Partial Turnset Report--the rest of the turnset
Please note that I ended a turn early, as it appears that we're ahead of schedule in our tech path as it is. Plus, now is a good time to regroup, consider what techs we might want to trade for.
It is also a time to gather and consolodate our military forces in Mehmed's lands--attacking Cities is a bit premature at this stage and could just cost us our in-the-field units.
Anyway, onto the report...
T258 (1130 AD)
We spawn our Golden Age, switch into Buddhism, and switch into Theocracy.
Most Cities hire Scientists in place of Food-based squares or in place of other Specialists.
Scientific Method is due in 4 turns after all of the Scientists have been hired, although we came close to seeing it being learned in 3 turns.
T259 (1140 AD)
We earned 385 Gold from Angkor Wat.
Toku adopts Bureaucracy.
Guilds is for sale from Justinian and Saladin but I won't be buying techs until after we have Liberalism. If I'm forced to take Liberalism in my turnset, I'll probably stop play before trading, so that we can get team consultation on which techs to buy, if any. Guilds could lead to Banking, which could help get Toku's vote, but we'll save that discussion for the next turnset.
Isabella gets a Great General. Hey! I want one of those!
Our Caravel is off exploring, leaving Missionary-transportation duties up to our future Galleons.
T260 (1150 AD)
A Great Scientist is born in Grt Person Farm. One down, one to go.
Zara got a Great Spy. I wonder if we'll be a victim of his Espionage, if he'll build a Scotland Yard, or if he'll use it for a Golden Age.
We capture the northern Barb City! It comes with a Granary and we set to work on building a Courthouse.
We have 23.52% of the World's Population, compared to Toku's 20.00%. We're mostly stagnating growth to generate more GPP, but the odd City here and there is still growing (Mystic will grow next turn, for example).
T261 (1160 AD)
We have built our first Galleon. The people are happy, so, to celebrate, we start work on another one!
Science Rate gets set back to 100%. The Tech Race is now officially on!
The Apostolic Palace vote comes up. Our options are:
a) Stop the War against Zara
OR
b) Stop trading with Justinian
I don't like either option, so I choose the last possibilty of "None."
T262 (1170 AD)
We learn Scientific Method and hard work begins on researching Physics!
I can finally confirm that Saladin is researching Education, but he doesn't appear to have a very fast tech pace.
Our Workers start to build Forest Preserves, starting with the Forest around Delhi that has 3 spots to regrow and the Tundra Forest by Riverdale, to hope for a Forest regrowing there.
Note that I have already put a Farm on the last PRiv square (1S of Riverdale), so there's only 1 spot for the Forest to spawn growth (1S of the Tun For), but a bigger chance than a negligible chance is better than a negligible chance!
T263 (1180 AD)
I stop Crabs from starving a population point to death.
Justinian and Isabella cancel their enforced Peace Treaty deals with us. BLubz earlier suggested that if an AI Demands Paper, then I'll give into that Demand.
Well, these two AIs are about to start Demanding, but it'll be to cancel deals or join a war.
I make a command decision and leverage Paper for peace with Justinian. We pick up his World Map, which shows an island to the north of Toku's area.
For her part, Isabella gets Compass in exchange for going to war with Mehmed. Welcome back to the War with Mehmed Club!
T264 (1190 AD)
Justinian adopts Caste System. I don't see why he needs to do so. Maybe he wants +1 Hammer from his lone Workshop? Maybe he's going to try and generate a few Great People and spawn a couple of Golden Ages? You'd think that an AI would have enough Specialists slots in their Cities by now, though.
Then again, Saladin and Zara are also running Caste System, so what do I know?
Military Units are starting to spawn across the empire. We built 5 units this turn, counting a Galleon.
Buddhism gets spread in the northern Barb City. Delhi immediately gets to work on building a replacement Buddhist Missionary.
T265 (1200 AD)
We're advancing slowly towards the next Barb City. There are several hostile units in the open (I am guessing that somebody World-buildered in certain "personalities" for these units that are not City Defence. Fortunately, we're only seeing Axemen and Longbowmen, for which our army is well-equiped to handle.
Justinian offers up Nationalism up for trade. It is tempting but I will wait until after the end of my turnset or Liberalism, whichever comes first. Besides, if we do take Nationalism in trade, then we'll just have a fight about whether to use 2 Great Engineers on The UN, save one for one of the Final Four, or use one on building The Taj Mahal out from under Saladin's nose. Actually, Saladin isn't saying about "having his reasons," but that message might not come up unless he'd otherwise be willing to trade the tech around. Justinian is Friendly with us, which is why he'll cough it up to us.
Mehmed spawns himself another Great General while Isabella gets herself a Great Prophet.
Land ho! Our Caravel arrives at the island that Justinian told us about. A Barb City exists there. However, it is only Size 4 (and thus would only be Size 3 after we capture it). I will scout around to see if there is Fur there.
A Buddhist Missionary is on its way to Isabella!
T266 (1210 AD)
The moment that we have been long awaiting has arrived!
Toku will now like Zara more than he hates him if one of them ducks out of the war.
I take the opportunity to Open Borders with Zara, in case we'll be looking to cater his vote near the end of the game.
The hour is approaching. I use one Great Scientist to Lightbulb Physics at the last moment, so that we'll learn the tech at the end of this turn. Next turn, I'll have to make a choice between Electricity and Radio.
T267 (1220 AD)
Researched Physics -> Electricity
Saladin has Education, but we're going to beat him to Liberalism! Well, at his ridiculously slow pace to learn Education, we will.
We spawn 2 Great Scientists (one from Physics). Now is the time! We Lightbulb 3 Great Scientists. But we're short of learning Electricity in 1 turn by only a tiny amount. Can we pull it off?
I actually am able to squeeze our empire into learning Electricity in ONE TURN! Scientists EVERYWHERE, even spots that they normally wouldn't appear, are hired--scientists in bars, in mental institutions, and even some are dug up from under a rock--just to push us through a 1-turn Electricity run.
As a side note, Isabella spread Buddhism in one of her Cities, yaaaa! It is a shame that she is not yet ready to convert.
We get our Deer back from Isabella, while giving her a Wheat from the northern Barb City, in exchange for the Resource that she'd previously been trading to us.
We capture the southern Barb City and THE FUR IS REVEALED!
T268 (1230 AD)
We learn Electricity and have enough Gold remaining to research Liberalism in one turn.
No AI has learned Liberalism yet, so it will be ours first!
Even at an unsustainable 100% Science Rate, Radio would have taken us 12 turns to learn!
Silverado and Wheaties, our high-production Cities, decide to try out a new prototype... when the Engineers say that it'll be a great way to spy on our enemies and unleash waves of destruction from afar, the Scientists claim that the Engineers are full of hot air... and the Engineers, for once, choose to agree with the Scientists, snickering about their clever word-play. The Scientists, not to be outdone, suggest that the Engineers try a trial flight by filling their blimps with hydrogen...
We spot another City near the first Barb City on the island to the north of Toku.
T269 (1240 AD)
Zara offers to peacefully become our Vassal. We DEFINITELY DO NOT WANT any vassals, so I turn down his offer.
We score Radio with Liberalism!
I'm going to stop play on this turn, as we need to reassess our priorities. We should also talk about trading options for UT's turnset.
Here are some of the trades that are available:
Music from Toku for Paper and 150 Gold
Music from Zara for Paper and 150 Gold
Nationalism from Justinian for Astronomy (a monopoly tech) and 150 Gold
Nationalism, Guilds, his World Map, and all 150 of his Gold for Education and Printing Press
Guilds and Music from Justinian for Education and 100 Gold
Guilds, Music, and 390 Gold (not all of his Gold) from Saladin for Astronomy (a monopoly tech)
Note that Justinian "has his reasons" for not trading us Divine Right, so he's building one of the two Wonders that are associated with that tech. I don't think that we'll need that tech any any point in our game, though, so trading for it would be a bad move. No one is offering it for trade at the moment, anywa.
Please note that our economy is totally dead. We're at +16 Gold per Turn at a 0% Science Rate.
Still, Mass Media will be learned in 16 turns, 16 turns which are fast approaching! One turn of 100% Science counts for about two and a third turns at a 0% Science Rate.
Suggetsions for the next player:
Galleon 1 can finish taking our Great Scientist to the Fur. I figured that I'd hedge our bets by being able to Lightbulb from anywhere in the world (including in the Ocean) and send him on a sailing cruise. Since we have a monopoly on Astronomy, this plan was feasible. However, for transporting any future Great People to the Fur, we'll want a Galleon chain.
My suggestion is to send the Galleon chain EAST instead of west--i.e. leave from Zara's side of the continent. But, we'll have to keep shuttling Military units over to Mehmed before we're ready to set up any such sort of a Galleon chain. Worst case, we'll just stack multiple Galleons on top of each other and just move them as a group towards the Fur, near the end of the game.
Anyway, after dropping off our Scientist, Galleon 1 can pick up some of our Cats and Maces and head towards Isabella. He can double-back once those land units been dropped off in her lands to pick up the remainder. I'd suggest, however, leaving a few units in the Barb area--one Longbowman on the Fur and one Longbowman in the northern Barb City. Any Warriors that we get here can hide in the southern Barb City of Zhou until the last turn of the game.
There's a bit of an army of our units forming to the NW of Cordoba. I would at a minimum wait until we have 6 units in a stack before we press onto any of Mehmed's Cities. That said, I would actually recommend that we just camp his GHFor square there (NW + N + N + N + N of Cordoba and E + E + E of the GUranium) until we have a big stack of units. Hopefully, he'll throw the odd unit at our stack, so that we can get a couple of promotions while waiting for enough of an army to arrive.
Probably the worst thing that we can do is press the attack before we have enough units to successfully capture and keep a City, thus greatly risking losing almost all of our army at once.
If we get more units over near Toledo (we don't have enough there yet) or if Isabella gets a stack of units to help us out, we can consider capturing Toledo. Upon capturing it, we should immediately Liberate it to Isabella, in hopes of getting a +1 "You liberated our Cities!" Diplo modifier. The City is too hard to defend for us to want to keep ourselves and its location will help keep the two AIs throwing units at each other.
The Confucian Missionary in Isabella's lands has mostly been used as a scouting unit. We DO NOT want to gift it to Isabella. We also don't want to spread it in a captured City unless we are POSITIVE that the captured City will not become the future home of The UN.
We should figure out how we're going to take on Mehmed. I'm thinking that while we gather our forces in his lands, we'll just play defensively, hiding on Hilly Forests or Hilly Jungles (like the GH Jungle 1S of Toledo).
Once we have a critical mass of units near him, then we can go after his Cities.
We should consider making one such City The UN City, while we'll also need to capture a Silk City, like the one on his north-west coast.
I'd rather not try for the Silk City until we can put at least 10 units in the area, or else we might lose whatever force we send there, since it's kind of in his "back country" and thus Isabella won't be helping to absorb some of the attacks in that area.
When exploring with the Caravel, try and keep all Barb Galleys alive. There are at least 4 Barb Galleys floating around that island to the north of Toku. The more Barb Galleys that are alive, the more discouraged the AIs will be to settle the area or to capture the Barb Cities there. So, just make sure that you don't end the turn of the Caravel on a Coast square.
A Fort already has our Barb Cities connected to the rest of our empire, so there's not much worry there. The City Governor should automatically assign a few Artist Specialists on your behalf when the southern City comes out of revolt, allowing you to connect up the Fur once our borders expand over it. In the meantime, you might as well just keep the Workers in the southerns Barb City, saving us on Unit Supply costs.
There are some unirrigated Wheat Resources by the Barbs' Cities area, but we'd have to mow down some nicely matured cottages, and we don't really need to grow these Cities anyway. Bigger populations will just mean more costlier maintenance.
We can't afford to switch into Slavery to whip Courthouses there, though, as we need Caste System to keep up the Great People Production, as well as to keep our Science afloat.
Airships can presumably be rebased to Isabella's Cities and thus attacking Mehmed's southern Cities seems to make the most sense for our initial assualt. Two Airships are currently being built.
Workers on our mainland can keep building Forest Preserves. I have put a few down already, such as one on the Tundra Forest SE of Riverdale and the one on the PRiv For E + E + E of Delhi. You can hover your mouse over a Forested square to see if it says "Forest Preserve" in the pop-up text. If it doesn't say that, then it's a square that still needs a Forest Preserve.
Presumably, if a Forest grows near Riverdale, we'll save it for The UN.
We also want to avoid settling Whales, as we'll probably need the Forest near there in order to complete The UN, should we choose to build it in Riverdale.
Go slowly into battle with Mehmed--it's better to wait for Airship support and large stacks, winning us conclusive battles, than to kill off a few of his units if it means losing several of our units in the bargain.
None of the Cities are currently losing Food, but you should note that Crabs has an almost empty Foodbox. If we get a lot of unhappiness from War Weariness, we'll have to keep an eye on this City so that it doesn't starve.
Please DO NOT create a colony, as that's the same thing as getting a vassal, in terms of making it next to impossible for us to get voted-for as the winner of the game. Either you get a ton of vassals or no vassals, and we have chosen to go down the "no vassals" route.
Please do not declare peace with Mehmed. We must continue to stay at war with him, as we won't be able to redeclare war on him without angering some of the other AIs.
Saladin knows both Banking and Education, so he is likely to be the first player to Economics. We don't need to compete with him, as we'll be learning Mass Media and can always get Economics in trade later, should sufficient AIs research it.
Keep sending Buddhist Missionaries to Isabella, drop them off in a City of hers (it doesn't matter which City--just bit the closest City--Seville) and gift her the Buddhist Missionaries (just make sure to unload them from the boat first, so that you don't accidentally end up gifting the entire boat!).
I've already pre-built a bunch of Workshops near Riverdale, so there should be no need to build more. There are 4 that are "partially completed" within 1 turn of completing, but we DO NOT want to complete them now, as doing so would reduce the Food output of Riverdale. If we do turn those squares into Workshops, it'll happen when we're just starting to build The UN, but no sooner.
There are 4 military units of ours that are near Toledo. We can consider moving them onto the GH Jungle 1S of Toledo and just defending from any attacks there. If you want, you can "scout" 3 squares to the north with Confucian Misionary 12, look at the defenders in Toledo, and then send the Missionary back into Barcelona to hide. That info should tell you if you'll feel safe in standing 1S of Toledo.
If a City doesn't make a lot of Hammers, it's probably best to just build some of the cheapest Military Units there, such as Longbowmen.
I have yet to spread Buddhism to Ivory Towers as Saladin sent a Caravel to Sugar Daddy, converted the City to Buddhism, and then had a Buddhist Missionary "sitting, waiting," in a coastal City along his northern Coast that one of our units saw as it went by. Saladin's Caravel is on its way east again, so chances are that he's got a Buddhist Missionary in there and that its headed for Ivory Towers. It's up to you if you want to complete the 0-experience War Elepant in Ivory Towers in 3 turns or if you want to start building a different Military Unit for now, so that both units should hopefully be created after Buddhism gets spread to Ivory Towers by Saladin.
Screenshots will have to wait until another day. I am exhausted.
), if things look tight on the Liberalism race, we can burn 2 (or 3) GSs on Physics and take Electricity as a fall back position.
