Round 11: 1780 AD to 1812 AD
Heeding NaZdReG's advice regarding corporations, I changed builds right off the bat, discontinuing Wall Street in Dehli and starting on it in the capital, HQ of Sid's Sushi Co.
Frankly, it makes more sense that Corporations, if implemented properly, would have better synergy with Wall Street than shrines do, doesn't it? I mean, the Vatican City is not the financial centre of the world, New York is. It's like the change in siege weapons: it's just more realistic. No catapult or trebuchet unit
ever captured a city. So now, in the game, they can't. Their job is now historically more realistic.
But I digress.
Wouldn't you know that war against one opponent--Gandhi--was not enough for Tokugawa. He had to go and declare war on the Chinese as well! Then he sent his lackey to try to get me to join in:
I turned him down, and later as well, when he asked me to fight in the war. I was glad it was Wang Kon rather than Tokugawa, because remember Toku has some nice resources--dye in particular--that I'd like to keep getting from him.
Back on the war front, Gandhi, I recall, had a whole mess of Frigates on his west coast. I'd been wondering what happened to them. Well, they turned up off of
my west coast:
I relocated all my Airships to the nearest cities and then attacked his fleet with them on the next turn, when they'd moved snug up against my coast. Two Ships of the Line took out a couple of Frigates that had escaped any damage, then it was up to my own Frigates. I lost a few of them, but eventually wiped out Gandhi's fleet before he could do any damage to Russian fishing grounds.
I was pursuing the UB this round, and decided to stick with the shortest path from point A to point D. Point B was reached in 1788:
Meanwhile, there was one more Indian city on the continent to take care of. I followed a suggestion from ShredZ and used a spy rather than siege weapons to remove the cultural defense:
This still doesn't eliminate the need for siege weapons. Notice how unlike a true cultural revolt, the defenders have not suffered any damage:
I still needed Cannon to damage the defenders, especially since this city was on a hill. I lost one cannon in the process.
I kept the city for now--it has a source of bananas, after all--but we'll see what happens to it. It's under even more cultural pressure from Japan than Bombay is.
Back home, Yakutsk generated its first Great Person. Given how I've been keeping my economy afloat, the result wasn't a big surprise:
Since Wall Street was well under way, I decided to settle this GM and another one I'd had hanging around since the previous round in the capital. Would a trade mission have been better? Maybe, maybe not. Frankly, I was starting to get tired of moving all those little units around.
I also settled the Great Artist:
Which probably means I'm not going to bother fighting Tokugawa unless he forces the issue. Like I said, I was getting tired of managing war weariness and shuffling units hither and yon. Furthermore, under Representation, all settled Great People provide another +3 research points. And Bombay is a holy city, so the GA's gold will go nicely with the gold from the shrine. I'm thinking I should also spread Sid's Sushi here, mainly for the additional culture boost it grants.
Back home, I completed my next wonder in production powerhouse Yakutsk:
So now, until I switch to Free Market, I have
two free specialists on the main Russian continent--one from the SoL, and one from Mercantilism. Too bad the continent's not bigger for more cities to benefit from this wonder, but it's also kind of good to know that not everything about the map was a dream for the specialist economy.
With Gandhi pushed off of the other continent, there was just one annoying city to clean up:
That freed up another clam tile for Delhi. I razed it, not seeing any reason to hang on to the city. I have more than enough cities on tiny little islands as it is. If Toku or Shaka want to put a city there, let them.
The next tech on the way to the UB was completed in 1808:
That should be handy; several of my cities are getting very large and encountering health problems, so having Supermarkets available will be beneficial to some of them. Yakutsk could especially use one.
I noticed Tokugawa had 500 gold just laying around and sold him Nationalism for it. This had another benefit, improving relations with him to Friendly:
I still have a lot of negative modifiers with him, and I'll lose a big +6 with him when I leave Mercantilism behind. Switching to Free Market will drop me to +8 with Toku, which I think is "Pleased". I'm not sure what the threshold is for "Cautious", which is when he'd probably start canceling deals--anyone care to enlighten me?
As I said, I was getting tired of shuffling units around. Gandhi had two lousy cities left, both on islands to the distant southwest of Delhi. He'd managed to sink all but one of my Galleons in that area, which meant building several more and sailing them over there, along with protective ships, in order to ferry my troops down to his little islands. Tedious.
Well, that's why the vassal system was introduced, in my mind.
Besides, I wanted Divine Right to activate the Spiral Minaret. I haven't liberated any cities back to him, but I'm thinking of doing so with Goth, Calcutta, and Pataliputra. Then I'll get bananas from him as my tribute resource. This should also turn him back into a half-decent vassal and tech source. He might be able to finish researching Steam Power for me!
I played through a couple more turns once peace was restored and Wall Street was complete in Rostov.
I also moved most of my specialists out of the marketplace and back into the science lab, with the exception of some of my smaller, distant cities with few specialists, and of course the Wall Street city. I'm also getting ready to spread my corporation to other civs. I did manage to spread it to one of Qin's cities (he was one of the few running Free Market), and he was good enough to spread it to another city for me. I'm hoping that Shaka in particular will be accommodating in that way.
So that was the round! The war is over, the race to Alpha Centauri begins, and it's time to see how powerful corporations can be. A state of the world post will follow in a little while.
.
I'd appreciate it.
.
right now.
moves.
in Rostov, but I would think the extra 
from Free Speech would probably be a bigger advantage.
I had no idea civ was so damn complicated lol.
