Round 2
After a rather long break due to RL, I got back in the game.
I set myself to explore more, west and south of Toku.
As you might/or not/ remember from last round, Tokugawa was in war mode and was shipping units west. It was only a matter of time before he declared war, as predicted on Wang Kon.
Since he's such a tough nut to please, I decided to side with him in this war. I'd rather keep him happy and lose my friendship with a small AI that's stuck and unable to reach me.
By 225BC, Music was completed and thankfully, the Great Artist was Ethiopia's. I set him to rest until further notice.
I'm pretty sure Tokugawa was researching Aesthetics so I took what I could get for it. It allowed me to put hammers in Shwedago Paya as well.
Exploration south of Tokugawa paid off, as I was able to capture a nice barbarian city. The real payoff, however, is I managed to get an Axe to 10 exp, unlocking the Heroic Epic.
My next worry was to get Ragnar Pleased with me. To achieve this, I gifted him techs up to Music. It has several pluses and minuses, notably: tech trades, less chances to be a target (game over at this point given his size and power), adds to the possibility that the Sistine Chapel will be built on this landmass thus slowing AI culture overseas.
You might have noticed my economy was a bit frail. Fortunately, failure gold goes a long way.
Tokugawa finally came around to ask the big question. I answered, "I do", of course.
Currency was unknown to everyone so it was the logical tech to pursue. I went into a trading fest upon finishing it. Code of Laws was next, still unknown to Tokugawa.
As research was set on Civil Service, I noticed religions weren't going very fast. What's up with the oversea AIs??
I finally made it to Nidaros and I'm pretty glad to be on Ragnar's good side to say the least. You can't see it here but he has gold in his BFC and another just outside. He has pretty good land which explains his early tech rate.
Failure gold does not come only from World Wonders. National wonders are fair game too.
As Civil Service was about to complete, Ragnar culture bombed his city next to the Taoist holy city, making it a bit useless. I didn't bomb it back as I wanted to keep the artist for a Golden Age.
Tokugawa finally got tired of not making ground against Wang Kon and called in peace so I did as well.
Trading Music away earlier also meant I could use the Sistine Chapel for failure gold!
Ragnar had gone into war mode around 300AD. I wasn't the most likely target but there was always a danger. I monitored his SoD activity with the free missionary from Taoism. Needless to say, I didn't build any units as I was satisfied with his troop movement.
Back on the home turf, I finished Paper and single-bulbed Education.
Ragnar successfully took 1 city from Tokugawa. Granted it was only defended by 2 archers but it still took him like 4 turns hehe
After a while, Wang Kon who built the AP was willing to talk again. Being at 4 cities and having a shrine means he has a lot of gold on his hands.
Education researched, I stopped the round to look at how to continue forward.
Techs
Diplomacy [includes difficulty penalty and AI peaceweights]
A better look at Ragnar-land. That is so juicy, I need it!
A look at my piece of land:
I can place 2 more cities on the eastern part but there's no food at all there and my workers are busy elsewhere for the moment. Still, they could pay for themselves at some point.
Top 5 cities. What's going on overseas???
I have 2 spare Great Artists... the latter being bord at low odds rather than a Scientist. I can either use both for 2 Golden Ages or use 1 to culture bomb Samartian and gain back several tiles.
Finally, here is the site for my Globe Theater. 5 food resources (although 2 don't really count as a food resource) should allow 1 draft/turn for a long long time.
"Seeing" the situation overseas, I think I can gamble and delay Liberalism for, say, Steel. If I get hosed again and get another Great Artist, it might be more difficult however. The alternative is to research it now and take Nationalism to build the Taj Mahal.
Not having a religion hurts quite a bit in this game, especially the no Organized Religion part. The good news is Zara gets a lot of cheap buildings so it's not all that bad.
A Golden Age in a few turns could be quite helpful to help construct universities for Oxford.
Canons+Oromos should be a good bet here while heading to Rifling. I think there's no doubt my first target should be Ragnar. He looks like the only threat at this point, unless there's an AI massing up vassals overseas (I doubt it a bit however as fighting is still going fiercely seeing the GG birth rate). I can clean up Wang and Toku afterwards which should be easier to gobble up. From there, anything should be possible...
On other hand most of players have their own weak spots...
