[SPOILERS] Roland and Suboptimal Team Up

[Bruindane]

I don't think that China should found a religion.  What might work best is for China to indeed go full wonder hog but spread them out among different cities.  Why?  If I take Sacred Places (+2, +2, +2, +2 for each city with a wonder following this religion) and convert China then I can reduce my investment in commerce, culture and science a bit.  You could build 1-2 Holy Sites, I'd convert them to my religion and then China's faith output could be used to convert the other cities. 

This implies that Indonesia should build wonders in its cities, perhaps the religious ones.   

Shifting the beneficiary of Sacred Sites is a team choice, but Indonesia prefers Choral Music ( for Shines and Temples) over Divine Inspiration (4  per wonder).  China will be starved for faith assuming a Golden Age monumentality and might need Indonesia's gold to buy the builders for the wonder snowball.

[suboptimal]

I don't think that China should found a religion.  What might work best is for China to indeed go full wonder hog but spread them out among different cities.  Why?  If I take Sacred Places (+2, +2, +2, +2 for each city with a wonder following this religion) and convert China then I can reduce my investment in commerce, culture and science a bit.  You could build 1-2 Holy Sites, I'd convert them to my religion and then China's faith output could be used to convert the other cities. 

This implies that Indonesia should build wonders in its cities, perhaps the religious ones.   

Shifting the beneficiary of Sacred Sites is a team choice, but Indonesia prefers Choral Music ( for Shines and Temples) over Divine Inspiration (4  per wonder).  China will be starved for faith assuming a Golden Age monumentality and might need Indonesia's gold to buy the builders for the wonder snowball.

There might be one or two wonders that Indonesia might build but with Holy Sites, shrines and temples you've got to figure +8 per city per turn to start. Choral Music is a follower belief and Sacred Sites is a founder's belief. China would be able to use their Holy Sites that are converted to Indonesia's religion to generate in addition to since they'd benefit from Choral Music. Sacred Sites + converting China is a good way to have Indonesia directly benefit from China's civ ability. One other way to speed this up would be to select Religious Colonization as an enhancer belief before grabbing Sacred Sites. That would let us spread the religion to all new cities automatically.

One other consideration is that China's wonder building ability only lasts until the Ancient and Classical Era wonders are all built. Once they're gone that ability is no longer usable. It's possible that we could "split" China's religious status by having a few cities in each religion. However, I think having Choral Music in all of China's cities is the efficient play - avoids needing to consider Theater Squares or late Monuments for any early culture and lets us save building those until/unless we take the early tourism and make a run at a cultural victory. They key would be beating Russia to the first religion as Choral Music will be THE pantheon to take.

I suppose what we could do is have China use Stonehenge to found a religion with Choral Music and either Divine Inspiration or Sacred Sites and spread it to Indonesia. I'd then build Holy Sites for and but not found a religion when the Great Prophet shows up. That might be the way to go. I wouldn't want to found a subsequent religion because all my cities with Holy Sites would convert to the new religion immediately.

[roland of gilead]

it's a difficult one to maximise both.

we may just need to work on it in game to see what happens.

i do think china's culture comes mostly form a few epic culture zones. easy enough to get +8 culture zones. later the great wall can get great culture later in game.

is choral music any good for china with no holy sites really? i think the magic of faith from wonders is the freedom to build other district.

going to be a lot of competition for religion with japan and russia already in game.

[suboptimal]

If China isn't building Holy Sites then no, Choral Music isn't worth it except for denial (and spreading it to me). I had forgotten (momentarliy) about Japan. It's going to take quite a bit to beat Russia & Japan to a religion. Also note what Woden posted as an expectation of this game - race to Frigates. If that is indeed the MO of everyone here then getting Choral Music into Indonesian cities as a Chinese religion might be worth the faith lost by not taking Divine Inspiration. The faster Indoenesia builds culture the faster we get to Frigates.

Time to get refamiliarized with Indonesia...

[suboptimal]

One other thing to be aware of (don't know if you've seen it in your game or not). It appears that the Diplomatic Quarter and the adjustments to envoys are "live" even without the associated DLCs. This should be interesting...

I've been testing using hotseat mode and the likely map settings. I've confirmed that we'll start with the Writing eureka and, if we're on separate continents, the Foreign Trade inspiration.

[roland of gilead]

What are the changes to diplo quarter?

[roland of gilead]

you raise an excellent pint with choral music.

if you can't get it do i take it and along side 2 or 3 completely surrounded theater squares build full holy sites in every city. That would give me the faith i need to buy builders and settlers as well as denying a vital belief to another team. What it would also do is give me a ridiculous amount of culture.

going to test this one this week.

[suboptimal]

There is either something wrong in my test game settings or there's an undocumented game change getting through. I set up a hotseat game with me as the only human in order to try some things out with Indonesia. Diplomatic Quarter wasn't a build option at Mathematics (it's part of the Ethiopia DLC, so that makes sense). However, I was not receiving a first-meet envoy whenever I met a city-state first. As it turns out, apparently this is intended behavior (last post): https://steamcommunity.com/app/289070/di...010421055/

I've run one test game so far. Mercenaries wound up in the first column of its era and easily gettable. However, the classical tech tree was gated by Iron Working - that tech needed to be researched before any other Classical Tech would unlock. The problem I had was actually getting going - missed a Classical Golden Age my 6 era score or so due to my typically sloppy SP play and that wrecked my expansion. Need to buckle down and put more thought into my play. Of course, the other issue I've been having is getting a realistic start. It seems like 4/5 maps put Indonesia on the coast with no fresh water in sight.

I went back through my PBEM 14 report and tracking sheets. The development in that game was abysmal compared to some of the more recent ones. On Turn 98 the highest science rate of the five players was 40, highest culture was 25. However, that was an R&F game, not a GS game, and district adjacencies were harden to come by.

[roland of gilead]

that first golden age will be interesting. China should be ok with a few wonders up and a religion perhaps.

Not sure where you get it from though boats is part of it.

if i got a religion and spread it to you what beliefs would you get? everything except the founder?

[suboptimal]

that first golden age will be interesting. China should be ok with a few wonders up and a religion perhaps.

Not sure where you get it from though boats is part of it.

if i got a religion and spread it to you what beliefs would you get? everything except the founder?

I'd get era score from the first ship, a little bit more if it's the first one in the world.  I'll need to review the list and see how I can cobble together 25 era score.  In PBEM 14 it was all I could do to get to 24 era score and we need 25 here. 

Regarding religious beliefs I'd get the follower belief and the worship belief (religious building) in any city you converted.  I don't get the founder belief or the enhancer belief, unless I'm Kongo (which I'm not).  If you grabbed Choral Music and spread your religion to my cities we'd both get from shrines and temples.