[SPOILERS!] Grimace and wetbandit hope to stay on their side of the DMZ

[wetbandit]

Very cool on Confucianism. I agree on using the missionary for far flung places, yorktown, lex, and akagi are all good candidates. I think we can hope for free spreads in our core for the time being.

IW is ok, I guess, to get the extra happy hooked up. I'm less than thrilled. I think I'd prefer construction and then metal casting. Alternatively, our happy cap is pitifully low and we will eventually want to revolt into some better civics, like hereditary rule and organized religion. We need Monarchy and Monotheism for that, so finishing Meditation with the overflow or running straight towards Monotheism (and foregoing building a Monastery) is a good option also. We can plan to set up for a Golden Age at some point to switch into religion and these civics. Or we can get Meditation, build a monastery in Bismarck right away, and revolt to Confu.

With respect to the settler, I'd hold off settling him right now, I don't believe that he'd have a trade connection since the water is blocked by Elum and there's no road.

[Grimace]

The problem with relying on automatic spreads is that sometimes it works great, and other times you're like LP in PB20 where you can't get a spread to save your life. We'll see what happens, but hopefully we can eventually generate a GP and shrine it, and then we'll want it spread as much as possible.

As far as techs, IW not only gives us an extra happy, but assuming we have iron somewhere in our sphere of influence, it gives us a boost to prod, as well. But I guess we can rely on the whip (especially with the need to build lots of courthouses) to keep our happy under control for now. Plus, as you pointed out settling that city right now is will cost more than it will benefit, so there's no pressure to get the phants online at this time. We may want to divert there in several turns, though.

Question -- the GM we'll get for the GLH (due in ~21 turns, I believe), do we want to plan to use him for a GA, or something else? Because that will affect our tech path as well.

In the meantime, I went for Meditation because we can get it in 1 turn even at 0% science, and then we'll go Monotheism->Monarchy->Construction (or possibly Mono->Monarchy->MC) because HR will significantly reduce the need for the elephants, though we will still want to get them at some point.

[wetbandit]

I hardly got any auto spreads in PB20 either, especially to Gawdzak or my other neighbors. And I founded on T33...I'm glad I wasn't the only one

Med doesn't lead to Monotheism so we'll be at least one turn delayed to Mono/Monarchy. Using the GM for a golden age, is probably the best solution to let us swap into a lot of civics. We could probably have civil service done by the end of it. It would be nice if we could speed up that first GP. I see a lot of use of caste system in the near future, too, after CH whips and that sort of thing.

[Gawdzak]

I clearly remember there was some unwanted Hindu spread in that game, preventing the spread of the one true faith (Judaism).

[Grimace]

Ah, well, luckily those monasteries are still good for boosting science a bit and for culture. We could really use them in our border cities.

[Grimace]

Turn 103

Conversation between wetbandit and I in google hangouts (edited slightly for typos):
Me: Better to go PH->Monarchy? Or Poly->Mono->Monachy? PH gives us temples for extra happy. And it's cheap. But Poly->Mono gives us OR. But takes longer.
WB: We want mono for or, ph possibly later mainly for the research bonus on monarchy
Me: So Mono has the higher priority?
WB: I don't think either have a high priority right now tbh, unless you want to revolt outside of golden age. You could easily save some cash and see what happens
Me: Since we can get a GA for sure in 22 turns, is it worth it to revolt before then? Especially since it'll probably take about that long to get OR and HR.
WB: I don't think so, given what you just said. Its possibly nutty, but running a spy specialist in Yamato to speed things up isn't crazy. Isn't too crazy I think.
ME: Ok, we have some overflow, so I'll put it into the Poly->Mono->Monarchy branch. PH is cheap and easy to come back to. Not a bad idea. Doesn't really matter what specialist we get because we can do a GA with either. Elum's island city is start to really annoy me, though.
WB: Having ph gives a boost to monarchy, about 20% on the beakers we put in, which is often enough to make up the difference on ph
ME: So something like Poly (which gives a bonus on PH)->Mono->PH->Monarchy? I sent a worker down to build a road to the elephant city (it just needs to road 1 tile) because it's already going to have border pressure, and the sooner we get it in to protect our cultural borders, the better. All those forests = chop monument & library (for culture).
WB: Something like that for the tech path

Nothing else really going on this turn. We'll have a settler out of Nevada in 3 turns, and one out of E in 8 turns (we could cut it to 6 by using the corn), or we could do a whip when it gets closer...maybe just a 1 pop whip?

[wetbandit]

I clearly remember there was some unwanted Hindu spread in that game, preventing the spread of the one true faith (Judaism).

Rotations didn't get a spread for, what seemed to me, a ridiculous amount of time, not to mention the small towns around it that never got one.

Hey those are my words!

I would hesitate on using monasteries in border cities, they need so many other buildings first that the monastery is going to be a very low priority. Rather, you can throw up a quick one, or wait for OR (which is ~15 turns away). The 60 hammers are a Courthouse, 1+ workers, more military, or a barracks.

If you're going to whip E, I'd do a 2-pop whip for even the RtR-overflow (15-19 hammers) into a Courthouse, which will get the ORG boost.

[Grimace]

Turn 104

Either Agent or AdrienIer got the Museum of Maussollos this turn, probably Adrien based on the score increase, which means they have Calender..

Checked the diplomacy window just for fun and saw that Elum also already has Calender (and has Spices and Silk online), so he has 5 happy resources (Fur, Ivory, Silver, Spices, Silk) plus Stone. On the other hand, he doesn't have horses yet, though he should any time as there are some in his borders near Ergili, the previously-empty city we saw before.

CH is about on-par with us resource-wise, as is Whosit (except he has Stone also). Dreylin has Whales and Stone, in addition to both Silver and Gold.

City counts:
Us, Whosit, CH, Elum: 11
Dreylin: 9

I went to 100% science as we can pull down Polytheism in 1 turn.

Yorktown is pretty unpleasantly sandwiched between Whosit's and Elum's culture, so the missionary is going there. I'm thinking we should build a Monestary, at least there. Hopefully when its borders pop it'll gain back its first ring tiles that it has lost, but even then we need to out-build their culture if we want to keep that section of water open to us.

[wetbandit]

Did you see Elum's techs in F4 as in he also has alphabet or is this inferred solely from the resources in the diplo window?

[Grimace]

Solely from the diplo window. Besides, Alphabet doesn't enable tech trading in RtR.