Round 6: 650AD - 950AD
Another short round focusing on the war.
As discussed, we researched Meditation so that we could lightbulb Philosophy with our Great Scientist. It took only two turns, after which the GS did his thing:
I was thinking of whether we should found Taoism or let some civ on the other continent found it first before lightbulbing Philosophy, thereby increasing the likelihood of religious conflict on the other side of the world. But such concerns were moot when some civ did found Taoism just before we could lightbulb the tech.
We researched the rest of CS next, followed by Paper, which leads to Education, further down the path to Liberalism.
And the war plodded along on its WW-inducing path. It wasn't too serious yet, but in order to capture the two more important Zulu cities, we would have had to endure quite a few more turns of war.
We slow-built a few more catapults while our invasion stack rested. Most of our cities were suffering from whip-weariness, so couldn't really crack the whip. Fortunately, our friend Khan came by to alleviate the situation a little:
Good Khan. Any boost to happiness is certainly welcome.
After a while, we captured one of the two cities:
By then, Shaka had begun to put up more resistance, sending quite a few horse archers to our land, even landing a stack of them next to Edirne. As you would expect, all they managed to do was pillage a few tiles, but destroying them cost us a number of units.
Then Khan came again, offering to trade (IIRC) Calendar, Compass and some gold for Philosophy. It hadn't occurred to me to trade Philosophy to him, since you generally don't want to trade Philosophy away early when gunning for Liberalism. But if anyone is in competition with us, it's more likely to be the civ that founded Taoism than Mongolia. I decided to use the opportunity to backfill on some techs:
Metal Casting is useful for forges and, later, Machinery to get macemen. Monarchy is just there as a filler tech, since he refused to give Compass or Calendar with MC. The gold would help keep our research afloat for a while.
Next, we finally captured the other city we were aiming for:
At last the war can come to an end. And not before we got our next GG:
What should we use him for? The usual GMI or a military academy in anticipation of mass-producing Janissaries?
I knocked on Shaka's door to see what he was willing to offer for peace:
Not bad. It's rare to see an AI offer a city. He must be quite desperate. Should we accept this offer? Or should we ask for techs? Capitulation is not currently on the table. I suppose we need to have Feudalism ourselves to get the option, I can't really remember now.
This is where I stopped, since we have a few decisions to make already.
Here's the tech situation:
We only have Paper on Genghis. The other two techs we have on Shaka.
The power graph:
Evidently, we have brought Shaka a few notches down. Now Genghis is stronger.
The GNP graph:
Genghis is running away in this, but that is to be expected.
And we are one turn away from our next GS in Edirne, where we have built the National Epic:
I guess he would lightbulb Education. But it's 950 AD, and another civ got Philosophy earlier than us, so I'm beginning to doubt our chances of winning the Liberalism race. What if we don't? In that case, it would have been better to get to Gunpowder from Guilds, since we won't be able to get Nationalism so soon. But we don't know that yet, and I guess Education would be good for a few universities anyway. Unfortunately, we would have to slow build our Janissaries in that case. Any other thoughts on this? And what should we research towards next, should that other civ get Liberalism soon?
And, finally, the map of our half of the continent:
As you can see, the city Shaka offered is north of us. Not a great city, but decent. At the very least it's not in tundra. IMO it's a good idea to take it for free.
So, any comments?
PS: Oh, yes. I think we have not revolted to Bureaucracy. At first, concerns over halting production in the middle of a war stopped me, but after that I forgot to do it at a suitable opportunity
Well, I guess now that the war is ended we can certainly afford it.