u/j_j-j_jr_shabadoo

Playing on King difficulty. I wasn't expecting to dominate the globe with my religion, but I thought that if I leaned into religion hard enough I might be able to hold on to my own cities and the closest city states. I built Borobudur for the free missionaries and but by the time I finished the Grand Temple Arabia had already converted everything within sight except for my capitol city. They converted the surrounding city states with missionaries, but converted my own cities with just caravans, so I don't think investing in inquisitors would have done much to help. The religious pressure that comes from their caravans is ridiculous!

Oh well, at least I was able to build pagodas in three of my cities before they converted. Pagodas are nice, but I dunno if they are they worth the 4 shrines, 4 temples and two wonders I invested in hopelessly trying to protect my religion.

There are a couple of spots with plains and tundra forests to the east and west of Seoul, but with no unique luxury resources (except for cotton, but that location is horrible). Is it worth settling on the plains without access to luxuries, just for the sake of having more cities? Should I wait until I can explore other islands and see if there is anywhere good to settle there, or does it just make more sense to have just one city and go super tall? What will give me a better shot at a science victory, three mediocre cities or one super tall one?

Playing as Mongolians on King difficulty, I was able to defeat Americans despite having only one non-puppeted city to produce units and them having 5. They sent wave after wave of mostly archers and catapults (plus a few spearmen) against me, but I was able to conquer them due to my troops superior upgrades and retreating units from the dront lines as they became injured. I think that my invasion would have been harder if they had built some swordsmen, which they never did despite having multiple iron mines.

The choice to not make swordsmen or much other melee was unfortunate, but at least the Americans put up a fight. What was really a let down is when I turned to attack the Celts, and despite them having a superior tech level of units (gatling guns vs my crossbows), are a complete pushover because almost all of their unit production went into building a fleet of 5 caravels, despite being on the same continent as every other civ and me having no navy whatsoever.

My understanding is that it is not possible to create mods to improve the AI because it is hard coded, but I wish there was a way to make the AI smarter when it comes to unit production. As it stands, I find it too easy to attain a domination victory so I have to up the difficulty setting, but that makes it harder to attain other kinds of victories, which I don't necessarily want.

I understand that worms are safe to eat if thouroughly cooked, but this was seared rather than cooked through

The screenshot shows a plate armor of potential which I am in the process of identifying, but I also have a plate armor of repulsion +1. I'm not sure which of those is better for my build. My +5 ring is a ring of evasion.