off by mountains and deserts from the west.

My early culture position is undermined by people finding cultural city-states and having early culture tiles worked in their cap. I also still don't have even an idea where the next, third city-state may be, but I really hope I'm not shortchanged on the Political Philosophy inspiration, that would be brutal. In any case, I need to use my production advantage to find time to build a monument, so as not to fall deeply behind on this front.

My longer-term plan, especially now that I found a natural wonder, remains religion oriented via Stonehenge. I'm not yet sure how I would found the pantheon -- I don't think I have an interest in running god-king, as I'm behind enough already. Because I have a good spot for Petra, I don't really care whether I get +15% wonder pantheon, or the +1 culture to plantations pantheon (two eligible tiles in my first two cities), or +1 GPP/t to Theatre, Holy and Science Districts, or OLORAM. I'm hoping to either run into one of those religious city states, or even wait and get it via Stonehenge faith generation, albeit that would be a little slow.