It's 550BC I've just wiped out Alex and Hatschepsut and now I've got a continent all to myself, a fairly big one. Altogether I have six cities, including a couple that I captured from the AI that are not in great locations. Finances are a bit of a problem--I'm not producing a lot of cash, despite having built a lot of cottages, I'm only really surviving on the money I plundered from the AI cities I captured.

Ghandi is across the water and he's got significantly more tech than I do, as do a few other AI's. I guess the war was expensive, so I'm behind there. I worry about this.

My other worry is that there are big empty spaces on my continent--barbarians axemen and even a few barbarian swordsman are plentiful. Not only that, but if I don't settle some of those open spaces it's only a matter of time before one of the other AI's do.

So I have a few choices here and it's not clear what I should do:

-- Settle all that empty space, expanding to maybe 10 cities. How many is too many? I feel that might be expanding too fast and that I'll be short of funds and fall even further behind on research.

-- Grow the cities I have and concentrate on rebuilding my finances. I worry that in this cases I'll be plauged by barbarians for awhile, and then face competition on my local continent.

-- Build up my navy and start attacking on another continent. Is that too early? Should I try and build up a tech advantage? I stopped Alex and Hats from getting axemen/swordsman by sitting warriors and later axemen on their iron and copper and horses but the other AI's have been developing unmolested and at the moment are ahead on tech.

I also worry that if I expand now that'll limit my opportunities to launch a war against one of the other continents.

Thoughts.

Hard to give advice without a save... i.e. need to see what tech you have (currency, alpha, monarchy, col?), what your land looks like, worker situation, etc.

Get currency, code of laws and monarchy, after that expand the whole continent, make enough workers use herditary rule to let your cities grow massively and then fancy which victory you want to do (with a big continent any victory is 'easy').

Well, you say Gandhi and the other AIs are across the water, but at 550 BC you presumably don't have Optics. So you are not isolated. That's good in 1 way - you can trade techs and aren't isolated - but bad in the sense that the AIs can settle your land.

Accordingly, I think your best route is to expand to all decent city sites and try not to leave any non-tundra/ice open for the AIs to settle in. 10 cities is not a lot... you'll be happy you have the production/commerce base later on. Aim for Currency/CoL for help with your cash situation, build/whip Libraries for Scientist based research if you have to lower your tech rate while expanding.

id say expand and grow fast. disband some military units to help with finances if u got enough for barbs.
i expanded fast and never got sci past 50%. on my new game. but im way ahead in tech and growth. herditary rule helps u out there alot. i fineshed a war with america early to get my contenent. so grow and manage right and youll be able to comepete..

Sounds like a perfect case for a pinch specialist economy. Get some libraries up and get the scientists working, drop the science slider as low as you can, 0% if need be. I'm guessing also that there is a lot of unimproved land, so workers are vital.

Get some of your now job-less military out and fog-bust... that'll keep them pesky barbs away.

Lastly, the AI can only settle if they can get galleys across the water. Otherwise you're safe until astro... that is unless JoaoII is out there. In any case, you could also let them settle in the gaps and give your military something to do :mischief:

Post a save + some screenies please ....;)

If you have pottery or CoL this should be an easy settle, grow and win how you like. Cottages will allow you to afford to block off the land even at zero slider, CoL well let you run caste and run merc/sci specs as well as perhaps get some nice production off of WS. It is very hard to fall far enough behind in 550BC as long as you can work enough cottages or specs to keep the economy growing while filling out to 2 or 3 fold times the land as the nearest AI. The timing will depend open who controls the non-coastal tiles (assuming there are such). Once your culture controls a line of deep sea tiles, the AI can't send over galleys to settle.

Late game, Ghandi is an easy kill. He under builds units and you can get good mileage out of using cannons, cav, infantry, air, tanks or nukes to take him down with ease. It is also almost impossible to piss Ghandi off enough that he won't trade.

Get Currency, CoL, and Monarchy. Swap into HR. Cottage spam your continent save for 1 gpfarm and a handful of production cities. The rest should be cottages everywhere. Grow your cities as large as possible under hereditary rule. Build wealth in some of your (especially production) cities and get courthouses in your cities (whip if necessary).

Once you have settled your continent, have it covered in cottages, and have a stable economy (i.e., no threat of striking), then you should be able to coast to a space race victory (or domination if you want to spend your time doing intercontinent warfare--yawn). Assuming, of course, that we are not already talking about 1650AD.