[SPOILERS] Bacchus and India's many gods

[Bacchus]

Glad to see that everyone tended away from the power/previously used picks. Ichabod's may be a step too far, but then on a Pangea England is a bit of a fun gamble. Also, we will hopefully get a good view into how England's ability to automatically get a melee unit when you found or conquer a city on another continent works. If he researched Iron Working, but didn't have Iron, would he get a swordsman, for example? if yes, there are probably some fun cheese plays to be had.

No Greece means that GG-enabled Varu are a possibility.

[TheArchduke]

Can´t wait for this to get started.

Afaik you get the best infantry unit you can have.

England is a good snowball against hapless AIs. Difficult to judge it against Humans. An early sucessful conquer during the swordsman era could be a great snowball.

In any case, this will be interesting, funny civ picks.

[Bacchus]

At the very least England will get a bunch of free hammers hosing up neighbouring city-states, but only if they luck out with continent borders. Really not a fan of these "all or nothing" abilities.

[Bacchus]

So let's get this rolling. I load up the save...




That don't look right! Of course, it's hotseat, so everyone gets the first player's loading screen.

What does our start look like?




Holy four-yield tiles, Batman!

That's just ridiculously good. Small problem -- all those forested hills are currently in second ring, which also contains rice and cattle. Which means the tile picker will get to the tasty tiles about never. Much as I like to gather more and more and more food, I kinda want the cogs.

City-state radar shows nothing, so the warrior moves 1 left, runs into a peak.




It's defensible, if nothing else. Latitude wise we are about smack in the middle of the map, which may be a problem. Longtitude is also ever so important too though.

Settler effectively has two options -- SW or SE. Not really that much of a choice. SW picks up just one 2-2 tile in first rint, SE picks up three. The only trade-off going SE is not picking up rice in first ring, and pushing cattle into the third, but I'm not going to start off my working food, and the tile picker will choose rice and citrus from SE. Moving also vacates a forest which can be chopped with Mining, Rainforest requires Bronze Working.

Score shows that both Rowain and Kaiser founded this turn. That mostly means I won't get a good choice on the pantheon, which is alright. OLORAM would have been the likely pick here, but really I have to time for marshes, they are going to be removed for a food boost and replaced with stepwells/farms.

I move SE, will found next turn and get a bunch of extra vision. Who knows, might be stuff in the second ring to the south. I also automatically have a good place for the second city -- 4W, it can even build a campus.

[TheArchduke]

Yeah, between everything else, you don´t have time for a granary from the getgo, you need units and settlers. 1 SE sounds very good.

Good to see this finally take off.

[Bacchus]

The surrounding terrain is rough enough that there is little point in building a scout, I will start either with a singer or a builder. The latter is potentially less reckless than it seems.

Craftsmanship boost is tricky here. I will have at least one of rice or citrus in culture pretty quickly, but everything else is forested. One option is to open with a builder, farm the rice and chop two forests, completing a singer and overflowing ~15 into the next builder. The second could plantation the citrus, build a stepwell, getting the boost for Craftsmanship (20 culture) and... do I'm not sure what. I want harvest the marsh, and put a stepwell there, but it probably won't be within culture. I could buy the cattle tile and pasture potentially, but I'm not sure I will have the gold.

[TheArchduke]

You really need great reasons for buying tiles so early, Money is the only emergency fund for buying or upgrading units. Builder to slinger sounds good, although exploring with a slinger is a dangerous affair, they tend to die quickly.

[Bacchus]

Longer term considerations -- rice farm, plantation and two stepwells put the capital on 9 housing, so growth efficiency dies at 8. Actually, the cap is swimming in food, so even growing to 9 is possible. In any case, either at 8 or 9 pop I will be looking to deforest the plains hills and put mines on them. Because jungle harvesting brings food and bypasses housing penalty, that should push me to 11-12 pop. Should line up nicely with Apprenticeship, which turns mined hills into 1-4 yield tiles.

[Bacchus]

Weak leaders who are all talk no action let their brave slingers die, we will be smart and tough, and take care of them, believe me. Also we need the Archery Eureka for killing a unit with a singer.

I'm thinking about the worthiness of religion, and I hope Ed Beach has already been applying a hot, acid drenched poker to the nostrils of the employee responsible for documentation and UI. There's just no info on how religious pressure works, not even in XML, which only contains some values which feed through in some unclear way.

I kinda want religion because we get 5 faith per turn just for having it, as long as we are not at war. With Jesuit education if founded early that's a free Library or Amphitheatre. There is always an opportunity to evangelize Crusade, which gives a nuts +10 strength next to foreign cities that share your religion. Basically you bring two apostles along with your invading force, and it becomes an era stronger. Finally, there's Church Property, which is a not-shit income stream of 2gpt per converted city, especially as you get the first conversion free.

There are some further windfall synergies. Building Henge (a wonder) gives the boost for Drama and Poetry (55 culture), which unlocks theatre districts, which get an adjacency bonus from wonders, and whose buildings can be bought, via the Jesuit Education belief, with Faith generated by Henge.

D&P is a bit of a dead-end civic though, at least for the short term. It leads to recorded history with a somewhat irrelevant campus adjacency policy and theology, which is also kinda useless. A bit further up the tree, however, there is Civil Service. It can be difficult to boost (grow a city to 10 pop), but we are actually well placed to do that due to land and being India. Civil Service brings two very nice policies -- Meritocracy (+1 culture per district) and Retainers (+1 amenity per garrisoned unit). With us being in a food rich jungle, amenities are very likely to be a problem -- in fact I want to pick Zen Meditation as follower belief, as it gives +1 amenity per two districts. Anyway, I think you are starting to see how it all compiles to a massive builders snowball. To top it off, religion really helps on the way to Tier 3 governments -- monarchy is unlocked at Divine Right, which follows Civil Service and Theology, and then theocracy unlocks at Reformed Church. All of these civics tend to have religion-focused boosts.

[TheArchduke]

Have you considered defender of faith.

It is a whooping strength increase of +10, that is a double GG bonus for all your units near your cities.

I would prefer that over crusade any day of the weak, because I doubt someone else will let you convert their cities if you pick crusade.

I found the religious pressure quite contrary to CIV V rather neglible.