Since Feruin is taking
forever, I'm gonna start a new game to go alongside his. Monarch difficulty. I want to get that level under my belt before I take a crack at Emperor.
Unlike last game, I went with 2 instead of 3 cities in Japan. I know this is a bit strange, but our core area is going to be China, and clogging up Japan with extra cities will kill us late-game with tech penalties. I again put the capital at Matsuyama and the second city in Kyoto.
The build orders for the first 50 turns are thus:
Matsuyama: Galley-Granary-Library-Barracks-Swordsman
Tokyo: Trireme-Library-Granary-Barracks-Catapult-Catapult-Catapult-Forge-Spearman
I'm on the fence about by build order. It's meant to maximize the value of the gold, silver and silk resources and allow plenty of whips. The forge I threw in not for the production bonus, but the two extra happies from the gold and silver. And Tokyo definitely needs that with all the whipping going on.
The problem is that I leave out workers. Granted the two starting workers is fine for improving Honshu, the second I invade China I'll need another 5+. Thats something I'll have to think about later.
Anyway, we had the standard game start. Switched civics, founded our cities, pop the huts (Which were weak btw: A map and Hostile Natives) and contact China. We set research to Sailing and built a galley and Trireme the second we finished. The Trireme was off to contact India and the galley sent our Swordsmen off into Manchuria to try and pop another hut. Sadly, CHina beat us to those.
Alphabet was finished in 14 turns (Go gold!) and we checked the trades.
Yay for not converting to Taoism! We went with India's deal because we liked it more. We also agreed to open borders and sent our trireme to the Arabian Penninsula to hopefully nab us some more techs.
I was tempted to switch to Buddhism when I first contacted Persia. But I decided to hold off and see who else I might meet. Sadly, neither Babylon nor Egypt would trade me construction. Looks like everyone but me is going for the great wall

. While the little-Trireme-that-could was racing to Europe, we has some rather interesting happening back at Honshu.
Aww yeah. Now if only Qin would build Colossus, we'd be set. Careful observers will notice that Huangzhou is the capital of China now. Looks like it's a good time to send in those cats while China lacks iron and bronze.
Keijo's build order: Worker-Barracks
Continued in next post...