Civilization V Solo Reports

[T-hawk]

This leaves you with less faith for universities

Then that kills most of the benefit of Jesuit Education, which is getting the universities bought right away on reaching Education to start the beakers and GPP.  Remember that the end goal is saving turns, so anything that costs turns needs to pay back enough to overcome that bar, and I don't think pagodas do.

but significantly more for schools and labs

Because this isn't true.  12 pagodas times 2 faith times the 50 turns between universities and labs equals only 1200 faith, that's only 2.5 labs, that can't make up on delaying the universities.

[The additional culture from pagodas should add to roughly an additional policy but I'm unsure what to do with it.]

It doesn't.  The cost of an 18th normal policy is somewhere around 3000.  12 pagodas times 2 culture times 60 turns (from 120 as the average pagoda to 180 at endgame) is only 1440.  Even a Golden Age isn't enough.

This might work together with a different tech path that focuses more on growth and less on science by beelining engineering first, and only then philosophy, and then civil service, education etc. If it is possible to build aqueducts before libraries in your later cities that would be great.

Yeah, Philosophy only makes sense because of Religious Center; anything without that would go Engineering first.  Aqueducts before libraries is always possible, I'm just not sure which is better, but it's probably close enough not to make a turn's worth of difference either way.

Temple of Artemis is part of some DLC that I never got.

Aztecs?  The kill-culture is fun, but really, Poland gets as much from their first freebie and definitely by their second.  Differences of a few turns in early policies really don't matter much, I've found.  Gardens for the food bonus come later than you think, turn 120 isn't frontloaded enough, and oh yeah Poland could just go finish Tradition by then and have the 15% that way on top of the pile of everything else in the tree.

Yes, I keep an eye on tributing, and yes the starting warrior/spearman goes on the inner ring of the sea to try.  But on Emperor, you seldom get high enough on overall military strength.  I have gotten tribute a few times in games that didn't come to completion and reporting, though.

Yeah I've been debating whether to slum down on Prince for some faster times.  I originally picked Emperor in G&K where they'd have significant lump sums of gold for your luxes, but that's nerfed in BNW.