Round 6: 1080AD - 1280AD
Having won the Liberalism race, we didn't have such a clear goal this round. Instead, I pursued whichever short-term objective was expedient. Well, there's the 2nd war to take out Peter, which we would want to undertake as soon as possible and which we would have to prepare for. That might be the exception.
First, I made the tech trade with Saladin:
With Liberalism in the bag, we needn't worry about Saladin being more advanced than us for some time. Besides, we're going to get Nappy to declare a devastating war on him, right?
I think this trade could only benefit us.
With Optics traded for, the way was paved for grabbing Astronomy with Liberalism:
So what happened to wanting to build the Taj? Well, I must confess the pain of failing to grab a wonder was too new. Without Industrious, I am no longer confident of building more than one wonder in a game (maybe two, depending on the situation), especially this late and without a significant tech lead. Even with marble from Napoleon to help us, I suspect some wonder-hogging civ like Saladin's would somehow manage to build the Taj first (and for all we know someone on the other continent might already have Nationalism). Two hundred gold or less would hardly make up for turns of wasted production at this stage. There were just too many other things we could be building at the capital with its Bureaucracy bonus (including units to use against Peter).
Grabbing Astronomy, besides allowing us to build observatories, would allow us to have trans-ocean trade routes early, which would benefit our economy. Of course, this would require us to establish contact with the other continent, but I think we should do so asap anyway to get a feel of the global diplomatic situation (important for a peaceful future). So, to accomplish this, Seoul built a caravel next. With luck, we might even win the circumnavigation bonus, although it's not a big deal in this game.
Now that we had Liberalism and Astronomy, what next? Remember the GS we had waiting in the capital? He could lightbulb Printing Press, so that was the tech I decided to research next:
Getting extra commerce from villages and towns for 3 turns of normal research is a good deal, don't you think? And the earlier the better.
Before that, though, since we're no longer racing to a tech or to a wonder, I decided to go through a turn of anarchy to adopt Buddhism:
This would improve relations with our neigbours (especially Saladin, who immediately became Pleased), reducing the chances that we would be at the receiving end of a sneak attack. And, if we get our way, Saladin and Napoleon would soon be embroiled in a war against each other, thereby further reducing the chances of us getting attacked by either of them.
Then I made another tech deal with Saladin:
Banking would give us access to Economics. Although the free GM had probably been grabbed by someone, Free Market and Astronomy have good synergy.
However, I didn't start researching Economics immediately. We're not Spiritual so, to minimize time spent in anarchy, it would be advisable to switch civics in pairs when playing on Normal speed (unless your empire is too big, in which case it would take 2 turns of anarchy to switch two). To do this, we would switch to Free Spech and Free Market at the same time. But that would remove Bureaucracy's production bonus in Seoul, and since our capital could use a Seowon and an observatory soon, I decided to give it time to build these and researched Nationalism first.
Our caravel reached the other continent and we met our first overseas civ:
Gandhi's quite advanced. Indeed, he had Nationalism before us, possibly even before we got Liberalism. I traded Liberalism for Music, gold and his world map immediately. It wasn't a terribly good deal, I know, but I thought it was important to know what the other continent looked like so we could establish contact with the other civs quickly and not have spend turns asking our caravel to wander about looking for them. It would also increase our chances of winning the circumnavigation race.
Once Saladin got Printing Press himself, I thought the time was ripe to instigate a war:
Now Napoleon had his own (improved) muskets. Surely he would have no problem at least fending off Arabian units.
We got a -1 from Saladin for this, which put him back to Cautious. But he should become Pleased again soon due to the accumulating shared religion bonus. That's the advantage when your rival is too obsessed with religion
We met the other two overseas civs successively:
Huayna was slightly more advanced than us, and he's angry because we traded with Gandhi, his religious enemy, before we even met him
Psycho AI. Did they ever think of changing this aspect of it?
Ramesses was nowhere near us in terms of tech. Poor guy. He's the lesser of the two Industrious civs and Huayna (who also has the Financial trait) has been hogging the wonders and reaping the benefits. And, surprisingly, despite being Hindu like Gandhi, he's on quite good terms with the latter. Damn. I would really have preferred hostile relations between HC and both of his neighbours. Would make him easier to contain in the future. Do you think we could engineer such a situation?
I signed Open Borders with all three of them. Unfortunately, they were running Mercantilism, so we wouldn't getting trade routes with them for some time. I hope they realise the benefits of a laissez-faire economy soon
And then, having built several more units for another invasion, it was time for renewed hostilities with Peter:
We should be able to capture at least 3 more of cities (the better ones) in this war. But he might slow us down with relatively large numbers of defenders in his cities. Let's see what the Russians can do.
With this, I end the first part of the update. The second part will be posted tonight.
[to be continued...]
