Civ 6 Adventure 1: Approach cold in a dry place (Arabia)

[Ranamar]

This is my first serious game of Civ VI, after a bit of durdling around as Catherine de Medici to get a feel for things.  (and when I say durdling, I mean I'm pretty sure I took far too long building a settler.)  The Civilopedia has better search but does not seem as well organized as the Civ IV one, which is the last one I really played.

On top of all this, I can't hold a candle to some of the players here, so expect a comedy of errors, bad plans, changed minds, and so on.

Right, so... I'm Arabia.
Arabia gets some big bonuses once they have a religion.  First off, Saladin is guaranteed to get a great prophet.  If he hasn't gotten one by the time the last one is left, it's just granted to him straight up.
Additionally, the worship building for the Arabians' religion costs 1/10 as much *and* gives a 10% bonus to science and a few other things.

Since I'm guaranteed a prophet, I don't necessarily need to work particularly hard to get one, but that's no reason to wait.  Some of the religious bonuses are massively better than other ones, which I'll get to when founding a religion.  On top of that, we want to be somewhat religious-focused, I think, as we have the Madrassa, which is a fancy university that doesn't come at the usual university tech.  (Instead, it's at Theology in the civics tree.)

I decided to settle in place, because it turns out that settling on floodplains destroys the food bonus.  I also wasn't punished terribly hard for going worker-first in my trial game, so I'm building a worker to get a couple of improved tiles off the ground.  For one thing, building a quarry gets us a boost to something down the line, and then a pasture has some nice bonuses, too.


Unfortunately, we're going to need irrigation sometime soon, too, but there isn't a good resource to farm for the boost.  That rice will probably have to do, and it's a little far off.  Maybe I'll spend some gold buying its tile and the cow one.  In any event, we're starting with mining for the quarry and going from there.

Turn 2, we find horses (Nice!  Our UU is mounted) and apparently sight another continent for a foreign trade boost.  It looks like I live on the boundary between Zealandia and Gondwanna, but they're one landmass.


Turn 5, a barbarian scout shows up.  Time to stop exploring and see if we can intercept it somehow.  Of course, it's faster than my warrior, so that's sorta awkward.


I chase it over a land bridge, but there's another scout nearby that I'm probably not going to be able to catch either.  Well, nothing for it but waiting for the FFH-style barbarians, I guess.


T12, I change my mind a bit.  Since my borders autoexpanded onto tea, which requires irrigation, we're going to rush for that.  I need to irrigate something, and I also need Pottery.  So, 3 turns into AH, I'm switching to Pottery, while I investigate irrigating this rice I have.  With the limited charges on a builder, I feel like I'm not missing much by running in circles, and the granary housing could be handy.

T15, Code of Laws comes in.  I take +5 vs. Barbarians and +1 faith and gold in capital.  +5 vs. barbs seems handy, but the +1 faith per turn in the capital is critical: it's the single easiest source of faith I have identified in the early game.  (The alternative, from what I can tell, is to build a holy site district.)  I set Foreign Trade because, while the Craftsmanship boost will come soon, I don't plan to use those policies quite yet.
I also arrive at the rice, buy the spot, and farm it.  It's not irrigated or anything, but it boosts my irrigation research, which I need to build a tea plantation.  I set that as the next tech after pottery, even though pottery hasn't come in yet.  I also now have a 4F tile to work on, and I grow in one turn.

T16, the scout I've been working on completes.  I start on a warrior, while bringing my starting one home.  When this finishes, I'm tempted to start on a settler.  I've got horses to the north of me, on a lake, and I want to claim all that.

T19: Barbarian horses have arrived from the South; a scout had gotten away.  I need a plan to fight this, as, currently, I have one warrior, with a second in build.  Maybe the horsemen will try to cross the river; that'd be nice.
[I appear to have misplaced the screenshot I thought I took here.]
Second warrior arrives in 2 turns.  Maybe my scout can help out for a bit.

T20: now we have a second horse arriving, along with a Saka Horse Archer.  One more turn, and then I'm chopping a forest to boost building yet another warrior.


T21: second warrior completes; set slinger and chop tree to complete it in 2 more turns.  I also dispatch the far side horseman with my scout.  Perhaps I panicked overmuch, but it does look like I'll lose one warrior.

T22: The Saka fails its morale check and runs, instead of finishing off my wounded warrior.  My other warrior kills the other horseman, and I move the wounded warrior into the city for faster healing.  In the process of taking down that horseman, we spot a barbarian camp.  Looks like it's time to move in and take it out, once this slinger completes.


T23: The Saka came back???  Well, my new slinger dispatches it, although I did need to move my less-wounded warrior out of the way for that.  Why use the slinger?  Well, it gives me a boost on Archery, which I suspect I'll want sometime.
Since the slinger completed, it's time to build a second builder.  I've got tea to put a plantation on in 2 turns, and I'm going to try to get a pasture running after that.  (Then, horses here we come!)  Settlers to come next, I think; it's high time we expand.

T25: My slinger was in range of the spearman defending the camp.  This appears to have been sufficient to bait it out, which is nice for breaking the fortification bonus.  I'm not quite ready to fight it yet, though, so I'm taking it back across water and seeing if the spearman attacks my other unit in range.  If not, oh well... I suppose I can bait it out again once things have healed up.  My scout is healed from his horsey adventure, though, so he's on the move again.
Foreign Trade comes in, as does Irrigation.  I set Animal Husbandry and Craftsmanship.  It's 5 turns to the builder, so we should get the full boost on Craftsmanship.

T26: The spearman smells blood, apparently, and keeps chasing the wounded slinger.  I swap it with the nearly-healed warrior in my capital.  My other warrior is nearly healed, so he's going to stay fortified another turn.

T27: Spearman crosses the river.  I'm really not sure what he's doing.  Having healed up and observed the camp to be empty, I move one warrior to backdoor it while the guard is away.


T28: Barb spear attacks my fortify-to-heal warrior; gets rekt.  Warrior has a promotion available now.  Unfortunately, promoting now eats your entire turn, and I want this spear dead now, not later.  There's a horseman on the horizon I chasing my scout to worry about next.  Fortunately, I can roll onto the hill and kill the spear this turn.  The camp succumbs as well.  The scout runs like hell with a hill to slow the horse down... and discovers there's a barbarian camp in that direction.  Whoops!  Well, that scout is probably turbofucked.  I run him into the ZOC of the spearman to reveal some more territory; there's no way he's making it out alive unless the horseman forgets about him.

T29: Being trapped, I decide to have the scout go out in a blaze of glory.  Also, AH came in; next tech BW for spears and iron, then Masonry for Pyramids, which I'll build on my little bit of desert that I have no idea what I'm going to do with.  Worker next turn.

T30: Worker builds and moves to Tea tile; next build Granary for housing.  Shuffled some units around to get ready for the next target.

T31: Building tea plantation for a third improved tile brings craftsmanship down to arriving in 4 turns.

T32: I find the barb horseman again and beat up on him a bit, but don't quite kill him.  Also, I realize after the plantation I have 7 housing for 4 pop, where I thought it was a little tighter.  I switch my build to a settler, because let's get this show on the road.  11T to settler.  We'll be able to see iron by then, so I'll have a little idea of whether I should reevaluate from going after the horses (and jade, although that one is within 3 tiles of my capital) in the north.

T33: The horseman decides to go out in a blaze of glory.  This time, I remember to try the promotion.  It turns out that promotions take the whole turn but also fully heal.  I'm going to need to remember that.
Let's talk a bit about promotions for melee units here, though...
The two options for the first-stage promotion are:
* +7 combat strength vs. melee and ranged
* +10 combat strength defending against ranged
In almost every case, the first sounds vastly better than the second!  If I'm reading it right, you get 70% of the second one's bonus in any case where that one would apply, and you also get that +7 when you're bashing heads normally, which is ... I dunno, almost all the time, right?  Especially at this stage in the game, when there aren't aircraft.  Needless to say, I took the +7.

T36: There are more scouts (and often nearly-dead ones) nosing around, while my expeditionary force is away.  I build a scout, partly to delay construction of my settler: I want to hit 6 pop for a turn to get a boost before dropping back down to 5 when I build my settler.  Also, I have a sudden brainstorm: I forgot I can buy cultural expansion, so I move my worker to the nearby Jade... when it gets there, I'm buying the tile and getting a second amenity, putting my capital back into happy state.  It beats the unimproved forests which my last citizen has been working, anyway.  (perhaps I should have been building farms...)
Unrelatedly, Bronze Working comes in.  As mentioned, I'm going for Masonry next and plan to build the Pyramids for better workers.  (then maybe I'll start using them for just about all tiles everywhere...)

T37: Barbarian camp #2 cleared.  Still chasing scouts around.

T38: Jade mined.  (All my worked tiles are now improved, with an average improvement value of 1 pip of *something*.  One of these scouts walks right up to my capital, and I'm running after it with a slinger.  Scout finishes build in 1 turn, then back to settler.  I'm looking around a bit with my warriors up near the encampment.

T40: This turn, I hit 25 faith, from my 1 faith per turn in my capital from my government economic policy.  This lets us pick a pantheon.

We've got some choices here, which tend to come in themes:

+Faith:

• Dance of the Aurora: Holy Site districts get +1 faith from adjacent Tundra tiles (missing from my list)
  
• Desert Folklore: Holy Site districts get +1 faith from Desert tiles
  
• Sacred Path: Holy Site districts +1 faith from adjacent rainforest (missing from my list)
  
• Stone Circles: +2 faith from each quarry (missing from my list)
  
• Religious Idols: +1 Faith from mines over luxury and bonus resources
  
• Initiation Rites: +50 faith for each barbarian outpost cleared
  
• God of War: Bonus faith equal to 50% of the strength of each enemy unit killed within 8 tiles of a holy site district you own
  

+Production:

• Lady of the Reeds and Marshes: +1 production from Marsh, Oasis, and Floodplains
  
• God of the Sea: +1 production from Fishing Boats
  
• God of Craftsmen: +1 production from mines over strategic resources
  

+Food:

• Goddess of the Hunt: +1 food from camps
  
• Goddess of Festivals: +1 food from wine, incense, cocoa, tobacco, coffee, and tea plantations
  

+Culture:

• God of the Open Sky: +1 culture from pastures
  
• Oral Tradition: +1 culture from Banana, Citrus, Cotton, Dyes, Silk, Spices, and Sugar Plantations
  

Other:

• River Goddess: +1 Amenity to cities if they have a Holy Site district adjacent to a River
  
• Fertility Rites: City growth rate is 10% higher
  
• God of Healing: Increases healing by 30% in your holy site district and adjacent tiles.
  
• Religious settlements: Border expansion rate is 15% higher.
  
• Divine Spark: +1 Great Person point from various districts (missing from my list)
  
• Monument to the Gods: +15% production for early wonders (missing from my list)
  

As usual, some of these are bad, many of them are niche, and a few of them are kind of astonishing.
There are 6 missing, which is probably everyone else, and some of those are very good.  +GPP and +Wonder can be quite good.  Stone Circles is bonkers if you have some quarries (My Medici game had 5 near my capital... it was a huge boost).  Of the rest, God of Healing seems kinda useless, Initiation rites feels like it comes too late, although I could be wrong, and the harvest one requires removing stuff: I'm aggressive enough about chops.  Oddly enough, God of War feels like it is defensive.

So, current value of foodhammer items:

• Lady of reeds is +1 prod each in 3 tiles I don't currently use.
  
• God of the Sea is also underwhelming... I haven't researched fishing, but I currently have 5 seafood revealed, but 1 is in the arctic.
  
• God of Craftsmen works on my 2 horses I'll get online soon... and nothing else so far; it turns out there's no iron nearby.
  
• Goddess of the hunt? hah!  There's one huntable resource to the south.
  
• Goddess of festivals?  I have two tea tiles nearby, one of them being worked.
  

Value of culture or faith items:

• Open sky will eventually net me 3 culture from 2 horses and a cow; there's a second cow to the south.
  
• Oral Tradition will eveeentually get us some stuff with the spices up north.
  
• Desert folklore will get me a small amount in my capital and that's it.
  
• Idols currently only works with my two jade deposits; there's a copper deposit in the arctic, but it hardly seems worth getting ever.
  
• I don't really like how the combat or harvest ones work.
  

So, that leaves the "other" stuff.

• River Goddess will get us +1 amenity in maaaybe 3 cities if I push it, based on the single river I've found so far.  (I could have done more scouting, though...
  
• +15% culture spread will save us some money somewhere.
  
• +10% city growth is a nice basic boost.
  

So, let's go for fertility goddess.  I'd have gone for Monument to the Gods if I could, but, failing that, city growth is solid, IMO.

T41: Goody hut boosted Astrology.  That's probably my next thing anyway.  I need religious districts.

T43: Military Tradition (which was kind of filler) comes in; Start on State Workforce civic.  It says 19 turns, but I plan to have Astrology done in 3 and the settler out at the same time, at which point I'll build a religious district to boost it to completion.  If I get to ~50%, I'll switch to something else.  (Mysticism has been boosted, and seems decent.)
Also, it appears that I managed to get my grow-to-6 in the turn before my settler comes out, by adding the 10% growth rate.

T44: I have met Jakarta!  It is an independent trade-oriented city state which apparently wants a trade route.  Amusingly, I swear it wasn't there last turn, or actually maybe I only found it because their warrior wandered towards mine.  Anyway, it sits on some pretty good land, and I thought I had been scooped by someone settling there.  Well, if they annoy me too much, I suppose I can annex it later.  Being the first to visit it, I got one free envoy, for 4 free gold per turn.

I also appear to have contacted Kabul, which is why these things say that I have 2 city state visit events.  That one is a Militaristic city state and gives me +2 prod in my capital when producing units.  Apparently, its quest is to trigger an inspiration (get the boost for) the Early Empire civic... which I was well on my way to doing anyway!  So, that's handy.

I have no idea what I'm going to get when I do these quests.  Maybe envoy #2?

T45: My population went up in Cairo. I get a notification that housing is low in Cairo, but I do get the quest complete for Kabul.  It is, indeed, envoy #2.  (at 3, it bonuses all encampments, as well as the capital.)  Next turn, the settler will complete, and the housing crisis will recede for a bit.  I probably need to finish that granary now, but first things first: a holy site next turn when Astrology comes in.

T46: Settler Completes.  Astrology comes in.  I start building a holy site between two forests next to my capital.  It should have a faith adjacency bonus from the two forests.  Bizarrely, it seems to get just as much of a bonus next to one forest.  I don't understand that.  Since the Holy Site is going to take 12 turns, I'm switching off state labor to a theology civic until it is closer to completion.  I want the theology civic anyway, and it takes less time than the holy site.

T48: Cleopatra completed Stonehenge.  Well, then, we know who's getting the first full religion...  Meanwhile, I work to move my settler into position for city 2.

T49: Writing completes.  Next tech: horseback riding, so whenevery we want to research our UU, we can.  I move my settler into place for the city, and realize that I'm probably a little short on workers to develop the strategic resources around.

T50: At this arbitrarily round number, I should probably do a bigger report.
First, I built city #2, Mecca.  I also bought the single highest-yield tile nearby, a spices in a rainforest.  Interestingly, unlike Civ 4 jungle, Civ 6 rainforest gives a food bonus.  Additionally, the way the improvements work, it probably won't actually yield anything more after improving, at least for now.  (Rather, it will turn a food into a gold.)  Later, Scientific Theory will add an extra food to the plantation, but, for now, it just gives +0.5 housing, compared to just leaving it forested.  Well, okay, it also gives a luxury, which will be handy fairly soon, I think.

Not shown because it doesn't get calculated until the next turn is 2/0 required amenities.

Next, here's my capital:

The holy site is completing in 8 turns.  At that point, I'm going to finish up the civic I'd been putting off and hopefully take advantage of it to sneak out the pyramids before Cleopatra builds more wonders.

Finally, here's the extent of my exploration, so far.  It's probably pretty paltry.  Interestingly, there's another barbarian archer coming from the south.  I bet there's a barbarian camp I haven't cleaned out.  I should probably buy a spearman to deal with this obnoxious horse archer.

T51: I bought the spearman last turn... This turn, I can take advantage of the fact that cities provide bridges to sally across the river and hit the horse archer... which, to my hilarious chagrin, is not actually a mounted unit.  Rather, it is a ranged unit.  Meh; we'll be alright.

T53: Found Cultural City State Nan Madol.  This time, we weren't the first visitor, but I'd just generated an envoy, so I sent it there, for +2 culture in the capital.  The quest is somewhat obnoxious, but that somewhat speeds up my civic gain rate.  Maybe I should have built some monuments!  Mecca is also size 2, so it is now working the previous 5-yield spice tile and a 4-yield horse tile.  I really need a builder, but I need a trader to build roads even more, so that's still what Mecca is building: 10 turns to go.

T56: Found the barbarian camp to my southeast... also found 2 silver deposits!  If I can figure out how to feed something on the edge of tundra, definitely a city candidate.

T57: Holy Site completes.  Completing a district completes the state workers.  I switch over to the wonder-building civic, but it occurs to me that my next free civic swap will come in about when I finish the granary to grow faster, anyway.  oh well.
Horseback riding completes as well.

In military news, I squashed the southern barbarian camp.  I guess I would have gotten ~100 faith from the initiation rites, so far.  On the other hand, I've gotten good use out of growth boosting, I think.

I also finally figured out how to take a moment to look at Cleopatra's Sikhism.  It's thoroughly wonder-based, with the wonder discount, faith for wonders, and the high-faith-generating religious building..  Well, then.  Also, given my tendency towards farmer's gambits, she doesn't like me much: I'm running a skeleton military, but she can't get to me, and I don't know where she is.

Finally, Kabul has given me a new quest: send a trade route.  This is worth more than my other trade route quest, since I need to build military sometime and will build an encampment to enhance it, so they'll get my one trade route first.

T59: Well, shit.  Cleopatra found me.  I wonder if she's going to attack with her half-dead warrior.  Probably not because that seems silly, but she doesn't like me, for sure.

T60: It looks like Cleopatra is just exploring.  That's nice.

I also found iron in the south.  I have some ideas of how to feed this city, but I definitely need to build it, because I need that strategic resource.  One option may be to build it close enough to my more fertile land to make use of those tiles and then just pay out the nose to get to the strategic resource.  There's a reasonable grassland tile which is exactly 3 tiles from the iron tile, and also reaches some 3-food tiles which are probably okay, elsewhere.  The city will be worth a lot if I can get it off the ground, but that will be rough.


T62: Cairo's granary completes.  I need to decide if I'm going to stick to the plan of building the pyramids.  It's probably not a great idea, but I'm going to do it anyway.  If Cleopatra scoops me, that's a lot of gold I should get back, and, if she doesn't, well, that's also nice.  It's 23 turns, currently, which should get a little shaved off by gaining one or two more population.
Actually, I did some math, and, embarrassingly, I think the production boost for wonders is actually worse than my previous +1 production per city.  We're at ~9 production, so a 15% boost is about 1 production.  Next turn, I get another free civic swap, so I'm going to take advantage of that, I think.  Meanwhile, I really need to do a little bit of building pronto, so I'll build one more builder and then do the pyramids.  I need more luxury resources, basically, and I know where to find one.

T63: A civic comes in, so I switch to +1 production per city.  Also, it appears that Mecca is now at housing cap.  I'll need to build a granary sometime.  Also probably walls, (and even a monument) since I'm pretty sure that Cleopatra is north of me, so Mecca is pretty much my line in the sand.  At least the trader is completing next turn, so I'll start getting some roads.
Also, more barbarian scouts... and I see a barbarian camp in the fog.  That wasn't there before, I didn't think... but maybe I just missed it when I revealed it.

T66: I actually figure out how to make a trade route.  This boosts Currency to the point where it will complete in 3 turns.  Then, I can build a commercial district to improve my number of trade routes past 1.

T67: The builder I'd commissioned completed.  I'm going to go do my Pyramids plan now.  19 turns to complete, after some growth.

T68: Hong Kong, an Industrial City State, finds me.  They offer production in the capital for wonders, buildings and districts, but I don't have an envoy ready to send.  Their quest is to recruit a gsci, so that's going to be a little awkward.  I guess I need to get moving on a campus sometime.

T70: New governments unlocked!

This seems like a good place to stop and take stock for the next post.  Since I've figured out the controls more, I might even have a better report than my T50 one.

[Ranamar]

On T70, we've unlocked new governments.

Governments give different sets of cards which are available to be used, as well as having innate bonuses and a "legacy" bonus.
Here are the governments available for the full game:


The legacy bonus is one which, for every 15 turns you stay in that government, one of the bonuses ticks up in perpetuity.  They're all percentage bonuses, and it's shown with a writing quill next to that line.

The set of policy cards which you are allowed is shown by the symbols under the name.  Chiefdom, what we have been doing, gives us one military (red) and one economic (orange) policy.  With this set, we also start getting a wildcard (purple, shows 4 icons) and sometimes a global (green) policy.  Notably, purple policies only ever can go in wildcard slot.



One more thing to note is that city state envoys triple in spawn rate when you go from chiefdom to a first-tier government.  This is before any green policy regarding envoys is added.  (At tier 2, it's 2 for every 150 points at a base rate of 5/turn instead of 1 for every 100 points at a base rate of 3/turn, so this doesn't go up as much as you'd think, over time.)

So, let's think sorta short-term here, for a bit.  I'm building the pyramids, and I want to get them done quickly.  The obvious focused bonus would be Aristocracy, but it also gives up a fair amount.  Let's do the math, so here's my capital:

Currently, with 12 production per turn, it completes in 16 turns, which implies that there are approximately 158 hammers remaining.

In my capital right now, I get  12 production, including the +1 production bonus from my economic civic.  The production comes from 5 tiles, each of which would gain one from the yield bonus, and all 7 tiles being worked would gain a food.  (Tea would gain a gold and a science.  Jade would also gain a culture.)  Just aristocracy and the wonder-building civic would bump that up to 16, since we lose the production civic.  +25% to wonders should put that to 20 production/turn.  The pyramids would complete in 8 turns.  However, then I'd go off and do something else because I need to build non-wonder stuff, and the stuff I need to build doesn't seem like it's military units.  (In fact, I'd say it's settlers.  It's high time I built some more cities.)  We can goose it a little more with the production civic in the wildcard slot or get more envoys or boost our GPP points for one type of great person.  (Oh, did I mention we're losing the GPP race and may need to rely on our trait for the religion?  I should have built a shrine earlier; it seems pretty central.)  If we build a shrine next, we would get it done in something like 4 or 5 turns, though.

Meanwhile, if I go for classical democracy, we get 1 amenity right away.  This bumps the capital from content to happy, and keeps it that way even when we grow to pop 8 and get the 50% growth penalty from lack of housing.  Classical Democracy also gets us 2 economic slots, which we'd obviously put in the +1 prod and +15% wonder.  So, we'd have +20% prod on our wonder, but not the big goosing of increasing capital production.  End production would be 14.4, so 14.  It would take 11 or 12 turns to complete the pyramids, then.  Afterward, we could switch to the +50% settler civic  and crank those out, followed by workers at +30% (although, if we don't have civics researching at the right time, this will have some switch penalties.)  Additionally, we get a free slot for increased envoy generation, and a wildcard slot which we can put in, for example +2 great prophet points.  Even if we don't get the pity prophet, it's 120 points to the prophet (minus the 13 or so I already have) and building the worship building is a big boost.  Additionlly, I'd get to pick between the last two worship beliefs (that I suspect are left) rather than being dictated which one I get.  I'd get to similarly pick my building from two instead of one.

So, aristocracy kicks out our wonder 3-4 turns earlier, and probably builds buildings (but not settlers) faster.  It would grow my capital quite possibly into unhappiness, although housing is going to make that take a long time.  With the extra amenity I'm moving for, that won't be an issue.  Alternately, if I go for democracy, I don't have to build on the spices just yet, and I can improve other stuff with my one builder that I have right now.  To throw an extra wrinkle in, I'm currently at 69/100 envoy points.  At 100, I get an envoy, which I can sent to Hong Kong for +2 production to wonders and buildings.  Without a +envoy policy, it arrives too late to matter, but with one, I can get the envoy in 7 (because off by 1) turns, which should definitively get the democracy build time for the pyramids down to 11 turns.

I'm going to mull this over some more today and decide tonight.  It's possible that the aristocracy yield bonus really is worth all the downsides.

[Ranamar]

I'm going to mull this over some more today and decide tonight.  It's possible that the aristocracy yield bonus really is worth all the downsides.

As soon as I left for work, it dawned on me, this is crazy.  Autocracy is basically this game's answer to Bureaucracy: great with a really tall capital and few or small outlying cities.  Guess what I have?
Even with mostly military civic slots, it's still going to be better, because the other civic bonuses are not enormous.  Besides, I can definitely line a civic up with completing the wonder (because it's boosted by wonder completion) and change civics the turn after.  Then, I can build whatever else with whatever other econ civics.

Edit: As it turns out, "+1 to all yields" actually means +1 to each thing it produces.  (so, +1 food, culture, science, production, etc.)  That's ... underwhelming.  It's still better than the alternative, though, I think, and I don't think I'll regret it, since even +1 prod in capital is about what the other one having an extra econ civic would have gotten me.  Also, as I neglected to note above, I'll have a new luxury resource coming online in a couple turns anyway.  Honestly, I'll probably still never have a more relevant time to be running something with a wonder-building bonus.  I might as well math it out again, though.

New math (condensed):
Pyramids remaining cost (since I finally found it...): 181
Current capital production (with +1 prod civic): 12 => 16 turns (182 prod, so a growth wouldn't do anything)

Democracy changes:
+15% wonder civic -> +1.8 = 13.8 (yes, this appears to be decimal) => 14 turns (something like 0.2 prod off from 13 turns, so growth would do it)
+5% happiness bonus (immediately) -> +0.6 = 14.4 => 13 turns
Envoy in 7 turns -> +2 building prod => 12 turns
7*14.4 + 5*16.8 = 100.8 + 84  = 184
-> growing, given the envoy, does nothing.

Autocracy changes:
-1 prod from no prod civic +1 prod from autocracy
+25% wonder bonuses -> +3 = 15 => 13 turns by a hair; growing on the any turn brings it down to 12
Envoy appears at 11 turns, doing us approximately no good.
Gaining a happy resource to make the city happy gains us approximately nothing, too, but that's no reason not to do it.

After this, we'll probably switch to a settler, wherein the difference is mostly whether the Autocracy city is happy.

Edit2:
Okay, this is weird:

As you can see in the upper-right corner, there are 54 hammers invested.  Last turn, there were 39.  39+15 = 54.  So, it seems we're getting 15 hammers per turn, like we should with a 25% wonder bonus.
However, for some reason, it is convinced it will take not one more turn to build this than I mathed, but two.  13*15 = 195, while 13*12 = 156.  Neither of those checks out: one is too high, and the other too low.  Maybe it's expecting the trade delegation to go away? (which might complete next turn, actually...)  13.75*13 = 178, so that might be it.  (It's short by 1-2 hammers the turn before.)
Also notice the part where the wonder-building bonus is applied but is shown nowhere.

Edit3:
One more turn later, and the expected production time is on track for naively assuming that no growth or luxuries will happen:

This display stuff is really buggy.

[Ranamar]

T75: switched civic research off drama because it's almost done without the boost; switched research to Celestial Navigation from Construction for the same reason.

T76: Built horse pasture; Cairo grows to housing-1: reports Pyramids in 7 turns.  If I switch the worker over to a forest (2F1P instead of 3F), it reports the expected 6 turns to complete.
Also, after hunting down some barbarians, it looks like you might not get exp when you need to take a promotion.  Like, promoting is blocking.

T79: Celestial Navigation is almost at 50%, so I'm switching to Archery.  Something down the line can use 3 archers as a boost, and I've got a slinger I can presumably upgrade.
Pyramid watch: 3 turns.

T80: Archery completes, so I'm switching to Construction.  At some point, I'll build a water mill in my capital to boost it.  Construction, meanwhile, boosts Games and Recreation, which is almost boostable and gives us entertainment districts.
Speaking of building buildings, the envoy just came in, and I'm going to send him to Hong Kong for a building production boost, because we're going to build a bunch of buildings when not building settlers.  Several of my nearby city states want trade routes, so I need to figure out how to rebase my merchant caravan so that it will trade with one of them now that I no longer feel like I'm racing against time.
Incidentally, it looks like our great prophet civic is paying off: we're just barely in the lead to get a great prophet now.  I think I'm going to further goose it by building a shrine, but I need to decide if I'm going for a settler first.  I'll decide that when the pyramids come in, next turn, along with a civic swap.

T81: I just checked, and a shrine is 260 gold.  I have 272 at +13.7 per turn right now.  I'm going to buy a shrine so that, next turn when the pyramids are done, I can pull one of my citizens off a forest and put it there.  Then, I'll be able to finally actually work my holy site, along with getting another GPP.  After that, I need to decide between immediately building a settler and putting it off for a water mill to boost construction.  It looks like the watermill + settler will come in just as I hit max housing, too, incidentally.  Then, I should crank out some settlers.

T82: Pyramids come in!  This completes Drama, which gives us a civics swap.  Next target is Theology, because I want that to be ready when I do my religion.  The other thing I need to do is line up campus districts, because the Madrassa goes in a campus district.

Our current northern city has a nice mountain range, which gives us 2 tiles (if you buy far enough out) with three surrounding mountains.  That seems perfect for a campus and holy site. (and the adjacency bonuses are better that way than putting them next to each other...)  I send my pyramid builder that way, and to farm the rice along the way.  The one awkward thing is that it's running low on land that doesn't suck.  On the other hand, I'll get some stuff built fast doing this, because chopping a jungle is even better than chopping a forest: it's +25 prod *and* +25 food, currently.  I'm gonna need to figure out how to do it because it's a little low on production, but I'm definitely going to build some monster districts there.  Since I need access new tiles, though, I'm going to build a monument as well.  It's past time I accelerated border gain there, and basically all the surrounding tiles are pretty good.  So, monument, then builder, then science district.  (That builder might be a little late to the party at the next city, come to think of it...)


Speaking of next cities, I'm thinking probably near (next to?) the marble to my east.  There's a river that runs from a mountain, and it encroaches closely on an independent city state, but they're not really allowed to care.

Actually, while I build a monument up north in Mecca, I'm going to build a water mill in Cairo in 4 turns.  Shortly after that, Construction will finish with its boost, which will finis games, which will open up some more civics to work on while I get my prophet, since that boosts Theology.  With 70 points left to get him and 4 GPP/turn, that should get us a religion in 18 turns, minus however much faith I want to pay to buy him early.

After the watermill, though, it's past time I started building settlers.  I'll probably build three.  Maybe even 4.  The cascade, which I expect a turn or two after the mill finishes will let me then switch to a more focused unit civic.  For the moment, I'm running +1 in cities, again, mostly to boost Mecca a bit.

Incidentally, I'm not working the holy site after all.  It turns out that districts destroy the yield of their tiles, and the site yield for the holy site is currently terrible: 1 for adjacency and 1 for the shrine.  It looks like stuff is geometric of a sort, though: each building both gives another worker slot *and* makes the bonus better.  We'll see if that's actually true, but that's what I'm expecting.

T86: Water mill completes.  2 turns to finish Construction.  I'll put 2 turns into a builder before switching over to building settlers.  We're going to need a lot of builders soon.

T87: Apparently, goody huts now give not one but two goodies, at least if you hit them with a scout.  I think that's because of the advanced age.  Anyway, I got two things boosted: Recorded History (which I have now switched to, because theology is almost halfway) and Military Training.  Great!  Now I don't need to build an encampment unless things are dire, and I can research that for the envoy.

T88: New civics!  Interesting: this time, it was apparently too close to the last time, or maybe the wrong era, so I didn't get a civics swap.  In that case, I'll still switch to the settler, but I'm not sure how I'm going to change civics when I get the chance.  I am going to switch to the settler anyway, though, then back to finish the worker then chop out another settler, I think.  Why chop?  I want to build a commerce district next to the river so I can get more trade routes, at some point, and I figure I'll lock in its price sooner rather than later.  It's not like the holy site adjacency is doing anything for me from the forest, and a commerce district would achieve that as well.

I'm also swapping to Military Training for the envoy, because it's 1 turn shorter than Recorded History's 7 turns, and envoys are handy.  New tech is Engineering, with 2 turns to go from previous effort.

Running away from a barbarian, I find Jerusalem, a religious city state.  Their quest is *also* a trade route, and I'd rather like to get along with them, as their district bonus is to holy sites, which I expect to have a few of.  Also, the barbarians have archers now.  Ouch.

T91: farmed the rice near Mecca, which added a housing.  This will buy a little time before we hit the growth limit there again.

T93: Military Training comes in, and I can switch civics.  My next civic research is Recorded History, which shows 6 turns to completion (already boosted).  I also get a free envoy, which I need to send somewhere.

I wonder if I can swap in the doubled envoy civic and get two envoys on Jerusalem this turn.  (A quick test says it works.)  This is very tempting, since then I just need to get a trade route to them to buff all my holy sites, and I expect to have more soon.  On the other hand, I'm at 94/120 for my great prophet.  That's 7 turns if I spend no faith on recruiting him, or 13 turns if I hang onto the gpro card.  It's probably better to hold off until then: I'm not working my holy site, and I probably wouldn't at 4 faith right now, either.  Once I don't need the gpro card, I can switch it out and do a trade route right after for the quest.  (Well, maybe a trade route; I need to increase my trade route range a bit, which means I need to go to Hong Kong first, it looks like.)  Next free envoy is in 21T; next civic swap in 6 or 7, depending on whether I stick with recorded history all the way, or switch over to something else to put it off.  I need it and defensive tactics eventually for civil service.

There's an Egyptian missionary nosing around Mecca.  It's really not clear to me why Cleopatra hasn't tried to convert my city yet.  Maybe it's because I already have the base pantheon?  It's also possible that it's exploring or the AI is confused.

I have Apprenticeship (industrial zones) 17 turns out, but I can expedite that if I build another pair of mines... and then I really need to get down to building stuff, where by stuff I mean cities and I guess indy zones right after (because they're like building forges).

Mecca completed a builder this turn, too, so I'm laying down a campus nestled in the mountains.  (You saw the amazing site earlier.)  I might clear the jungle for the holy site which will go nearby to help build it; currently, it says 20 turns.  My recent tech developments created a massive increase in cost.

Fun fact: Chopping is so instant that it instantly completes the thing it's building.  I chopped out the last 3 turns of a settler, and now I can move it this turn.
More fun facts: Starting a district also happens more or less instantly, and you can start a district and then put 0 production into it for the turn.  I started a commercial district near Cairo (adjacent to the holy site) and then just started on another settler.  I think I'll build it after the settler, which currently says 7 turns.  The commercial district says it's going to take 11 turns.

So, this means I have a settler to send out this turn.


It's getting late, so I'm going to figure that out later.

I suspect my best first settling target is that one little green dot E of the rice and S of the Marble.  The other major option is going south somewhere to claim the silver instead of the marble, for my next luxury.  In either case, I need another luxury, because I'm apparently back down to contented from happy.

Probably, the answer is to do both, along with that spit of land next to the tea and the pale green dot between the two jade.  The jade one is probably just going to be an excuse to build a commerce district.  It wouldn't be good for much else, but it's near enough to a river.  Meanwhile, the southern fill eventually needs to get to that iron, as well, since it's my only source.  That, or since my medieval cavalry don't require it, I could just totally ignore iron altogether.

Actually, because I can't leave well enough alone, here's a view of the north:

That green patch by the elephant is remarkably tempting.  I should amble my slinger over there to take a look.  Probably, that ought to be Cleopatra's land, but if she's not using it...
The one concern is that the city is going to starve, because it's super hard to find food resources there, but maybe one can take advantage of either the rainforest or the marsh to help with that.  In any event, it has some lovely double-mountain sites for our favorite districts, and it's definitely the nearest place I can find ivory.  The challenge is getting creative enough to make it sustainable.

[Ranamar]

First, some comedy with pins:

This is quite literally the maximum number of pins possible, as the "add pin" button is now hidden underneath the top of the interface.  It's not scrollable, either.
They're also kinda buggy: I frequently found that, when near the pin limit, placing a new one would overwrite an old one as well as placing the new one.

After many hours, this is my dotmap, for now:

Loosely, hexagons are for things with mountain adjacency bonuses, stars are for cities, pluses are aqueducts (growth), and hammers are for production (indy zones).  I left a few notes for the future for myself, as well.

I had an aha moment when I reread the description of aqueducts and realized I could build them next to mountains as well as rivers.  I'm taking advantage of that in the east for the city where I marked "Petra".  I don't know if I'll pull off Petra, but I'm going to try.  (It also has space for a decent holy site / campus pair, if I don't decide to mine those two hills, too, for the Ruhr, assuming I get that, as well.  The big challenge will be feeding a big enough city for all this, and hopefully Petra will be up to the task.

There are two sites in the south that feel worthwhile in the short term.  In the west, there's one which gets me close to some fish: that will finish off the tech for harbors.  (Actually, I need one more turn of running it after, but...)  That city probably doesn't have amazing production, but it should provide some nice logistical support in terms of trade routes and the like.  In the east, there's one near the silver.

The silver city is pretty much last priority, though.  Aside from the fish city and Petra, I want to send a settler or two north.  (The one place where, I must admit, I couldn't quite decide what I wanted to do...)  In the long run, probably even more...

I want to build one in the jungle, and one near the elephants, and there's a lot of very nice holy/science sites, in any event.

To finish out T93, I set my civic research to Defensive Tactics, since I'm going to be getting a great prophet in 6 turns or so.  I don't expect the boost to happen before I need it for prerequisites, anyway.  Research is now on Mathematics, to get that ready for when I actually build my districts... and to get closer to Petra.

I got a policy swap, so I'm setting +50% for settlers and +50% for classical era melee and ranged units; the latter is so I can build a couple of archers to boost machinery later.  They'll take 1-2 turns in my capital at current output.  Both of my cities are set to build settlers, now: Mecca in 10 turns and Cairo in 5.  When Mecca finishes that settler, I expect to switch to builders... and then after that build districts in a bunch of cities.

I ended up putting the envoy into Jakarta, since it was my third and I get the suzerainty bonus.  It's useless at the moment, but I plan to change that.

T96: Founded Damascus near the future site of Petra.  I could buy access to a wheat (and farm it) for 90 gold.  Purchasing tiles appears to have gotten pretty expensive!  However, this city only starts with 2 housing, being inland.  Instead, I'm going to quarry the marble and then chop the forest, to hopefully finish it quickly.  Then, we can focus on growth.  I have a builder with 3 builds left, so I can get either quarry, chop, farm or quarry, chop, mine before he expires.  Until I get it mined, I'm going to have the city work the plains forest instead of the marble.  Growth in 15 turns because -50% isn't going to get anywhere fast.

T97: I have finally come to terms with the fact that flood plains can have almost nothing built on them.  I built a farm on one to increase housing to 10 in Cairo.  I need to actually grow a city to 10 soon for a civic boost.

T98: Settler completes in Cairo, which has suddenly gone from short a housing to having a surplus of housing.  Fortunately, I'm also planning to harvest a wheat tile, so there will once again be a bunch of food to grow. (Besides, it appears to grow *quite* quickly when not at the housing cap...)  Well, I *was* planning to harvest the wheat tile, but I forgot that I can only do that within my borders.  I think I might settle on it anyway.  On further consideration, I'm moving that one tile west like the game is suggesting.  It makes a couple bonus resources less immediately accessible in exchange for not having to buy access to the fish tiles I want to put boats on.  All in all, it doesn't seem like a huge loss.

T99: I finally found Egyptian territory!


Y'know, Egypt might actually declare war on me if I annoy them enough; I'm switching off defensive tactics, now that it's halfway done.

I can also expedite my great prophet by one turn for 170 faith... but I have 167.4!  Better luck next time, I guess...

T100: Egypt converted Damascus to Sikhism last turn.  That's super obnoxious.  Well, not much to be done for it, I guess.  I'll just have to convert it manually.

We also got our great prophet!  So, T100: time to finally do that religion thing.  Let's make it Islam for thematic reasons.  I'm pretty sure Islam isn't a fertility cult.

These are the remaining religious follower beliefs:


Of these, I'm most impressed by Jesuit Education, Religious Community, and Zen Meditation.  Zen Meditation is likely to provide an amenity anywhere we actually are worried about those, while Religious Community will solve my housing cap problem... probably just in time to start worrying about happy cap!  We've got Civil Service coming soon to get us an amenity from garrisoning a unit, which will hopefully keep us on track with that, though.  Big enough cities can afford to spare a tile for an entertainment district anyway.  Jesuit Education could be interesting if I significantly increased my faith output, too.  Currently, it's a third that of my gold income.  That said, I swear I'm going to set up some campuses for the requisite massive faith output sometime soon.  On the other hand, I could use the housing now.  Maybe next time.  Religious Community it is!

These are the remaining other beliefs:



We don't care about most of those, because we need a worship building to get a civ bonus... so, for now, it's one of Cathedral, Gurdwara, Meeting House, Mosque, or Wat.  The worship building grants +10% science in its city... Wats grant science.  We're going to take the Wat.  (Also, we're about to unleash a truly staggering amount of science just as soon as I build some campuses...)

It turns out I'm a hair short of Theology, too, so that is the civic research for the turn.

I found Baghdad on the coast next to the fish.  The worker in place to improve a fish does so.  This gets us to within 1 turn for Celestial Navigation, so I set that as my tech, as well.  Housing is pretty tight in Baghdad, too, of course, so I once again set a Granary as the first build.  It currently says 30 turns to build and 4 to grow.  I could rushbuy it, and maybe I should, but I also need the money for other stuff.  We'll save that for some consideration later in the turn.  The alternative is to buy a plains hill tile and put a mine on it... and I can reduce the hit a bit by borrowing a pasture from Cairo, which puts me up to 4 housing.  Cairo, having a holy site, just came into some extra housing.

So, how are we doing at turn 100?
Well, here are reports screens I ignored from before:



Score seems to be sorted funny, but I'm top in score:


Opening details on the score page reveals that I am out-teching (on both tracks) and out-expanding everyone else.  I have no idea what kind of simulated thumbs they must have up their virtual asses, given that my empire score (40) is now nearly twice that of every single other civ.  Cleopatra is at least almost keeping pace in civics, but not as much for techs.  Everyone else is worse off, although some have expanded more.

[Ranamar]

T101:  Theology and Celestial Navigation come in, as expected.  Apparently Theology grants an envoy.  I'm 38 envoy points from my normal one, which at 3 points per turn gets me an envoy in 13 turns, or a 8 with the faster envoys civic.
I think I'm going to try to sneak in getting 3 envoys to Jerusalem.  It turns out that, if you have suzereinty over Jerusalem, it acts like a second holy city... and it's way out beyond my empire!  I don't know how long I will get away with that, but it'll be funny to try.  So, that means I need to take the civic that grants me a double envoy for my first envoy, in my wildcard slot.
Alternatively, if I take the card that adds envoy points, I might be able to get suzereinty over Hong Kong, instead, and that gives +20% to all city projects.  I think "project" is the stuff you can build from city districts, which isn't great right now.

My culture per turn seems to have spiked a bunch, as well.  (This is probably a result of bringing marble online and starting to grow new cities.)  My previous 5-6 turns to finish the two things left that I'm trying to finish appear to have suddenly turned into 3 and 4 turns.  That means we'll get a civic swap when they both come in, but not before.

In any event, I'm going to switch off of the settler in Cairo long enough to build a Temple (and then buy a Wat).  I'm feeling the weight of bringing two cities online enough already, and going to 4 new as opposed to 3 new just means they will all be stunted for awhile.  Besides, I plan to change civics to the +1 production civic to help my fledgeling cities, and I want to get Cairo to 10, at least temporarily (but probably permanently, with the increased housing) to boost civil service.  Besides, Wats are super cheap for me, and they'll give a massive bonus in such a big city.  In other news, I'm running out of builders and don't feel like I have build queue space for them either.

Speaking of temples, I think I'm going to buy a missionary in Cairo, too.  They cost 100 faith, but I have 182 right now, and I need to put some effort into countering the fact that there's a missionary wandering around my empire converting cities to Sikhism.

Damascus can finish its granary this turn with a chop.  The chop overflows by 15 or so, so I'm going to do some science at the end of the turn to determine whether I can chop and roll stuff over.  If not, I'll put the chop into a builder, because I'm short on those, and then slog it out for the granary.  With the new civic, it reports completion in 12 turns (rather than 15, before), so it doesn't seem entirely implausible to just slog it out.

T102: It looks like the overflow issue is a display bug.  This next turn, the aqueduct I queued after chopping the granary out has 18 hammers... in a 4.4 production city.

I forgot to actually push the button for the missionary last turn, so I'm doing it this turn.  It spawns with 0 movement available, but I have to say, the overlay that pops up when it's selected is pretty cool.

T103: My first missionary is going east.  I need to convert Damascus from the heathen Sikhism, and I don't want Kabul spreading it either... it looks like the Sikh missionary is still heading that direction.  I have 100 faith again, at +10.3/turn, and the temple I need to buy my religious building is 5T out.  I'm going to buy a second missionary this turn.  Well, I would, if they didn't have escalating costs same as a worker: the next one is 105 faith.  I'll have that next turn and still have plenty in time.

My worker near Damascus builds a mine with his last build, just in time for Damascus to grow next turn.  That will send things from a 4-prod city to a 6-prod city.  Similarly, my worker near Baghdad builds a mine on a plains hill (passing up a farm on plains wheat, as it happens, because we need production).  Having my worker work that this turn sent Baghdad from 2 production to 5.  Next turn, despite the reduced food, it will grow, and also be at 6 production, by also working the cattle it has been borrowing.  We're critically short on workers, though, and everyone is busy building something important.  Mecca finishes a settler next turn, and I'm going to buy a better tile to work there, too: one of the citizens is working a water tile, and I will need a specific jungled plains hill for a religious district later... might as well buy it now for better production. (and food, actually!)

I wish I'd noticed that earlier.  I'm going to need to wrangle citizens off the rice farm because production > growth, when the settler completes next turn. ... The settler which I have managed to not have builder support for and I want to settle in the jungle.  Ouch.  I also just spent on the order of 350 gold in the last two turns to buy tiles to increase production in cities that aren't my capital.  I need to find another 260 gold for my new city, too, for a granary.  Better is to see if I can get a builder out quickly after all and spend some of that chopping to rush it out as I clear the jungle... while eating the slow growth in the meantime.  I'm definitely researching faster than I can build, in any event.

T104: Apparently, 3 turns after I made my last civic switch, I actually got another free switch!  I swapped the double-envoy card out for +2 to envoy points per turn to see if I can finish off my Jerusalem gambit that way.  +1 production stays, because I'm not going to be building that many workers at a time, and I really need the production in my new cities.  At the moment, I have exactly one available civic, so Defensive Tactics it is!  In 5 turns (I guess the short research times when I started stuff was because of overflow; it's a turn longer now), I'll get another option, which will definitely be civil service: it has a military card that gives +1 amenity if you garrison a city.

Also, there are more missionaries coming toward the eastern part of my empire from Egypt.

Mecca completes its settler.  In order to prevent the rice tile fro being worked, I had to lock down 5 of 8 workers.  This was essentially all the production tiles that weren't strategic resources, along with the crab to keep that one from going to the rice.  8 turns to grow with this setup, versus 6 with the rice... and I basically don't care, because my next citizen looks likely to literally just produce food, unless the borders pop naturally somewhere!


Damascus grew to 2 pop and gained a second Sikh.  I used my missionary to spread, and got ... one follower.  So, now it's 50/50.  I don't know how religious pressure works, but I'm hoping my capital can help a little, soon.  I'm going to use my other spread on Jakarta, I think, and we'll see how that goes.  I buy a second missionary; they're going north either way so I get some base religion in Mecca.  After that? I'm not sure.  Maybe the new city.  Converting Jakarta is going to be a pain, in any event.

This is Civ's settler suggestions:

They're either waaay far away or arguably poor land.  However!  Building a city between the jades there in the west seems like an effective way to claim a couple tiles I'd otherwise have to pay a ton to claim.  The city won't do shit, but it will get me a couple tiles that would otherwise cost 140+ gold to buy, and it'd buy me time to build some builders before going back to the settler well or even just building districts for my local cities and preparing to have a horribly expensive expansion up north.  (... and down by the silver down south, for that matter, but I don't have the resources to make non-backfill cities great right now.)  It's stupid, but it's tempting, and it saves me trouble for the moment.  I can also build a harbor and a commercial center, later, so it makes some money, at least.

Also, I'm 2 turns out from industrial districts, but I still don't quite want to get to the medieval era yet.  I'm switching to iron working, for now.  Maybe I'll even build an iron mine for it?  Seems doubtful, with where the iron is.

T105: Egypt is doing *something* with its missionary units; I'm not sure what.  There's another one hanging around Damascus, where I had converted one citizen and there's an up-arrow next to the citizen.  I'm not sure what the arrow means, either.  The city hasn't converted to Islam, though, because 1/2 isn't a majority.  Until it grows again (5T), you'll have to convert everyone to convert the city.

Good news, though!  Mecca just claimed another rainforest hill.  This gives me +1 production now, and another +1 production when it grows, due to being able to take more tiles with production.  I think 3gpt may be better than 1hpt right now, though, so I'm staying on the crab.

Also, having decided not to settle the jungle for now, I move my fogbusting scout out to go exploring a bit more.  More recon is always good.

T106: I use a missionary next to Kabul.  I have no idea what happened.Clicking on my other missionary shows no effect, but maybe it only shows actually converted cities?  My other missionary moved into Mecca and shows no effect either, but if I look at the religion tab, I discover that it has 3 citizens following Islam now.  I'll need to see what happens if I set another spread there next turn... I sorta suspect 50% rounded down min 1 is what gets converted... but seriously, there's no documentation on how religious pressure works in this game!  On top of that, the interface for finding out how many citizens of your religion you have is scattered all over the place.  Finding out how many converts you have in a city without an official religion is impossible, from what I've seen.  (If it's converted to something, you can find the answer in the religion window on the page for whatever the official religion in that city is.)

T107: My second religion spread in Mecca converted the city.  It got me ... one ... citizen.  I don't know if it's random or something with first-mover advantage, but it seems like you need a truly massive conversion effort to get religion working.

Oh, also, I built Homs, the more or less irrelevant city that claims some land for me.  It appears that cities always claim exactly 6 tiles, because the tile with the citizen "shouldn't" have been claimed, and the jade that says "swap" was already claimed.

I'll probably spend a builder charge on a jade mine eventually, but it's not top priority.

In tech news, I just noticed that Castles doesn't require Iron Working.  This is a prime example of really shitty graphic design in the tech tree, because the line from Iron Working to Machinery overlaps the line from construction to Castles.  I want this later because there's a civic card that gives housing for having medieval walls, which this provides.  However, for now, it's basically a research sump: I don't need *any* of these techs while I build.

T108: The temple arrives in Cairo.  This means I can buy a Wat, which I promptly do.  Suddenly, I have gone from 10 faith per turn to 18 faith per turn.  Buying piles of missionaries doesn't sound so bad now.  The next Missionary is going to cost 115 faith... or I can buy an apostle for 250 (presumably ramping similarly).  Apostles have 10 more religious combat strength, and they can actually attack.  I might go around trying to kill some enemy missionaries, just because having them in my territory is obnoxious.

Also, it looks like Kabuil was finally converted to Sikhism.  Looking at the religion page, yup, I got *one* convert with my religion spread.  I'm going to have to do something about that, in any event.  On the bright side, it's 8 tiles from my holy city capital, so that should make things a little easier.  As it stands, I can get a missionary every 6 turns or so, which means I should be able to recover Damascus from the infidels shortly, and then we can go to work on Kabul, or even just hope that pressure does the trick.

With the Wat completed in cairo, I'm going to crank out three archers.  This will cost me no maintenance, since I have the maintenance reduction civic in, and it will give me a cost reduction on a tech.  It will also give me a bit more military, so maybe Cleopatra will e more impressed.  Worst case, I use them for garrison duty when the garrison card arrives.

T109: Defensive Tactics comes in, so I get a free civics switch.  I might want to switch off the envoy point boost, because the next one arrives in 1 turn with and 2 turns without it.  I have other things I want to use that slot for, like recruiting a great person to impress a city state.  (One is asking for a great general, and *nobody* is recruiting those; 30 turns with the GG card in would get me that and a general that could come in handy if anyone ever declared war on me.

I also ambled my slinger up towards Mohenjo-Daro.  It says it's being influenced by 0 civs, which leaves me wondering why I'm not getting a free envoy.  (Maybe I haven't figured out the timing on that?  Maybe it's because I don't have vision on the city itself?)  It turns out that this city state gives free freshwater bonus housing to all cities while you have suzereinty over it... which I would dearly love for my next round of building, as they'll all be wanting aqueducts if I don't hang onto that place!  In any event, I'll either get an envoy in 2 turns or I'll get free envoys at the end of the turn, so I'm putting the double envoy civic back in.  I'll be stuck with it until I finish civil service, but so it goes.  Civil Service says 15 turns, but it boosts when a city grows to size 10, and Cairo is slated to do that in 7 turns, so we should be good.

It also wants me to recruit a great engineer, which, uh, well, soon, when I get indy districts, I guess.  I should stop putting that off.  I feel like I've just about stabilized my current stuff, so I don't feel so worried about planning out some districts; I'll do it when I can lay down two districts as startable in my new cities and then kick off the big event after laying down all but an indy district.  I'm not sure where my Mecca indy district is going, unfortunately, so that city may have to pay through the nose and/or chop a bunch for it, though.  (My preferred spot needs to be purchased, tbfh, as do the tiles next to it for maximal output, but I guess I can put that part off.)

T110: Still no free envoys in Mohenjo-Daro.  I'll put 2 in next turn, then.  Damascus grew to size 4, precipitating a housing crisis.  Even with max production, it's 10 turns to build a builder, and it's 13 to finish this aqueduct, so I'm just going to keep working on the aqueduct.  It's either 19 or 28 turns to grow, so I'm going for one more production, rather than half an effective food point.  When the aqueduct completes, it will actually start growing again.  I thought about building a builder now to speed things up, but I want to swap out the +production for archers when I get Civil Service in 6 turns, and I'd have to buy a tile to mine, since the only hill tiles in range right now are either desert hill (worse than plains forest) or reserved for a future industrial zone.  Once I'm sure I'll get the archers done in time, I'll do the builder; worst case, that's 3 turns later.

T111: I have my envoy, so I double-envoy Mohenjo-Daro.  It gives me +2 culture in the capital, which is always nice... and now I need to figure out getting that other envoy.  33 turns (or less if I switch the civic to +2 envoy points) from natural envoy development might be it, though, at the rate things are going.  I'm not sure if I can get enough indy zones up fast enough to beat that.

T112: Ugh; Cleopatra is going to convert Homs next turn.  This is going to mean even more cities for me to clean up the religion of.  Other than that, nothing of note happened.

T113: Building a third archer boosted Mercenaries, as well as Machinery.  Also, yup, Cleopatra converted Homs, which is about to grow to size 2.  (That's why this was super obnoxious.)  She also sent me a nastygram about having a weak army.  I decided to finally send a delegation, because I was feeling rich.  (25 gold is ~10% of my treasury right now.)  Also, apparently Cleopatra declared war on Nan Madol.  I'm not really sure why, but that's kind of annoying, too.  At least I didn't really care about Nan's ability anyway.  I bet she has a bunch of units lying around, with nothing to do with them.

Since my boosting archers completed, and I have a garrison in all my cities at the moment, I switched over to the builder I was contemplating earlier.  It's 4 turns.  Cairo grows in 3, which will probably get us Civil Service on the spot.

Baghdad also finished its granary, so I need to build something there.  Its production is pants, although that production will go up by 1 when it grows and starts working the currently unimproved wheat (unless it goes for the improved fish at 3F1G instead of 2F1P).  I think I'll just go for a builder, then.  Soon, I'm going to lay down a bunch of districts everywhere, but not quite yet.  I need to clear some stuff first.  For one thing, I'm planning to harvest the other fish by Baghdad so I can drop a harbor there.  Hopefully, the food from that will bump me up close to 4 population so I can lay down two districts instead of one.  (The other would be industrial, because we're getting no production out of this city any other way...)  It's 12 turns, but what are you going to do about that?  I want to lay my harbor district down on a resource that's already there, and I don't want to wait for size 7 to build the harbor district, so I can't do the commercial hub I plan to build next to it first.  It'll finish eventually, even if I put the build on ice for awhile.

My builder from Mecca chops out another builder, and we're following up by laying down a holy site there.  This one I think I'm going to actually start building.  The holy site is needed for housing in Mecca.  That puts me on a 14 turn clock, however: the site will finish in 14 turns, even with a housing crunch, it will grow in 17 turns, and I need to start laying out as many districts as I can before going up an age now.  I don't have to build them, but it's also 3 turns to Cairo growing and boosting Civil Service.  I'm expecting district costs to spike with the age bump: I'll be entering the medieval age in both civics and techs at the same time.  Based on that timer, it looks like Baghdad is going to get handed slightly more expensive districts, since I can't harvest that fish before Civil Service and Apprenticeship come in.  This isn't the end of the world, though.  I'll get there soon enough after.  In the meantime, though, I'm starting on Stirrups, because that wardec on Nan Madol has me nervous, and I'd love to get it halfway done asap as a result.  The boost, Feudalism, is probably my next civic after Civil Service, anyway.

T114: I've got the faith for a missionary again, so let's build one!  This one is going to convert Damascus back from being Sikh.  Also in Damascus, I'm spending 105 gold to buy a tile I plan to use for a district.  It's probably going to be a holy site, since I seem to need lots of faith and housing, but I definitely don't want to build any missionaries there until the religion problem there is well in hand.  Later, the one next to it can be a campus, although getting that tile is either going to be expensive, as it's out at the end of border range or require a filler city.

T115: Civil Service boosts!  It's a hair from complete.  I switch tech to Apprenticeship: we're going into the next era in synchronicity!

So, the religious view is getting more interesting.  This view taken with the strategy view because it flattens the map and allows me to show more seems instructive:

Certain things have up arrows of different grades.  I assume that's how much religious pressure they are under.  What I don't know is how that actually makes a difference, but I have guesses.
First, Damascus is clearly heavily under the sway of our holy city.  Those are some big up arrows.  Jakarta is similarly with big up arrows.  Mecca, on the other hand, appears to be stalled for islam but is mildly being pushed towards Sikhism in its unconverted populace.  Homs is probably in a holding pattern.  However, this means that I may be able to get Homs moving towards "converting" if I convert one.  Mecca needs some padding, so I think I will either use both charges on Homs to convert it fully or use one there and the other to give Mecca some safety margin.  Converting Homs should give some extra defensive pressure on mecca and offensive pressure on Jakarta.  Also, it is only 8 tiles form Damascus, so it will even add to the pressure on Damascus.

T116: It's 1 AD.  Welcome to the Middle Ages, only a few hundred years ahead of schedule!  (Also, I was right: new districts are now more expensive than the holy site I laid down in Mecca.)

First things first, let's push the button for a religion spread in Homs.  It's immediately getting double-arrow, which seems promising, but I have no idea how long it will take for that to have an effect beyond looking pretty.  It's real close to Cairo, the holy city, though.

Next, let's do some bureaucracy... Civics and research!  I can research Divine Right immediately, which will get me to the Monarchy government.  Monarchy will be handy because it gives some extra housing if I build walls.  It also adds a military civic and a diplomatic civic to my current civic stack.  However, I can boost that with 2 temples, and I'd finish it before that happened, otherwise.  Also, Feudalism opens up a whole raft of other civics, as well as boosting my next military tech.  We're going to do that; I need to lay down a couple more farms to boost it, but that will happen soon enough.  On the tech side of things, I want to get Stirrups closer to done, in case I suddenly need some military.
Finally, the civics stack:


Check out the happy stats on these garrisoned cities.  (You'll note I do need more housing basically everywhere, though.)  Who says red cards can't be econ cards?


Finally, while we're not going to start building them yet, I'm going to lay down some industrial zones:
Cairo gets one where the pin that said "indy" was, Baghdad gets one south of the wheat, and Damascus would get one except it needs to grow a pop to be able to get a second zone... since I'd put out a holy site.  As it turns out, dropping those out that turn or two before saved all of 10 production on the final product, but... eh; it's not like I was going to do something else with most of those tiles in the meantime.  The only city that arguably "should" get an industrial zone and isn't is Mecca.  I need the housing from the holy site badly, and I honestly don't know where to put it.  The whole thing is kind of choked by water, and there's nowhere to get good adjacency bonuses.  I have something I want to experiment with later, but, well, that's going to be later.  I don't have access to those tiles yet.

One final note: Apprenticeship is when mines finally become superior to forests, because they now provide two production instead of one.

T117: Built 2 farms... 1 more farm and Feudalism gets accelerated.

I don't know what the up arrows on the religion mean, but I'm going to let that percolate a bit more.  In the meantime, I'm going to send my missionary over to Mecca to give it a bit of a morale boost.  I know some stuff is happening WRT religion, but I really have no idea, and the double-arrow looks stronger than the single-arrow which didn't achieve anything when Damascus grew.  Of course, if Damascus grows a new Sikh again, that's going to be real awkward, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  I have absolutely no understanding of how religious spread happens in this game beyond "it's within a 10-tile radius."

T118: I moved my missionary into Mecca and fired him off.  Looking closely, this time I saw it said "+200 Islam".  I have no idea what that is, but I can only assume that there's a secret religious point counter for each city and that religion is a function of that point counter for each religion and the number of citizens.  From some googling, if they swiped the spread system from Civ 5, the holy city gives +30/turn, and other cities give +6/turn.  If a missionary gives +200, that means it's equivalent to 7 turns of holy city pressure.  I wonder how many points it takes to convert an unconverted citizen.  I bet it's nonlinear.

Oh hey, also, I got some tile expansions.  There's a second tea I can put a plantation on in range of both Baghdad and Cairo, as well as a hill I can mine to boost Baghdad's production.  Homs claimed a plains forest hill, which is pretty nice for now, as Homs is at housing cap until the granary finishes in 2 turns.  I admit I'm not sure what to build next after that.  Maybe walls to get going on the wall housing that's coming up, just to keep them busy... various districts could also be good, if I don't want to use those tiles for some other city.

T119: I have met a representative of Seoul.  Also, they want me to get a Eureka on Military Engineering.  This happens to be building an aqueduct, and it's going to happen ... next turn.  Stirrups is also almost halfway done, so it's time to edge castles a little closer to done.  Next turn, I'll probably just start putting in for Military Engineering.

I also build the last farm needed to boost Feudalism, and buy a tile to build a mine for Damascus on.  In case the housing arrives before growth calculations for next turn, let's actually have the tile available.  Besides, it actually increases production over the forest, now that we have Apprenticeship, come to think of it.  I didn't do it in the other direction because I had forgotten that, and now I'm kicking myself a little.

Oh!  It looks like there's a new far-off religion, too.  Whoever took the harvest goddess (notably, still there when I got my pantheon, so I think it was the last one) founded Protestantism, with Jesuit Education (buy campus and theater with faith) and Meeting House (the production worship building).  Also while checking religions, it looks like Mecca no longer has any Sikhs, although the rest of my cities haven't changed as yet.

T120: Damascus's aqueduct completes.  It looks like an aqueduct sets the water housing bonus to 6.  Actually, based on the "minimum 2 housing" thing for if you already have fresh water, I think what it does is set it to 6 if you have no water bonus and 7 if you have any water bonus at all.  I haven't tested this, however.  In any event, it seems to be quite effective for turning mountains into fresh water.
After a bit of tile fiddling, I have it set to grow in 3 turns, at which point I'll start an industrial district.  In the meantime, the production is going into the holy site.  Don't worry, it won't finish any time soon.

Homs also finishes a granary.  I'm running low on builders, after, well, building some stuff, so I'm starting Homs on a builder until I figure out what else I might want.

I can purchase another missionary, so I do.  It's time to see if I can take back Damascus before it grows to size 4.

T122: Feudalism completes.  Stirrups is now one turn from completion.  Feudalism gives farms +1 food if adjacent to two other farms.  Currently, this is pretty useless for me, as there is only one location that even has two farms next to each other.  On the other hand, Feudalism unlocks a bunch of abilities, including a rather nifty econ civic card that adds two builds to your builders... which I might throw in for a small number of turns to crank out a stack of builders for later.

Additionally, the trade route with Jakarta finally finished its running back and forth.  This means I can rebase the one trader I have at the moment to a city which needs production and run a route to either Hong Kong or Kabul.  Kabul currently pays better, but Hong Kong is an investment in being able to punch a route all the way through to Jerusalem, as I believe I need a trading post in Hong Kong to have the range.

Also, it's getting late, so I'll actually play T122 tomorrow.  I have some thinking to do about what civics to research.

[Ranamar]

A little commentary interlude... I've started noticing a lot of not-so-smart things I've done, particularly as I try to figure out where I'm going to get production from. That, and sometimes when I reread the civilopedia (or other resources) for the second or third time until things sink in. Importantly, diarizing like this has made some of them a lot more evident than I think they would have been for me otherwise. The thing is, a lot of the solutions to my current situation feel like "go back in time 50 turns and something or another works out differently in practice than it seems like in theory," which basically means "Do better next time!" In particular, I wish I had built trade route granting districts (esp. harbors, which give housing) earlier, and I only just noticed that encampment buildings grant production as well as their other (so far generally unneeded, to me) benefits. In general, I wish I'd built some of these districts earlier and not put them off as much... this is probably a question of managing production better. That, and not understanding how culture worked, because it is not obvious at all what it does, from the interface.

Also, I forgot to screenshot it, but Cleopatra offered 22 gold, a couple gpt, and open borders for my second jade, after I mined it. I accepted without really bothering to haggle: she has really fallen behind on expansion compared to me, and furthermore, I suspect she hasn't done as good a job of managing amenities as I have. (Incidentally, amenities are really powerful, being a soft cap at 2 pop per and a production boost if you have less than that. Housing is a harder cap, but it feels like system mastery and good planning can keep it from being a barrier in a way that I haven't really handled well. Aside from the productivity bonus, I'm inclined to liken amenities to health in Civ 4 while housing feels more like happiness in how much of a hard stop it is.)

[Ranamar]

So, civics research.


I'm getting close to the second tier of governments, of which there are three: Monarchy, Merchant Republic, and Theocracy.  Reformed Church, for Theocracy, requires Divine Right, with Monarchy, so that is kind of irrelevant for the moment when contemplating upgrading my government, and it's kind of a hybrid between the effects of the other two, anyway, so we can safely ignore it, for the purposes of this analysis.  Of the other two, Divine Right is significantly closer at 12 turns if I don't get the boost in, compared to Exploration (for Merchant Republic) at 38 turns assuming no boosts or increases in culture.  And, if we're realistic about it, I'm *not* building 2 caravels, and I'm *not* getting 4 trade routes in a timely manner.  I'd have to have already started a lot more harbor and economic districts to be anywhere close to that.  However, if I put it off for a bit, I expect to have a second temple build soon, just not in 6 turns.

So, these are the two governments that are upcoming and worth considering:

Monarchy:
3 military, 1 economic, 1 diplomatic, 1 wildcard policies
+2 housing in any city with medieval walls (requires Castle tech, which boosts with a 6-slot government... like Monarchy)
+20% envoy points per turn (legacy +1% per 10 turns)

Merchant Republic:
1 military, 2 econ, 1 diplo, 2 wild policies
+2 trade routes
-15% purchase cost (legacy increases that percentage by 1 every 15 turns)

Both also grant 2 envoys per 150 points at 5 points per turn, which comes out to 1 envoy per 15 turns (2 envoys per 30 turns) instead of 1 envoy per 33 turns, assuming no civics that increase envoy generation.  (The +2 card turns my current 1/20 into 2/22.)  So, basically, it doubles our envoy rate, regardless.

Card-wise, Monarchy gives us one green slot and one red slot compared to Autocracy.  I'm really not sure I need the third red card: I don't build any military!  Functionally, that means I get a red (meh) and a wild, because I'm often using my wild for a green card, and those look like they're finally getting better.  (Merchant Confederation at Medieval Faires gives gold for deployed envoys.  That's worth 12 gpt right now, and it will only go up!)  So, call that net one wild card slot.
The innate bonus feels pretty underwhelming: while I have been inclined to chase sources of housing, I have exactly one ancient wall, built mostly on a whim.  I'd undoubtedly use the third red slot for Limes to build walls at double speed, but I'd have to build two stages of walls, for a total of about 305 production, to get the bonus.  Double-produce on that, and it's still 150 real production.  An aqueduct is a district that does similar for 192 production (but not doubled).  A Holy Site with full building set is currently 370 or so production and 30 faith for 3 housing.  Also, I think the Medina Quarter card (Medieval Faires) gives 2 housing for anywhere with 2 districts.  It sounded nice at one point, but it feels kinda underwhelming now.  At best, it gives you an econ card back (figuring on only needing the housing in big cities), given how little fighting I've seen.  The legacy bonus is similar.  It's worth approximately half the +envoy green card I have, because at 5 

The Merchant Republic gives me a net of 1 wild and 1 econ, if we assume I keep all the current cards I have installed.  Actually, one of the red cards is sitting in a wild slot, so it's more flexible than that.  This is definitely looking better than "net 1 wild card*".  (*Other bonuses worth up to 1.5 extra cards.)  The innate bonuses don't mimic cards.  On the other hand, +2 trade routes means I can put a stack of caravans in a new city, run trade routes everywhere, and give it a big bootstrap production boost.  Similarly, reduced rushbuy cost will give me a big city bootstrap boost because I can buy whatever I need to make stuff work.

Then, there's the fine print on Divine Right: "Obsoletes Corvee."  Corvee is the ancient/classical wonder card, and I've got a couple ancient/classical wonders I want to build, first.  Particularly Petra, just as soon as I finish boosting that tech, and maybe the Oracle: I expect my capital to continue to grow like a weed and have a ton of districts.  (I'm less sure how I'm going to house all those people...)  I don't know if the obsoleting actually removes them from my card options, but I'm also not sure if I'm going to have enough wonders in build at the same time to care that much.  Potentially, Petra, Oracle, and GLH at the same time, but that's the best we'll do.

Finally, Divine Right boosts from two temples.  I'm not getting that in 6 turns, but I'll get it soon, if I decide to go for the other one.  (Mecca, which needs the housing, is 5T from completing a holy district.)  So, I think I'll aim for Merchant Republic.  Also, who knows, if I dawdle a little and really push it, I might be able to pull off the trade routes!  I just need 3 +TR districts, which would have to be harbors in Mecca and Homs (or Mecca and Baghdad, but Baghdad isn't finishing its industrial district any time soon) and the laid-down but not completed commercial district in Cairo.  As for what to research first?  I'm sure it will increase district costs, but Mercenaries is already boosted and gives me an envoy when I complete it.  Time to get some more suzereinty bonuses.

For the rest of T122:
I laid down two harbors (mostly to get them reserved) next to Mecca and Homs.  If we're going to get trade routes, we need to get them sooner rather than later.  Homs was building a builder, but, uh, that can wait.  I'm running low on builders again, but I'll have time to build some 6-charge ones once this set of stuff is sorted out.  I move 2 workers to be in position to chop and build a mine on the same turn near Homs.  (One of the builders has only 1 charge left, so he should vanish as part of the operation, and there's a road on it.)  I'm also going to start saving my pennies, because I expect to need to buy, rather than build, the caravans for this operation.  I also transfer my trader, which conveniently just finished a route, to Homs, because a trade route will give +1 production to either Hong Kong or Kabul.  Kabul pays significantly better atm, but Hong Kong might get us a trading post soon enough to be able to punch a trader all the way to Jerusalem.  My second one can go to Kabul, I figure.  (Also, I should have done this long ago, because it definitely seems like the best way to bootstrap a city!)

Finally, I used my missionary in Damascus to convert a citizen.    This converted the city, sending it from big-arrows Islam to little-arrows Sikhism.  For my other charge, it's tempting to go over to Kabul and convert someone (it went from small-arrow Islam to big-arrow Islam, but I think I'm going to run across my empire to Baghdad, instead.  Currently there's one each of muslims and sikhs, and converting a second one would get me to 50% and a plurality... I'm not sure if that's enough to be dominant, but I'm hoping it is.

T123: Regarding that missionary?  Damascus grew to 4 and gained another Sikh.  (It's now at 2 each, but Islam is dominant instead of Sikhism.)  I'm going to convert a third citizen.  (Success; 3 Muslims in Damascus... but Sikhism is still the one with the arrow.)  Since it grew, Damascus now also has room for an industrial district, and I plan to build the Ruhr Valley here, eventually.  It has a *lot* of hills, and getting +1 production more on every mine will be fantastic.  (I think half the tiles, or something, are hills)

I've also got a trade route to launch.  I did not expect Homs-> Hong Kong to go this direction, but it makes sense.  I was hoping for roads through the jungle, though.  As you can see, Kabul is clearly better from a gold standpoint, but we can't quite reach Jerusalem, and I *really* want to get there.  The next route is definitely going to Kabul.


The trade route already shaved around 5 turns off the time it will take to build Homs's harbor.  Growing next turn to work the plains forest hill will shorten it even more, with chopping the forest and mining the hill (for another +1) cascading further.  I just need to get the other worker into position so I can do both things in one turn.

T125: Woah, there are still barbarian scouts wandering around!  A scout appears near Damascus.  I wonder if he even has a home to go back to.  I have an extra amenity (+2, so not enough for the +3 bonus but enough to still have +1) in Damascus that I can take my garrison out for the moment.  I move him onto a hill which will cover most of the scout's escape routes, and I'll kill him if he doesn't take one (which will involve running away, functionaly).  Unrelatedly, I finally set my scout (who has been running around at half health after being shot by an archer awhile back) to heal up.  He's far from home, but the exploration he's doing is pretty minor anyway.

Over at Homs, I do my chop-and-mine this turn.  That brings the harbor down to a 10T completion.  In other work, I actually harvest a fish near Baghdad.  I want to put a harbor there.  (I'm also still sad that the spit of land nearby has cliffs: I would have loved to put the harbor next to *two* fishing boats.) ... Wait, I can harvest wheat, but I can't harvest fish?  That's annoying.  Well, then!  I don't spend the worker charge, but my worker ran in circles for three turns getting there.  I still put it there, because I plan to put a commerce thing next to it, and it's the easiest way to maximize adjacency bonuses for the harbor and the commerce district I do plan to put next to it when Damascus grows to size 7.  Gonna keep working on the industrial district in Baghdad, though.  (12T remaining.)  Having placed the last district that I actually have a plan for what's going where before I finish a bunch of techs, I finally set stirrups (1T) to complete so I have an insurance option if Cleopatra starts feeling frisky.  Given that she seems to have failed to take a city state, though, I'm less than concerned.

T126: Stirrups comes in.  I look at what it enables... Gunpowder... "Boost: Build an Armory"  Armory comes from military engineering, and it requires an encampment.  Sigh.  Fine, where shall I build an encampment?  Cairo has a spare district slot.  (At 13, I suspect it will need to be an entertainment complex.)  If I build it over by the future commercial center in Baghdad, I can possibly build another district next to it to boost the commercial district further... and having no adjacency bonuses, being on the corner of such a hypothetical triangle really doesn't matter.  I'm going to finish the industrial and commercial ones first, though.

Moving my scout because I wanted to see if revealing tiles gets scouts exp (as opposed to whatever else might grant scout exp) introduced me to Valletta.  This is a militaristic city state which lets me build city center and encampment buildings with faith.  (That would be handy if I had more faith on hand not going towards doing damage control against Cleopatra... or if I just had more holy sites rolling in the first place.)  Additionaly, it grants cheap walls, but you can only buy them with faith.  Valletta wants me to recruit a GAdmiral.  How convenient that I'm building harbors all of a sudden.

My builder from the chop-and-mine moves to stand by on the hill next to where the harbor in Mecca will be built.  I plan to finish the job with the chop, but the location itself is planned for a commercial district, rather than a mine, despite being a hill.  It's a solid production tile for now, though.  My other worker plantations the second tea tile.  Someone is working it because it's the highest-output tile left near my capital, and I might as well make it as good as it can be.  He has one more action left, and I'm not sure what I'm going to use it for, actually.  The one hill in the city is set aside for the Oracle... I think I'm probably going to just sit him on a forest in case I feel a need to chop something out.

The scout from last turn totally ran from us, but I gave chase.  He's really boxed in now, what with a Kabul warrior also holding him down with ZOC.

T127: The scout ran but got majorly wounded by someone in Kabul.  I also got an envoy for mercenaries completing.  Now, I could send him to Kabul to get the suzereinty bonus of double experience on battles I initiate... or I can send it to Jerusalem, and suzereinty or not, get +2 faith at both of my holy sites.  Alternately, I could set the double envoy thing for the new city state... but I'm about to spend a long time not switching civics, so I don't think I'll do that one.  I'm sending the envoy to Jerusalem.  I do, in fact, get the suzereinty bonus.  I also get access to the luxury resource within their borders: I don't have diamonds yet, so that's nice.  Everyone has grown a bit, though, so it's not quite enough to make anyone but Damascus Ecstatic, though.  I need to bring my warrior back after killing this scout, so I can get that back up.

Speaking of killing scouts, my slinger that I have been exploring with found one also.  He's got almost no HP, so that will be another easy kill.  Still wouldn't have been worth passing up Jerusalem.  The extra +4 faith alone makes it worth it, IMO.

Since Mecca completed the holy site, the next thing to build is obviously the harbor.  It says 14 turns.  I could build the temple I was going to build, but, the city is going to grow another size (to == housing) in 3 turns anyway, and I really don't know what I'm going to do with more than one extra citizen right now.  The city kinda needs production, and there is only one more tile that actually provides production.  Actually, while it probably won't matter at 14 turns, I'm swapping from the 3 gold to the 1 production (both get 2 food) now.  We'll have both soon enough.

While we wait for some districts to finish, I'm going to pour my science into Gunpowder.  I need 2 districts which are different (That means the industrial one for Cairo and one other, because I already had a holy site) to boost Mathematics, and then we'll be off to the races again.  Education is another big tech, and that requires mathematics.  On the civics side, we're going to start on Medieval Faires.  I'm going to have to switch off to buy time later, but that's no reason not to get it close.

I'm also helpfully reminded that I can afford another missionary.  I'll take it.  Egypt is *still* trying to convert Mecca, and Baghdad needs another faithful or two as well.  More importantly, Homs is size 3 now, which means that converting one of the denizens of Homs will flip its dominant religion.  That'll be the first priority.

T129: Convert Homs to majority Islamic.  I'm sure I'll have cleanup to do soon, though, since there's a missionary making a beeline for Damascus.  (I bet Cleopatra doesn't know where Baghdad is.  If she did, I'm sure we'd be seeing Sikh missionaries over there, too.  Mowing the lawn, if you will, against this is really annoying.  It's almost enough to make me just save up for an apostle and use him for zone defense, as long as it remains singletons.  Also, looking at the religion readout, Jerusalem is doing something goofy.  It's 4/7 Sikh, but it's majority islamic because of the suzereinty bonus.  That'll bear watching, but I assume it doesn't ever spread the other one because of how the dominant religion is set.

T130: I lost suzereinty of Jerusalem.  Meh; I still have the faith bonus, and I'll apply more later; probably would anyway.  In other religious news, though, there are still a bunch of missionaries running around.  Yeah, I'm waiting the 10 turns since my last purchase to get an apostle.  Hopefully, I can beat some of these guys up so they stop pestering me so much.  Also, Cleopatra declared war on Mohenjo-Daro.  That would have been funny if I'd already had suzereinty.  As it is, I'm not sure.  I hope she's about as effective as in her war against another recent city state, which is to say, a total failure.  I'm liking this not bothering with military.

On the home front, Cairo finished its industrial zone.  The commercial hub comes next, of course, and it appears to have shaved 2 turns off by adding +3 production from the zone.  Also, Damascus gained a tile, and it's a hill, which means it's time for me to put a mine on it.  The mine will arrive in 3 turns, but working the tile now (2F1P) instead of the forest (1F2P) cuts 2 turns off the next growth while only adding one turn to the construction time.  Another border grew, too, which means I can build the last mine I was planning to build around the industrial district in Cairo.  That does mean I'm not going to chop to expedite the harbor in Mecca, but the mine will expedite things a bit anyway, as well as enhancing the industrial zone... and we'll still have the forest.  It could definitely be worse.

T131: Yup; the mine shaved 1 turn off the harbor.  It will complete in 8 turns.  Incidentally, so will the commercial district in Cairo.

In less pleasing news, a missionary converted Homs back *again*.  This is really obnoxious.  I could get another missionary next turn, but... seriously, I'm just going to get an apostle in another 6 turns and start beating these guys up.  They're only coming in 1s and 2s.  Apparently, religious combat wins reduce religious pressure for a bit, too.  Cleopatra has buckets of faith because of her religion, though, which is super obnoxious.  Apparently, a conversion tends to flip the arrow for who gets the next one, so Homs is double-big-up-arrow for Islam again.  I expect that means the next population will be a Muslim.  Oh!  I should politely ask Cleopatra to stop converting me.  I might have done that wrong, though... I denounced her, which sets state to "denounced" and prevents a lot of things.  I did find the "discuss" button after, and asked her to stop converting my cities.  We'll see how it goes.  I think I'm massively teched relative to her, still, but I'm going to need to spin up the economy for war if she actually attacks.  I hope it doesn't come to that.

T132: A barbarian scout approaches from the north.  Mecca, unlike my other cities, has walls.  It turns out you can bombard with walls and *then* activate the garrison to shoot it if it's a ranged unit like an archer.  Scratch one scout.  Oh, also, the fog of war *definitely* updates with barbarian camps even if you can't see them.  I see a camp in the fog where there definitely wasn't one before, and I haven't scouted there recently.  I assume more wandering scouts will arrive sometime.  Maybe now is time for a military?  Nah...  Military is for chumps.

T133: I got an envoy.  What happens if I send it to a city state under siege, like Mohenjo-Daro?  I sorta suspect that, if the city state doesn't survive, all your envoys there go poof.  Nonetheless, there's really no other city state that's more useful for me right now to put an envoy in: Baghdad needs the access to water-housing, I have a plan for suzereinty over Kabul already, and there's no chance any of the other city states are going to actually get me a third envoy enormously soon.  Besides, I want to see what how the siege goes, too, given that Cleopatra seemed to have given up on one at one point, already.

Oh dear.
I don't seem to join them in a defensive war off the bat, and I can't tell what kind of defensive strength the city has because I can't attack it.  I see they've already gotten through the walls, though.

I also switch tech and civics research to new targets, because the old ones are at risk of getting past the boost point.  I'm required to get guilds to progress up the tree, so that's the one for now.  If I somehow fill that one up, I can switch to Divine Right.  6 turns to 4 TR capacity (but then I need the traders) and 2 turns to the first of those.  Similarly, 2 turns to mathematics being ready to finish, when that harbor completes.  Hilariously, I think it will only shave 2 (probably more like 2.5) turns off the research, at this point.  I'm working really hard to keep my tech stalled for a bit until some inspirations come in.

T134: The city state does seem to be giving the Egyptians a good kicking, but I don't think that health bar is going to hold out long enough for their troops to come back:


The Egyptians broke their promise to not try to convert my cities, though, which is a total shocker, given that she really doesn't like me.  (Also, I denounced her, which I suspect isn't helping matters.  I didn't know what the button to complain was, initially.)  It's definitely apostle time, if I don't decide to just go on a war footing (probably hilariously just as I switch to a government with fewer red slots...)

T135: Yup; Mohenjo-Daro is dead, and no longer exists as a city state.  My envoys vanished.  I'm not too surprised, but it's good to have it proven.  Baghdad goes back to having a housing crunch.  In other news, Homs completes a harbor and I need to decide what to do next.

Also, there's another Barbarian Scout approaching in the desert.  I'm going to reposition one of my archers over there so I can just shoot them from the comfort of the city.  This is annoying me.  There's also a barbarian scout near Seoul where my scout is currently exploring.  I'm going to have him hide , to see if the warrior next to the scout weakens or kills it.  If the warrior weakens it, I'll kill steal for the exp.

Cairo has some crazy food production.  I've played some swapping games to get a little more production (and push the build time on the commercial district down to 3T) and it's still growing in 4 turns, despite being in a housing crunch.  If you look, despite the -50% growth, it's still doing +8 or so growth food per turn!  Believe it or not, the two farms are floodplains and I farmed them when I realized I could build approximately nothing there.  I'm saving the marsh for Mt. St. Michel, and one of the two remaining hills is definitely going to be a wonder.  The other might end up that way also.


I have a trader that's 3 turns remaining that I somehow started in Cairo, so I'm rushbuying the first trader and putting it in Cairo while the commercial hub completes.  It's not going to cut another turn off, but there's a chance it'll speed the trader.  Somewhere is going to need to finish another one for the last spot, anyway.  One of the more obnoxious, umm, features of the trade system is that you can't build a trader unless you have an open trade route.  Homs, meanwhile, is going to build a Galley.  I've decided to do the boost for sailing after all, and it seems like time to maybe explore some water.

T136: I got my boost for Mathematics last turn, so I complete it this turn.  I set Education, for now.  If I get relevant boosts, I'll research other stuff.  (except Military Tactics: that tech looks useless unless I want the amenities from Huey Teocali...)

Also, looking at the trade routes now, Homs provides 3 production, where Kabul provides 1 and +9 gpt.  A trader costs 320 gold, and I have 67 at +18.1/turn right now.  At +27/turn, it will take 10 turns to afford.  If I go to Jakarta (16 gpt trade route), it's 34/turn, which gets us there in 8 turns.  It's 2 turns to complete the comm district and 3 more to complete the trader with it, so we'll be waiting on gold for a bit.  Oh!  but I forgot the commercial district in Cairo gets boosted by Jakarta, so I'm getting +7 gpt when that completes, along with a growth for Cairo in 3 and a growth for Homs in 2.  We'll be fine going to Kabul, and finally get the suzereinty bonus for that.

T137:  I now have enough faith to get an apostle.  Those missionaries can leave in peace or in pieces, now.
Also, Baghdad completed its industrial zone.  A harbor is 21 turns, a builder is 6, and a workshop is 16.  Let's start on the workshop and keep getting this stuff online.  I'll need the harbor housing real soon now, but it'll be faster if I put the 175 hammers in for the workshop before the 280 or so hammers to get 1 housing out of a harbor.

T138: Commercial district completes in Cairo.  Next build is the aforementioned trader.  (3 turns as expected)  I now gain 34.9 gpt and have 161 in the bank, so I'll be able to afford to purchase another one in 5 turns, if I'm doing my math right.  Also, Homs grew to size 4, so I'm reserving a commercial district before more techs come in.

T139: Mecca's harbor completes, boosting Cartography.  It's time to work on its dire housing situation.  We are actually at 9 population of 8 housing there!  First up is a shrine, because of my religion bonuses.  After that will either be a temple or a lighthouse.
Homs also finished a galley, so we're starting a second one there.  I want to get the sailing boost after all, and then I hope to have the money to upgrade both to caravels for the exploration boost.
My scout, having wandered and gotten shot at enough to have two promotions is being chased by not one but two barbarian archers in the vast uncolonized wastes that should be Egypt but I haven't managed to afford to colonize either.  It's probably dead, but I'm going to see if I can keep it alive one more turn and hope the barbarians go somewhere else.  If not but it survives, I'll probably sell it next turn.

I send my apostle after the missionary which seems to be near Mecca.  It also seems to be running away, which would be nice, tbh.  I got a free random promotion: it was a choice between Indulgence Seller (100 gold if you convert a city for the first time) and medic... which would be nice if I were actually in a war.

T140: RIP my scout.  I'm not recruiting a gsci any time soon, so I'm leaving research on Education.  We'll get it, unboosted, in 6 turns.  Civics switch to Divine Right, though, since they're all close.  Cairo's Caravan build is in 1 turn.  The purchase one is 3 turns after that, and then we have to wait 1 turn to lay down the route on that one.

T141: Another barbarian scout comes in range of Mecca's walls.  City strike followed by the archers opening up themselves blows it away.  This seems like a great way to farm exp!
The trader in Cairo completes.  Straight up building another one would be 3 turns, or I could spend 6 building a workshop.  As tempting as building it is, I want the citizen slot in the industrial zone for my next plan, so I'm going to build a workshop and buy the trader when the time comes.

T142: Damascus completes its industrial district, and also has a trade route to assign.  I'm going to need a bunch of production there real soon, so I set it to go to Cairo, which now gives 3 food and 4 production when a trade route comes in.  I mostly care about the production.  Finally having a road to the capital from there is also probably good.  Mecca also completes the shrine.  A temple and a lighthouse cost the same, so temple it is: that will get me 2 housing because I can buy the Wat immediately, afterward.
I bought a tile to put Petra on at Damascus... and then immediately kicked myself: that was 3 turns of gold I spent on it, putting my plans for Medieval Faires back 3 turns.  At this point, I might as well have built the caravan.  Damascus is also expected to grow in 6 turns, which is awkward because I'm lacking useful tiles to put citizens on.  A workshop completes in 8 turns, and hopefully it'll expedite a little when I do finally buy that last caravan.  Then, I'll build Petra.

T143: Homs completed a second galley, boosting Shipbuilding.  I'm finishing that, this turn, and I'll move on to the next one after it which has already been boosted, when that completes.  I holy cow need builders, so Homs is working on one of those for now.  That will be followed by a lighthouse to give the new citizen coming in 13 turns something to do and then on to the commercial district.  Oh, also, I have faith enough to buy a missionary again (since last turn, apparently, so I'm buying one and moving my missionary and apostle out to see if I can finally convert Kabul, and then Jakarta.  They both no longer have a dominant religion, and, TBH, I'm kind of grumpy at the fact that this means I have absolutely no way of telling what the state of the religion is there.  Actually, Kabul is in the back and probably going to succumb to normal religious pressure soon enough, so let's go for Jakarta first.

T144: Someone finally built the Oracle.  Sadface.  I was going to build that in Cairo as soon as I finished my workshop.  Fortunately, Petra has rather more stringent requirements from what I can tell, although there's a bunch of uncolonized land that would be amazing for it if I were over there.

T146: With a missionary and the apostle, I manage to convert Jakarta.  Suddenly, instead of 320 gold like I thought I'd have, I have 420 gold.  It didn't speed anything up, but it's nice not to be broke afterward.  I buy the trader in Mecca.  It was a tough call between there and Damascus, as I want the Damascus wonder badly, but I also think I can get away with building the Colosus if I'm lucky.

T147: Egypt has caught up with me in era.  I'm going to have to start getting moving again.  Fortunately, everything is teed up to complete!  Oh, and it looks like the missionaries are back.  Time for the apostle to go back to a position to defend our cities...

I'm housing crunched in Cairo, so I'm going to finally build a settler or two to at least backfill.  I'm thinking two, and then work on the encampment for more housing.

Roads are still underwhelming on flat ground, so my Mecca trade route is going to Cairo for the extra production.  Interestingly, the Homs route is over water.  This route boosts medieval faires, to the point where it will complete next turn.  It also means that Mecca is outproducing Damascus, at least until it grows next turn and completes its workshop 3 turns later.

T148: Mecca completes a temple.  That makes two and boosts Divine Right, which I'm leaving at almost done.  Next up is Exploration, boosted by building two Caravels.  It's 16 turns if I don't.

Also, Medieval Faires comes in, giving me civics swaps.  You'd think I'd go for the new civic that gives me 1 gold per envoy, worth about 12 gold, or a 30% boost.  However, I want to get some wonders done, so I'm putting wonder production in the wild slot and leaving the rest the same.  I have two wonders in build (would have been three if someone hadn't grabbed the Oracle after all my durdling) and it's my last hurrah for ancient/classical wonders.  When I finish them, I'll put Divine Right in for a turn to swap civics again, before pushing on to finish Exploration.

T149: I try my hand at theological combat.  It's a win, but I evidently need two to kill a missionary before it can proseletize to my city.  Well, then, back to saving up a bunch.  It does look like it reduced the effectiveness of the convert action, though.

T150: I should stop and do a reckoning at the end of this turn, so I'll save after my actions and do that report later.  Also, it looks like each apostle is 20 more faith than the previous one.  I've been sitting on a forest next to my holy site (and city, if I'm honest), and I think I'm going to turn it into the Mahabodi Temple, a wonder that grants 2 apostles.  It's also a classical-era wonder and looks like it will complete right about at the same time as all the others. Sounds solid.

[Ranamar]

T150 continued:
I used another missionary spread on Homs, because I'm trying to get some buffer so it doesn't switch back to being sikh-dominant.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have done anything.  Homs still shows single-small-arrow for Sikhism, and it's growing in 6 turns.  The good news, I guess, is that I have a lot more faith per turn now that I have two maxed out holy sites, so I'll have more missionaries real soon.  I'll do another conversion attempt when the city grows,I guess.

I finished a settler this turn, too, which means I need to actually place it somewhere.  The second-guessing is real.  (... which is silly, because the answer is to just build even more settlers...)  I found a bug in the auto-pathing, in any event:


You'll get to the second tile 1 turn earlier if you go to the first tile and then use half a turn to walk to the second one.

Okay, T150 state of the empire.

The city yield report is hilariously lacking in detail:



Not shown here is that the very first religion-specific temple gave +10% to culture, science, and faith in all cities, not just the one that I built it in.  I don't know if it's a 6-tile-range thing or not, because my empire is pretty compact, but it's definitely not just the city with the holy site in it.  It also doesn't stack: I now have 2 and there's still only a 10% bonus.

Here's city status:

Basically everyone has a housing crunch, so I need to find some more housing.
I just noticed I forgot to re-garrison Homs.  I should fix that.  (I wonder if naval units will garrison.)

City States:

There's a way to see what all bonuses you're getting, but it seems to only come up when sending envoys.

Trade routes:


Score:


I'm not sure what to say about this other than that the AI is clearly useless, this game.

Finally, empire strat map:


...and my terrible exploration job:

Notice that amazing area over by the dead sea (SW of Seoul) which would make an even better site for Petra, if it weren't so far across the map.

[Ranamar]

T151: Cartography comes in.  This gives +1 gold from fishing boats.  It also brings us into the Renaisance era.  (It also unlocks Caravels, but this is not hugely interesting, since I'll probably never build one, at this rate.  I could build two to accelerate exploration, but I don't have the production to spare.)  Education has 2 turns remaining, so we'll go finish that up.

Seoul gives a new quest: train a privateer.  Might as well... Kabul gives a new quest: earn an inspiration for Mercantilism... which means get a great merchant.  I'm getting a few gmerch points, but I'm currently at 13/120.  If I finish some more commercial districts, that will accelerate, since it's currently chugging along at 1 point per turn... It might happen.  I'm not hugely convinced.

T152: Baghdad finishes a workshop, which boosts industrialism.  (probably build 2)
For some reason I suddenly got vision on Nan Madol's city health.  It's almost dead.  I strongly suspect I'm going to be fighting Egypt soon... especially because I don't want her taking the rest of these city states; I like some of the bonuses.

I chop a forest near Mecca to accelerate the Colossus.  It would probably be better to do it later, since I'm using that tile for production, but I have other places I need that worker, like my upcoming city.

T153: Education comes in, unlocking a ton of things.  Astronomy looks juicy, as does Mass Production and Banking.  I've got stuff planned to boost Astronomy (build a university next to a mountain) and Banking (guilds is coming in real soon) but not currently to boost Mass Production (build a lumber mill) because my remaining forests are in underwhelming places.  I guess I could put one next to the river by Damascus, actually, assuming I don't end up wishing I had something else there.  That's probably the best spot.

Also, I just noticed that apostles do not appear to heal.  I've had one sitting here for a very long time, and he's still damaged.  I think I'll move him closer to homs and leave him as a blocking unit, for the moment, in that case.  Later, I want to see if I can use him to first-convert Kabul, but I want more apostles first.

We have a new city!

Aleppo has is basically there to claim some tiles.  I rush-buy the granary to get us out of the basic housing crunch, and I'm setting a monument to build because we're going to want the culture for tile-claiming.  There's a silver in the first ring, which is the main goal, and then some nice space to grow later.  I'll probably try to build Alhambra on one of those hills, because I realized on looking at it that I totally screwed up placing my capital encampment for that.

T154: RIP Nan Madol.  I'm getting kind of annoyed at Cleopatra's tendency to conquer city states I like, but it's not like I'm pushing back, so far.  If I get diplomatic service and she's up to this again, I'm going to declare a protectorate war to at least kill a bunch of units.

T155: Homs's trade route with Hong Kong finishes establising trading posts.  I now have range to reach Jerusalem.  Jerusalem wants a trade route, so let's do that!  Also, it knocks the suzereinty bonus for Jerusalem out, which Egypt had been making use of.  My next envoy comes next turn, and I think I'm going to snipe that back away from Cleopatra.

T156: envoy to Jerusalem.  I get access to their diamonds again, which is handy, because I need more happy resources, at this point.  I also suddenly plantded a holy city deep in that land, but I'm not sure that is actually terribly effective with no other religious influence around.  Cleopatra is trying hard to convert Jakarta again, but it's not going amazingly well.  Also, I'm confused by the religion readout: Homs grew and gained a muslim, but it showed that Sikhism had a single up arrow.  That's probably the current delta, but clearly it's not the actual relative religion.

T157: Colossus completes; I get another trade route and a free trader.  Next build for Mecca is to finally finish the campus I've had reserved.  Housing from a lighthouse is something I also want soon, but Astronomy gets boosted by building a university.  Someone cleared the barbarian camp nearby, so I'm setting the trade route to Hong Kong: +5 gold is worth a lot more than +1 food in a city near its housing cap that is going to grow soon anyway!  (Also, we'll finally get some roads into the jungle...)

Kabul appears to not have enough converts to actually have islam as a dominant religion... it just grew without gaining Sikhs.  Unfortunately, there is literally no way to find out the religion status of that city without prodding it experimentaly, but I'm buying another missionary to bump its number of converts up. before actually using the apostle charge.

In tech news, Banking is close to 50%, so I'm switching to Astronomy.  I'm hoping I can get my university in Mecca built before it gets too full.  I'm probably going to research one of these without the inspiration, but it's kind of bothersome when I've got the stuff for it right there and just need time to complete it!

T158: Apparently, there's an audio cue when a barbarian camp is created... one was just created south of Baghdad.  Baghdad and Cairo are currently both at +2 amenities, so I'm taking this opportunity to swap the archer in Cairo for the spearman in Baghdad... the better to shoot scouts as they arrive.

T159: There are barbarian quadriremes wandering around.  I engage one with one of the galleys I had built; this is part of why I decided to build them after all.  In other news, my blocking missionary appears to have completely confused Cleopatra's missionary.  It's walking back and forth apparently trying to get into my land and, on not having room to go further, changing its mind and going back to next to Jakarta.

T160: The Mahabodi Temple completes, so I now have two more apostles.  One of them gets Martyr (gain relic if dies in theological combat) and the other one Pilgrim (+3 spreads if it goes to see a natural wonder).  The pilgrim is going to need to make a pilgrimage to the dead sea.  The other one is going to go call down some lightning.  Cairo's next build is a market, because I want two of those for the Guilds boost.

My trireme was pretty beat up after attacking a quadrireme and getting shot at on the interturn, so I ran it away to hide behind some city state units.  Along the way, I finally met a unit from the US.  That's exploration progress, I guess!  I've now met 2 civs.  America is apparently at war with 1 unmet civ, denounced by another one, and frowny-face with two others.  I send him a delegation.  Score says that America is at the bottom of the heap.  Details suggest this is mostly due to lack of expansion.

Interturn, I get this:

I'll take it!  An amenity would have been nice, but he doesn't have any doubles that I see.

T161: Petra completes.  Also, Damascus grew onto a second desert hill tile.  I was going to put Divine Right in for a turn to switch civics, but Exploration is actually only 4 turns out, so I think I'll just sit on it and do the civic swap then.  It can be handy to keep a civic swap in your back pocket.

Also, Petra is crazy  There are no mines on those desert hills, so far:


I also harvest the stone (after panicking because I was looking in the wrong place for the harvest button) next to Aleppo and then lay down an aqueduct there.  Did you know that you can harvest trees with "remove" but you have to click a harvest button somewhere else to harvest other resources?  Does Firaxis have any UX designers?

T162: My two galleys finally manage to gang up and kill the quadrireme.  Homs finishes its lighthouse.  My gold income has been skyrocketing lately.  With 400+ gold in the bank, I buy another builder.  I need builders badly, and I'm even gaining tiles that are improvable.

One of my apostles takes a whack at an Egyption missionary.  My trader has revealed that a whole bunch of missionaries are coming from the north, though, so it looks like I'm going to need more apostles real soon.  I'm betting that martyr will, in fact, martyr himself softening up one for someone else.

Also, Kabul finally has enough Muslims for my apostle to convert for gold.

T163: I recruit a Great Engineer.  It's a shame that the city state who wanted me to recruit one is now under Egyptian hegemony.
Cairo also finishes a market.  It's at housing cap, so I'm building a settler to do a bit more backfill and then I'll finally finish my encampment afterward.  I also buy an apostle because my opinion on missionaries is

T164: Jakarta Suzereinty lost!  I guess it's time to send another envoy or do a quest...   Also, I wasn't paying attention and Astronomy is slightly over 50%, so I'm switching over to Mass Production.  Mecca finished its campus this turn, so the next build is a library (3T) followed by finally building a Madrassa (8T).

My apostle this time has not one but two interesting promotions to pick from: Proselytizer removes other religions when I use a spread action, and Debater gives +20 to theological combat.  Given that I'm trying to clean out missionaries, I think I'll go for debater, but the other would have been nice too.

Exploring with my Galley, I finally found the camp producing those quadriremes...

Time to run away!

T165: Exploration comes in!  Time to turn into a merchant republic.  This boosts Castles.  It also obsoletes our +1 production civic card, apparently.  Next civic research set to Humanism.  I'm not going to get a great artist, so I'll just finish Divine Right the next time I decide I want to change civics... or whenever I decide I want to build a bunch of wonders, since the wonder card is there.

These are my civic policies for now:


I have the money to buy a trader, so I buy one in Aleppo.  Next turn, he'll boost the production there a bit, and we can hopefully finish this aqueduct faster.  I've got an empty space for a trader, now, but I really want to finish the settler in Cairo so I can finally get a city near my iron.  Amusingly, I think getting the boost for iron working will only cut one turn off, but I've got other things to fill in in the meantime.

T166: Suzereinty over Jerusalem lost as well.  I'm not too surprised; having that randomly spreading religion over there has got to be alarming... and besides, the bonuses are pretty nice if you've got holy sites.

T167: Egypt not merely sends me threatening messages but actually denounces me.  This is probably a telegraph for war in 5 turns, since I don't see units yet.  This could be awkward for some of my trade routes, though.  Mamluks are 180 production or 610 gold, with my purchase cost reduction.  I need to start getting ready in case she really does declare in 5 turns.  Step 1 is to set Military Tactics, because Egypt is still running around with chariots.


I didn't get a screenshot of it because I was so busy being astonished, but... with the +strength promotion on apostles, they can one-shot missionaries if they are at full strength.  This both reduces nearby religious strength for the other guy *and* gets you religious strength without even spending spreads.  Holy shit.

So, I just realized I'm going to have even more trade routes coming online soon.  I put off finishing the settler for a turn or two to put some production into a trader.  When Cairo grows, I'll probably just finish it off, though, as the housing crunch will start.  (Somehow, the settler managed to get to the point of finishing before it would grow...)

T168: A trade route ends, so I transfer the trader to Homs, which really needs more production for its commerce hub.  Also, with the missionary menace temporarily beaten back, I'm sending my own missionary out to a nearby Egyptian city.  Partly, it's scouting; partly it's decluttering; and partly, it's to give her a taste of her own medicine.  Also, Baghdad finished its harbor, so I have even more trade routes open... I start a lighthouse because it's growing and needs housing, but I definitely need to get more traders.

T170:  I had built an apostle last turn, and its promotions were proseletyzer or translator.  I took the first one, because maybe I can finally remove some of these heretic religions from Homs, at least for a time.

T171: Trader completes in Cairo.  I send it to Baghdad.  I'm not entirely sure if it's going to be used for money or production, but I want to build a road from there toward the heartland, and it does need some production.  Build set to Settler to put off in the corner of my continent.  Temple completed in Damascus; I buy a Wat.  Next Damascus build is a Pikeman.  He's going to anchor a flank on a mountain and force Egypt to sail around if they want to come through that area.

A trade route finished in Mecca, too, and I'm still feeling the production crunch there, so I set a route to Baghdad for +5 production/turn, instead of the Cairo 3F4P that I had been doing before.  I guess that will sort the roads-to-heartland problem.

As a side note, ever since running away from the second quadrireme in the south, I've been tag-teaming my galleys to explore the ocean there.  This is how far I've gotten:

I didn't notice originally, but there's a tribal village right next to the barbarians there.  If I had the production, I'd grab a quadrireme and bombard that pikeman to death for a bonus on naval tradition... but that's really low priority.

T172: Settler completes in Cairo.  I decide to finally finish my encampment.Sometime soon, I'm going to switch civics in a way that I'll drop everything I'm doing and crank out a stack of builders so I'm no longer feeling builder-crunched, but I'm putting that off for a bit.

I need to assign a trade route in Baghdad.  Production is nice, but I don't really need food or the like.  Also, I could do with a bit more backline treasury-padding in case Cleopatra actually makes good her denunciation into war.  Meh; 4 production from Cairo really is what I need.  Kabul for a bit of production and 10 gold was tempting, but if I'm doing a route for gold, I should just do Jakarta for 15.

The quadrireme is back from whatever marauding it was doing in the bay we'd already explored.  I think we can kill it if we double-team it, but I'm just going to say we should run.  It looks like what actually would happen is that we'd miss the kill by the tiniest amount.

We found the Japanese capital as we moved away, which led to this screen that I'm sure was designed to get a laugh:


Checking the score screen, Japan seems to be tied for third after Egypt with two groups I haven't met.  Presumably, they've all been fighting while I've been off being isolationist as Arabia.  Details show that he's actually expanded some:


Interturn, Hojo hits me up for some Jade:

I might have liked the Gypsum more, but I'll take the gold; he doesn't have doubles, af

T173: I convert someone in Nan Madol with the missionary I've been walking over there.

T174: I use another spread action, but it doesn't convert another person.  It's 2 Muslim with big arrows versus 3 Sikh, but that's what it was last turn, too.  I wonder if the first one is 100 points, the second 150-200, and the third closer to 300.

My pilgrim apostle is almost to the dead sea, and thankfully the barbarian archers seem to have wandered off:

If you're wondering why he's damaged, I actually got my apostles confused a little while back and had been bashing heads against missionaries before I realized I didn't have the right one there.

Interturn, apparently, Rome pissed someone off:


T175: University in Mecca completes, which boosts Astronomy to completion.  Astronomy cascades to boost Colonialism.

Shockingly, Mecca now has a surplus of housing, so we're not going to build a lighthouse yet.  Instead, I'm going to finish another commercial hub there: it shows 10 turns to completion, and I can move on to the lighthouse when it finishes.  Mecca grows in 9 turns and needs to grow twice to start being housing-constrained, too.

Baghdad also completes a lighthouse (but is mostly housing-constrained...)  Next build is a trader, because we're 1 under trade route limit and have more coming soon.  That shows 5 turns.  A builder shows 4 turns, but my next civic comes in 4 turns, so I'm going to put it off; the next civic change will be a shuffle for a builder burst.  (and then I'll probably finish divine Right to switch off...)

Also, I was wrong; the barbarians are still here:

It's time to run like hell, which fortunately I can do.  I'm gonna need an escort to get to the dead sea... maybe I can sail the pilgrim to the Galapagos, over by Mohenjo-Daro.  In the meantime, I'm just going to buy an apostle or two and use them for beliefs, depending on abilities...

I also decide to try my Proselytizer on Homs, since Homs had gotten to 3/3 Sikh/Muslim.  Holy shit that's bonkers; I used a spread and converted all three of their citizens.  It doesn't remove some other religion, it removes all other religion.

A short interlude for more bugs... This is a valid move, but the outline doesn't show it:


Aleppo completed its aqueduct.  A builder would be 8 turns, so I'm going to start on that in anticipation of the builder card.

These are the promotions on the latest apostle I got:

Some quick experimentation determines that "Evangelize Belief" always uses up the entire apostle.  So, my clever plan with a pilgrim evangelizing twice won't work.  As a result, I'm going to go for Heathen Conversion.  That seems like it could be really funny, especially with all the barbarians wandering around.  It also means that I'm just going to evangelize the pilgrim... when he gets home to friendly territory.


Interturn, Japan sends us a delegation.

T177: As you can see, I was going to build a commerce district on the peninsula and the city where it can reach fresh water with an aqueduct:
However, that warrior unhelpfully got in my way, so I'm going to found on the peninsula and just eat the housing penalty.  Hopefully, I can make up for it with 3 crab and a a cow.  As is my standard bootstrap procedure, I buy a granary immediately to give it some housing.  I'd buy a trader to send to a production city somewhere, but I have one in build and you are forbidden from having more traders than trade routes.  So, first build will be the harbor.  In 2 turns, I'll get a civic swap, and I'm going to put the tile-buying card in as well as the builder card, because I have multiple tiles I want to buy here.

T178: Damascus completes a pikeman.  The pikeman gives me envoy #4 in Jakarta, which gets me suzereinty back.)  Again anticipating a civic switch, I queue up a builder.

Exploring in the south, I find Zanzibar.  It's influenced by 5 (!) civilizations so far.  Its suzereinty bonus is to get a bazillion amenities.  The quest for a single envoy is to get the Square Rigging Eureka, which is to say get a kill with a Musketman.  I also found the Romans... who seem to have pretty well boxed the Americans in.  Finally, I remembered to send a bunch of people delegations.

T179: Humanism completes.  I set Mercantilism to start researching, but I'm going to finish Guilds soon: Homs will be building a market rather than a worker, to finish that off.  Everyone else is set to build builders except Baghdad which will finish off a trader first.

Time to switch civics!  Here are the new cards:

The important ones here that we're going to change soon are the builder one and the tile-purchase one.

For now, I'm just purchasing that iron tile so we can get the boost on iron working and the cattle tile so that Kabul doesn't snipe it from us.  Hilariously, at this stage in the game, it saves us less than one turn!  (60 beakers; notice my current science)


However, there are several other ones I have my eyes on after I finish building a bunch of builders.

T180: Iron Working completes with lots of overflow.  Next tech is Machinery, which completes in 2 turns and will get us lumber mills to accelerate another tech, just in time for a worker to complete and be in place to put it down.

T181: I lose Suzereinty over Jakarta again.  This has a mild effect on my trade routes.
Hattin starts a trade route to Baghdad for bootstrap production.  That 5 extra production doubles the total production in the city.
I also finish a builder in Damascus.  Production there right now is pretty crazy: builders are 3 turns to build.  I expect my market to be done in 6 turns, so I'm going to crank another 2 out of there before going back to whatever else I'm building.

T182: Machinery comes in.   Builder moves to the forest it will be lumbermilling.  For now, the next tech is Printing.  I need to get a second campus set up so that 

I bought a new apostle last turn, and it has promotion choices of medic or extra spreads.  I'm not fighting, so I go for the extra spreads.  Presumably, it will come in handy sometime.

I also just noticed that  Homs grew at some point, and so I swapped another tile to it to have good tiles for everyone.

Interturn, I learn that Tokimune is impressed by my builderly ways, even if Cleopatra is not impressed by my lack of military.

T183: Cairo completes its builder and goes back to finishing the Encampment.  The builder goes toward Aleppo.

I'm about to complete a tech, so I drop a campus next to the mountains by Aleppo.  I can drop another district, but I'm really not sure what it's going to be, or where, though, so I'll pay the production price later.  I do the same in Damascus.  Total cost? ~260 gold, down from what would have been at least 300 otherwise.