[SPOILERS] Bacchus and India's many gods

[Bacchus]

For crusade you just bring apostles along with the army and convert on site. You don't need the conversion until your troops are there anyway.

Defender is also great obviously. All depends on the circumstances. Great thing is that if competition for religion is low, you can just wait with 200 faith in stock and purchase the appropriate belief when necessary. Or is it 400? However much.

[Bacchus]

And here is another annoying thing -- what's the extent of the Defender/Crusade aura, how near a city do you have to be for it to take effect? Why the hell does UI quantify that important parameter as "near". Do you really want people to find out by laborious trial and error?

[TheArchduke]

Don´t you enjoy the blackbox, like they intended once again for diplomacy? Seems like trial and error, basic googling did not find any result.

Probably 2-3 tiles around a city.

[RefSteel]

My guess, based on the very sound foundation of "it's a totally different guess so maybe I'll look smart if it's right" is that it might apply to tiles that are inside the cultural borders of the city in question. Another reason I think this is a good guess: If your units are on a tile shared by two cities, only one of which you've converted, I'm pretty sure the UI is equally good at telling you which city that tile "belongs" to as it is about telling you what "near" is supposed to mean! And why would you want a special tile-based combat bonus for which you have to invest significant resources to tell you in advance which tiles it would actually apply to?

[Bacchus]

Oh yeah! Tile ownership and changes to it is great, and also so well documented. Did you know that you can swap overlapping tiles between cities, but not first ring ones, not wonders and not districts? If you do, it's not because the game told you!

Why would I want such a bonus is a great question. I wouldn't adopt that belief at founding ever. But it's quite nice to keep some faith in reserve to instaboost at least some proportion of your troops +10 in the face of an attack.

[Bacchus]

Played a quick turn to catch up on the clock, founding revealed two rice, cattle and jungle coffee all in the second ring Kinda jackpot, especially the coffee.

Didn't have time to take any other screens or look at stuff, but Ichabod was still on 0 score, also moved.

Set research to pottery to get irrigation quicker for amenities, marsh clearing and stepwells. In fact first stepwell will go onto a cleared marsh. My pop will be stratospheric.

Build queue set to builder which is a mistake, inertia from previous plan, I will change to singer next turn and lose a turn of scouting.

Warrior moved another step west into the mountain pass, and it's all still forested hills, I reveal one tile at a time.

[TheArchduke]

Screenies or it did not happen.

[Bacchus]

Behold the wonder of Delhi:




Note the river bend to the SE of easternmost stone. Another city is likely going there, and building Henge via the stone harvest.

Also, needless to say, with land like this, I'm going to be going for a builder's game. I have all the factors needed to builder ahead of other civs, and the onus is on them to bring me down with military. Against Varus that's going to be tricky.

I just hope I'm not in a geopolitical nightmare of neighbouring all 5 of my rivals.

[Bacchus]

Tentative districting -- two tiles north of capital get a Commercial Hub and an Industrial Zone, to the north of them goes a theatre district of the eastern city, to the right of that -- Henge.

[TheArchduke]

Holy ....

Normally even with a water mill, housing might be a hurdle but with India and stepwells.
I can only imagine how the other starts look like.
Stonehenge seems like a good choice, you can ignore holy districts that way for now. I am holding my breath for what further scouting unveils.