[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Zed-F]

Here’s a thought…

Get a Judaism spread to the capital and you can switch which religion is the state religion on the basis of whether the east or west side of your empire is building buildings at any given point in time. At least until such time as you can find the hammers to spread the state religion and/or build a shrine.

[scooter]

I am not sure what this means. I haven't noticed any Oxy boats around - I just sailed right through these seas. Weird.

Also, Luddite accepted my Silks for OB trade, which gives me a nice research boost. Critically, those extra trade routes in the capital go through the Bureau multiplier, which is something I had not considered when doing the math on what his routes were worth. Nice! The net effect is Machinery is like a 4-5T tech now, and I can no longer resist that. So I'm grabbing Archery real quick for island defense/MP, and then I think it's Machinery time barring something unforseen coming up. Yuris has just decided to do nothing but stay at war, but he has yet to advance any Phracts, and I'm stacked up at the front. So let's get some Zerks and then figure out what to do with them. Also one related thing that occurred to me.





Machinery opens up Engineering, which opens up Castles, which would be nice with my trade route focused game and stone doubler. Not to mention Pikes which are obviously useful with my northern neighbor, though they're hardly urgent. Definitely not an immediate tech after Machinery by any means, but I'm just making a note of it as something I hadn't really thought about yet.

[Zed-F]

Yeah we have lots of potential targets after Machinery: Literature, Engineering, Optics, Code of Laws... do we need to be thinking about what we can research to improve the productivity of cities that aren't the capital, without sinking in too many hammers to it, since the latter are our main bottleneck?

[xist10]

Maybe a silly question, but why should scooter spread judaism to the capital if he wants the switch between the religions ?
Only to get the bonus always or is ther another reason ?

And of course

[Zed-F]

The capital is our best production city so yes it would be to make sure the capital always got the bonus if we were to go that route. Of course that would also mean we could build a second temple to grow the capital even more, but we haven't built a first one yet....

[scooter]

My Galley bluff appears to be mostly working.





This city had a fresh Phract and a Warrior last turn, and he added another while keeping one in place. He's definitely holding back for fear of the seas.





Somehow the first picture did not take, so we'll have to settle for the one from after I moved the Chariot. First Phract sighting on the frontlines. I have 4 elephants and 2 spears ready to greet him if he gets too close. Also of note - an Oxy Trireme! He declared on Yuris and then immediately made peace. Of note they do NOT have Open Borders, so this may just be a scout. That said, I do have a Trireme of my own now, and I'm adding another next turn, so I may consider killing it if he presses his luck. Most likely he just comes up to the border edge and floats there or leaves.





Got a little unlucky with the missionary spread in Shiv, but got one in Connor, which is good as I'll overflow into a Barracks there shortly.





I've added even more units overall. I got a Trireme/Elephant combo out of Logan, and Zerks can begin in 2T. I'm gonna build a few for sure and see what happens. I am trying to restart some expansion though. Shiv is completing its settler slow-build this next turn. It'll work Trireme (or something) 1T while growing to 6, then triple whip another settler. I also finally ferried some workers over to the islands which will assist over there. Part of the Trireme push is to get a sentry net over the eastern islands as there's a path between there and Oxy. Also if Yuris ever does take peace, would be nice to have them there to escort Galleys to do a little raiding. I sort of wonder if Oxy intends to protect Yuris by sea from me.





Oxy opted for CoL and Confucianism.





As I said, this war is sort of annoying, so I'm increasingly pushing towards ending it. I can't keep up with Joao while building units for Phracts, so it's Zerk time.

[Zed-F]

Agreed that we need to push more military to force Oxy to do the same, since he doesn't get the same advantages on military buildup that he does for growth (albeit, Kremlin whips are still a thing, even if there's not a lot yet that requires the kind of big whips Kremlin is meant to enable.) Oxy will probably focus most of his attention on his fleet and hope to prevent a landing, so if we are able to land troops he could have some problems dealing with them.

I am glad to see we are still able to settle a couple new island cities, though; getting culture and vision in the islands will be important long term. I don't know when we'll be able to slip MoM in, but maybe that depends on what our great person plan looks like, and/or when we'd be able to launch a GA. With caste/rep, available I have to think Oxy must be considering his GP plans pretty closely.

[Mjmd]

The mostly base BtS settings have been pretty good for you, but that failed missionary spread hurts my heart!

[scooter]

The mostly base BtS settings have been pretty good for you, but that failed missionary spread hurts my heart!

Seriously. It's so obnoxious. 40h just lit on fire. Feel like that CtH change is an underrated buff to religion in general, though it's obviously just meant to be an RNG nuisance remover.

[Zed-F]

Yep... on the other hand, if we didn't perturb the RNG by attempting that spread, we probably wouldn't have gotten the roll that enabled the spread in Connor, or vice-versa.... so I feel like in this instance it kinda balanced out. Still annoying in general, though.