Spiritual Industries by Mackoti

[SevenSpirits]

I understand the problem. FWIW, here are some advisor screenshots from the start of t120. Peace treaty expires t132.

stick, music, shoot, nakor, sian

For the civics, remember mackousin built mids but it's banned, so no government civics past HR are available.

[NobleHelium]

Wait what? Mids are banned? I expect you'll settle a couple island cities at least. And still swap to nationhood to draft for five turns.

[Krill]

Killing everyone on your starting landmass and having the game called in your favour.

That might be a little basic though.

[SevenSpirits]

Just those two guesses? Keep them coming, I can tell you already that you won't be more wrong than Krill.

[NobleHelium]

Stop making excuses to not report.

Here's a bit of a wild one: victory on this map is pretty stupid to pursue, so I think you'll go for one of the map-independent victories and build the Sistine Chapel if it hasn't been built yet. And start gathering religions/religious buildings in three cities.

[Qgqqqqq]

Grab the economics merchant?
Settle some off-shore cities for routes?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Cultural victory!

[SevenSpirits]

Wait what? Mids are banned? I expect you'll settle a couple island cities at least. And still swap to nationhood to draft for five turns.

Correct. I am building 2 settlers for some obvious island cities. This is less important than you might think, because OB with an entire other continent reduces the need for domestic routes significantly. However with my latest conquests and settlements I'm just reaching the point where international routes have run out.

Also, yes, I will swap to nationhood for 5t. However, I did not use the next civic swap for that. I will use the one after. For the moment I kept Bureaucracy and swapped only to OR.

Killing everyone on your starting landmass and having the game called in your favour.

That might be a little basic though.

Neither of those figure into the short-term plan. AT has draftable riflemen and it will be a while until I have sufficient military advantage over him that I can kick him off the continent. For now, I am playing it peacefully and defensively. Except for the whole conquering Nakor thing of course.

Stop making excuses to not report.

Here's a bit of a wild one: victory on this map is pretty stupid to pursue, so I think you'll go for one of the map-independent victories and build the Sistine Chapel if it hasn't been built yet. And start gathering religions/religious buildings in three cities.

I considered this. There are actually quite a few points in favor here: I have sistene, I have... I don't even know, maybe 4-5 religions? And I'm spiritual for the temple spam. However: I remain unconvinced that culture victory in this kind of game is even viable. Having to turn off research seems really dangerous. And there is too much coast to have any truly safe parts of your empire on this map.

And no, I'm not going to try to play really badly as an experiment - I don't think that shows proper respect to my opponents and the game.

Grab the economics merchant?
Settle some off-shore cities for routes?

Economics merchant fell to Shoot before I started playing. I am doing the off-shore cities as I wrote above though.

Cultural victory!

Not today; see above.

[SevenSpirits]

Maybe this is just too damn obvious to you guys? I cashed in my great merchants for trade missions, whipped 6 universities and am almost done building Oxford. Am building hindu missionaries as much as I can for new cities, building a couple of banks, and trying to get enough riflemen out that stick doesn't try to capture back his cities.

For tech I will probably wait and see after Rifling (which just came in), while I am in nationhood. But the big potential next targets are Railroad and Democracy.

[SevenSpirits]

Btw, I only realized about an hour ago that spies are allowed this game. (Everything except civic/religion swaps are OK.) So that kind of changes things from how I was seeing them....

Basically, the endgame will be more hammer-focused than I was expecting. Spies make it hard to get too far ahead in tech, and can really screw with cultural victories too. So we are pretty much going for a military finale. I will want constitution soon for jails, and communism ASAP. (Yeah, corps are banned.)

I'm still digesting this info.