ALC Game 31: Greece/Pericles

I terribly failed! I managed to get the 10+ phalanxes and declare around turn 70, but my stack got totally wiped out at his capital, which was defended only by an axe, two spearman and an archer. So I am waiting for your turnset to see how you pull of the attack - at what turn you reach Karakorum etc...Besides, I am really interested to see how you survive the financial drain, I was already loosing money with just having the phalanxes around.

I had a pretty good bit of fun with this game and it went pretty fast once I got past GK and Izzy.

Settled 1NE and expanded to 6 cites all around. Thought GK was going to attack at one point early but he went after Izzy. Actually thought about tagging along in the war since I had built quite a few Phals at that point, but thought better of it. Figured a Bud friendship with Iz would pay off later since GK would never be of any use.

Once I got Construction, I started beefing up to take some cities from GK. Although my tech rate was reasonable with these two, I needed more land to really shine and GK was always going to be unpredictable.

As I was about to attack Khan with a lots of cats and Phals, he DOWs on me. Ha...really smart GK. I let him suicide a few stacks as a moved my two pronged attack from the east and south in a military maneuver to Krak. Besides the benefits of taking his cap, I wanted those only jumbos on the land mass. Once I had those, he was a goner. Iz declared on GK in the meantime with huge stacks of knights. Interestingly, I was able to trade CS for Feud right at the moment I had Khan at he weakest so that I could cap him that turn. In hindsight, it may have been best to wipe him out since he was useless as a vassal and only created diplo issues. In fact, he was probably the main reason Iz attack me later, which really shocked me by the way. I've never had her DOW me when we shared religions.

Met the other guys, and Stalin was a monster. Way behind on techs after capping GK and eventually destroying Spain rather easily. Iz declaring on me was beyond stupid. Anyway, I didn't even bother trying for Lib and basically just used the power of #1 in land to slowly grind myself into the tech lead after a few centuries.

Space was likely in the bag at this point and I was making a push for it with Fusion near, but I made some interesting diplo decisions to push the tide in my favor. Bribed Stalin into war with Pacal, who was my UN rival. Stalin had previously voted for Pacal in an election I lost by 9 votes or so. Now he voted for me. Also, bribed Qin into war with Vicky just for the heck of it to distract him from the space race. Sid's and the ability to grow my cities quite large were probably a factor as well.

AIs were amazingly stingy with techs this game for some reason.

good game/fun map

The plan for this round was to build up enough phalanxes to go and deal some damage to Genghis Khan and put ourselves in a strong position. We definitely dealt some damage to Genghis, but we did some harm to ourselves as well. But this is to be expected from an early rush, especially on this high a level. It's no wonder that few of the top level players rush. But this is an ALC people and it's the spirit of the thing that matters. Also, early rushes are fun even if not optimal.

I began this round by building another settler in the capital.



This move runs contrary to most of the axe rush strategy articles which suggest two cities is enough for an axe rush. But I decided a third city would be useful for a couple of reasons. One, I had a great site nearby to the west that had corn in the small cross and could also work the cows and a grassland hill from the capital. Two, I had to wait at least 10 turns before I would have copper, so the capital had time. Three, the new city would have several forests to chop which translates to several phalanxes. Also visible in this screenshot is that I'm researching The Wheel. Workers can't build improvements outside of cultural borders, but roads are an exception. Researching the wheel this early would ensure that I could road to the copper as soon as my workers got down there, even before Sparta's borders popped.

While the original settler, the one we started the round with, was in transit, I revolted.



I almost always try to revolt when my first settler is in transit. Remember that while cities can't build things or work tiles while your empire is in anarchy, your units can move. So this way you can get your city settled on time without having to waste a turn. The same theory works with workers if you want to revolt earlier. If your worker is in the build queue when you revolt, you waste a turn. If you wait for your worker to finish before you revolt your worker than has one more turn of improving than he would have had. In short, don't revolt with settlers or workers in the build queue.

Sparta got settled right away.



This is the reason creative is a powerful trait. This city would be crap if I was not creative. But luckily I just have to sit tight for five turns while roading the copper and the tile between Sparta and the copper and BOOM that city will be super. Notice also the binary research going on. Now that I have a second city, I can't afford to run at 100% research. Because of the silly rounding mechanics in the game it's best to run 100% taxes for one turn, and then 100% research until you get near to being out of gold.

Here's a micro tip: Check your tech bar often to see if you can improve your time to a tech. Especially in the early game. Sometimes making a silly switch can save you a turn.



This is especially useful when you're in a real hurry to get something. In this case I wanted the wheel ASAP so as I could start building some roads. By switching from working the corn in the capital to working the unimproved riverside tile, I was able to just finish the wheel in two turns instead of the three it would have taken.

It is very important when early rushing to not crash your economy. Pottery is a good tech to stop this happening.



I was tempted to go for writing, especially since I am philosophical and could get out some quick Great Scientists. But in this case I wasn't just worried about tech rate, but also my units going on strike. Pottery would allow me to build some riverside cottages in the capital that I could work and prevent this from happening. I was also planning on whipping and this is not good to do without granaries in place.

Here's another micro tip: the two-pop worker whip is the best thing since sliced bread.



The way to do it is to spend one turn building it. Then the following turn whip it for two population. This is especially useful in a city with a lot of food. I thought about just letting the capital build it old school style. But chopping is so important and I was about to have a new city to improve. I had a lot of worker turns in my future and three more worker turns were well worth the two pop from the capital.

I ended up settling city three where Lymond recommended.



Cornith could steal the cows and hill from the capital. It could work the corn. And it could chop quite a few forests into phalanxes for me. Also, picking up two gem tiles is not bad, even if they're under jungle for the time being.

Remember what I said about workers.



I could have started building phalanxes here. But I needed more workers man. Another worker can quickly pay for itself in chopping and if you have more forests than you're going to be able to chop, another worker is probably worthwhile.

Unfortunately, we spawned next to an AI with one of the highest unit probs.



That stack is larger than I'm used to and I don't have any catapults. Shoot.

Apparently I forgot to take any screenshots for the next few turns. I could say that I was concentrating really hard on the good micro necessary to get out a decent early rush army. Or I could say that March Madness is distracting. Whichever makes you feel better. The main micro to remember for an early rush is the power of the two-pop whip and the power of the chop. Two-pop whipping axes takes a little bit of concentration. As soon as you get to 5 hammers than it becomes a one-popper which you don't want to do. At the same time, you have to invest at least one turn of building into the unit or you incur a whipping (and rush buying) penalty. So you have to make sure that the overflow+the amount of hammers you invest the next turn will be less than 5 hammers or else you can't two pop whip. Chopping is more straightforward. Pretty much chop whenever you can. If possible chop mostly in a hammer heavy city so that you can have that city producing one unit per turn. Otherwise you get into awkward the-overflow-is-too-large-but-the-hammers-are-too-few in the smaller cities. The best way to get good at this is just to practice.
Anyway, a few turns later and I'd finished writing, my last tech before turning off the slider, and built a few phalanxes.



You can see they're healing. I'll explain. After I had a few phalanxes hanging around, I retreated with the fog busters. This is nice since it allows me a cheap garrison in the home cities as opposed to having to leave an expensive phalanx. Also, this way a few barbs spawn, which I want in this case. Barb archers in open terrain are perfect training for my army and a few XP never hurt anybody. Also, I decided to get out a great person. See how fast it happens? You gotta love philosophical sometimes.

And on turn 78, quite a bit too late, but whatever, I declare war.



It might have been better to simply wait for catapults at Construction but there were a couple reasons I didn't want to do this. The first is that Genghis is imperialistic. And the high level imperialistic AIs expand pretty quickly. Genghis already had six cities and I was worried if I waited another 600 years he'd be too big. Also, Genghis goes for Keshiks early and I didn't want to face any units that powerful. You can't tell very well in the screenshot, but I'd advanced my army of eleven phalanxes to as close to Karakorum as I could get. I left Turfan untouched, even though that's where his stack was. I did keep a sizable force in Corinth to prevent a counter attack from Genghis though.

Isabella got writing on turn 80.



She came by and offered open borders. If I was smart I would have realized that this meant it would be unlikely I beat her to Alphabet. But I didn't realize that until right now, in fact. And come the end of this round, I'm almost finished with Alphabet (Izzy still doesn't have it though, so there's hope yet).

My army nears the capital.



He's got four melee units and no walls (his city hasn't finished building a walls). Not a problem. I lost three phalanxes to axes and another one to a spearman, but in the end the city was mine.



After some healing in the former Mongolian capital the army turned on Turfan. The second, and now larger, army had been eating warm meals in Corinth, but it was now their turn to also join in the fight. They marched towards the city on the top of the hill expecting losses.



The decision to go after this city next was a tough one. I decided to do it mostly because I didn't like him being able to counter attack so easily and also because I was feeling enough oomph left to take one city. And that's the one that made the most sense since it would join Karakorum with the rest of my empire.

Back at home Corinth produced its great scientists who went over to Athens to settle down and do some work.



An academy in a city that small with cottages that underdeveloped gave me nothing. I thought about bulbing maths, but in the end decided that the 6 beakers from settling would be better in the long term. The decision to bulb versus settle is a tough one. But I had just finished chopping, and couldn't trade with anybody. And by the time I could trade, I was hoping that Isabella would have Maths and I could get it from her. We'll see.

Silly Genghis.



You can see that the stack approaching from the west got smaller. Genghis had attacked with some of the troops from the garrison and some other units he had sent from the north to help. Granted he did a lot of damage, but I did more to him, so we'll take it.

Losses were as heavy as expected and the capture of Turfan took two turns.



But the city was mine. Hoo rah! Unfortunately, I lost so many units that the fool wouldn't accept peace.



Actually, that's not that foolish a move given how spread out and weak my army is.
Luckily, though, even on immortal, the AI is not particularly smart.

In the meantime, Isabella had sent over some of her wonderful missionaries.



Do I wish to convert? Yes, please. That should help our relations significantly. Genghis was also Buddhist, so it might have been possible to have a religious lovefest, but I think that's flown out the window.

Back to Genghis being dumb. He sent an army consisting of two archers, an axeman, and a spearman to try and recapture Karakorum, but my garrison of two phalanxes and another just-to-be-safe-whipped-in-phalanx was able to keep it. After that last effort, Genghis was willing to accept a deal.



I did not declare peace. But instead opted to take a cease fire. This gives us the opportunity to snipe one more city if we feel like it. Although I'm inclined to let this one rest for the time being. Genghis is severely crippled, has an empire that's split in two, and really shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm sure he'll still be annoying but being a civilization that wipes me out I think is now impossible for him.

And that is where the round ends. I am not disappointed with the war, but it's definitely not your good old monarch war. Back in the day an initial army of eleven followed six turns later by another army of eight would have been able to take out an entire civ, now it only nets two cities. On the other hand, I have unlocked the Heroic Epic and have crippled an AI beyond repair. So it wasn't a total loss, but perhaps wasn't the best of moves. Here's the state of Greece after the first Greco-Mongolian war.

Mighty Athens:



Well it's not that mighty at the moment. Bu I should be able to grow it up pretty quickly now and work a few more of those cottages. That city is going to be a force in the middle ages when it gets an academy, an oxford, and a bureaucracy.

We are SPARTA:



This city is going to be a great Heroic Epic city as it has lots of green hills for mines, green tiles for farms, pigs for food, and copper for awesomeness. Yay, I love when things fit historically like that.

A captured capital:



I think this will likely be our GP farm. It has two decent food specials and the ability to build a lot of farms. In the old days, I used to pick GP farms based solely on food. But I have been annoyed at the incredibly slow production speeds in these cities enough times to try and pick one with at least some production. This city will be able to slow build infrastructure and then chop the Great Library and National Epic without problems (especially if we can steal that marble).

The whole empire:



Look at all the green. Yummy. There are still some sites I can see that I want. So I'll be building a few settlers after I've grown a little bit.

Tech Tree:



Nobody has Alphabet yet. And by nobody I mean Isabella, since I don't see Genghis being too helpful. I have lots of options on where to go next. Aesthetics and Literature, Construction, Civil Service.

What do you guys think is most important? Do you see wars in our future? What world wonders, if any, should I pursue? Do you agree with my placement of the national wonders? Should we finish of GK or go after Isabella? Any other answers, comments, questions, or suggestions you have are appreciated.

Benginal said:

Here's another micro tip: the two-pop worker whip is the best thing since sliced bread.

The way to do it is to spend one turn building it. Then the following turn whip it for two population. This is especially useful in a city with a lot of food. I thought about just letting the capital build it old school style. But chopping is so important and I was about to have a new city to improve. I had a lot of worker turns in my future and three more worker turns were well worth the two pop from the capital.

Click to expand...

@Benginal

This is great stuff - I appreciate the level of detail you provide. I also find myself micro-ing the tech bar and manipulating my tiles to get a tech quicker so I'm reassured to see that good players do this as well.

re: 2-pop worker whips. I'm trying to work on this as well but I'm wondering in this case if you tried to manage overflow and what units/buildings you usually try and overflow in? (In this case, the barracks I think) In your screen shot, in was turn 50 and in the production bar, it says 2 pop whip with net your overflow of 38 hammers. Am I reading that correctly? That's if you whip on turn 51?

I'm asking because although the good players following this ALC have mastered this, I'm still struggling with it, mainly because the overflow isn't what I usually think it's going to be and I problem chose the wrong thing to overflow in.

Any thoughts?

As a recap, both for myself and others, the last round saw us build up an army of phalanxes and take two cities from Genghis Khan. We took his capital and a well-defended city on a hill. After taking these two cities I opted to take a cease fire with Genghis Khan. Note that a cease fire is different from a peace treaty in that I can declare war whenever I want after a cease fire whereas a peace treaty requires I wait ten turns. My goal was to research the technologies necessary to build catapults and war elephants and then go finish off Genghis and possible Izzy as well.

To start the round I continued to research Alphabet. This technology is extremely important as it allows me to both trade with Isabella and build research. Building research and wealth is a great move, especially at a point in the game when my cities have built all the buildings I need and I want them to grow, which means I can't build workers or settlers.



You can see that Alphabet is just a few turns from completion. Also visible are the borders of a barbarian city. The AI is not very good at taking advantage of the flexibility a cease fire offers and usually waits a while before declaring again. On the other hand, as soon as Genghis Khan rolls a war he'll be coming for me. I decided to gamble a little bit and go try and take that barb city.

In the meantime, my capital is furiously working cottages while staying right at the happy cap.



To take advantage of cottages it is absolutely critical that you stay at your happy cap, while getting your happy cap large, and using your large population to work those cottages. Also, notice that I have the slider at 100% even though I'm still building libraries in some cities. While this isn't the most effective use of my gold, I want that technology as quickly as possible.

Alphabet came in soon after and I set my research to follow this path.



First is Currency for the ability to build wealth and for the extra trade routes which will be significant since all my cities currently have a foreign trade route with Spain and she still has a few more cities I can trade with. Next are Math, Masonry, and Construction to start building catapults and Odeons. I'll finish with Horseback Riding for some war elephants. Also, I was still worried about Genghis declaring war on me so I inserted a one-turn Archery for some quick and easy city defense.

I went over to Isabella to see what she was offering.



Not much as it turned out. She was willing to give me both of those techs so I wasn't worried that she was almost done with Alphabet herself so I decided to hang on to the tech until something more interesting was available.



That's more like it. Iron Working is great since now I can go improve my two food-neutral gem tiles, .

Here's an empire-wide shot of my two sources of iron and what's generally going on.



My cities are building key infrastructure except for Sparta which has everything important and is spitting out archers for defense. My workers are improving my cities, roading towards the barb city so that it will be on the trade network as soon as I take it, and roading towards Isabella who I waited way too long to connect to my network. My army is preparing to put down the barbarians at the northeast corner of my empire, in my empire. There's no need to have them meet up right next to the barb city as all that will do is cost more money in maintenance. After all parties arrive, we march on barbville.



7 highly promoted phalanxes against 4 un-promoted archers on flatland. This shouldn't be a problem.



I lost one phalanx that died at 70% odds and the rest were alright. I forgot that winning against barbs can only get you up to 10 XP, so I unnecessarily risked my great general, although he had 96% odds. Jute is actually lamer than I was thinking it would be. Usually barb cities are pretty good if you can capture them. But it's my only source of horses, so I'm not too upset.

My second Great Scientist was born in the gem city.



He could have bulbed math. But given the already decent state of my capital I decided an academy would be a better investment.

I farmed that city in Corinth and as soon as he was born Corinth went off great person duty.



It has some really good tiles to work and while it might return to great person duty in the future, right now I wanted it to be able to work those gem tiles when they became improved.

With money saved up, I was able to turn the slider back up to 100%.



63 beakers is pretty good and once I get bureaucracy Athens will be a stellar city. I did whip that settler for three population the next turn, because I was worried about losing this site to Genghis and with the corn and the cows Athens would be able to grow back quickly enough.



Speak of the devil.



He came by demanding gems. Since I knew I wasn't within ten turns of declaring on him I took the deal. He's still just at pleased with Izzy, so there's a small chance he goes to war with her. Although that's pretty unlikely. But wouldn't it be awesome?!

I also made this deal with him.



As far as I could tell, giving him Alphabet wasn't too bad. He couldn't do much with it and he and Izzy were on good terms and I imagined she'd give it to him eventually. Also, Horseback Riding was next on my shopping list. Not that I was having too much trouble teching things by myself.



I stopped the round a few turns later when Construction came in.



Very stupidly, I forgot to wait until now to open borders with GK.



So unfortunately I have no idea what his land looks like, which is not ideal since I'm planning a war into that land. Ah well. I'll send some troops in and they can take a look around before I declare.

Here are some big picture screenshots so that we're all on the same page about what's going on.



Izzy and Genghis are getting really friendly. Luckily they're still just pleased, but if I do declare war on Genghis I'll have to watch that he doesn't bribe Izzy in against me.

He could do this since he has HBR on Izzy.



Overall though, I'm doing pretty well in tech compared to the two of them.

My current forces are pretty decent.



That's enough archers to stay at home and defend, enough workers to improve my seven cities, and enough phalanxes to protect my elephants and catapults from melee units. I will need a few spears to counter Genghis's keshiks though.

Isabella is a sweetheart with her missionaries.



Unfortunately I'm not in any religious civics. Monotheism for OR is high on the priority list as after this war with Genghis I'll need to be quickly building some infrastructure -- courthouses, odeons, temples, monastaries, and probably some more granaries and libraries in Genghis's cities.

Madrid is also looking quite attractive.



Unfortunately there have not been any announcements of great general births from the other continent and they're moving along at a reasonable pace. Even if I'm ahead of my neighbors, I have to be careful not to fall behind the global tech pace.

And here's a view of the empire.



I've written some notes to myself about national wonders and which tiles I'll have to farm for irrigation purposes. I've also picked out my two best hammer cities and put them to building stables and then elephants. The rest of my cities will build catapults.

Final question: to war or not to war? Genghis is a real pain in the backside, but we seem to be getting along at the moment. I kind of like the idea of taking him out with elephants and catapults. But there's also something to be said for getting Civil Service, Machinery, and Engineering and using a classic middle ages force. Then again I could sit peacefully on this excellent land and take over the continent later with a mounted force.

Long term I see me taking control of my continent and winning a space race victory which I have yet to do either on Immortal or in an ALC. So that would be personally fulfilling.

Questions, comments, suggestions, answers, and ideas are all welcome!

The decision to declare on Genghis Khan in a few turns with catapults and elephants was reached unanimously. The empire was re-tooled to produce units in as quickly a manner as possible.



My two cities with stables were set to producing elephants. Sparta was able to produce three elephants every eight turns and was therefore not whipped. Turfan wasn't quite as effective so I followed the classic whip for two pop - grow back - whip for two pop technique. If you haven't tried it before, go do it now. It's awesome! I also whipped in some Odeons. The combination of this unique building and the creative trait is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. These super powered coliseums were two-pop whips and provided 2 happiness. Excellent!

I decided that the Great Library, though very nice to have, was a pipe dream in this scenario. Immortal unit maintenance is expensive and I wasn't going to be able to tech quickly enough. It turns out that I could have gotten the Great Library easily as it didn't go until nearly 900 AD, but I think this is the exception on Immortal.

I switched research to Calender since I have three calender resources.



That's three happy faces per city. And I had just enough gold to get there. I was able to get Izzy to help the cause.





This also has the happy benefit of meaning Izzy can't backstab me when I declare war on the Khan with this here force.



The screenshot shows an approximation of where Genghis forces were. It didn't look as though he had a single stack of doom to destroy which was annoying, but no matter. I developed the following battle plan.

• Phase 1: My main force would push through the Mongolian heartland to Beshbalik and then further north to New Serai splitting the once proud Mongolian empire into three parts.
• Phase 2: A small army in Turfan would grow in size and confidence and eventually mount an offensive into the northeast third of Mongolia taking Old Serai and whatever else was up in that area.
• Phase 3: The main force would move west taking Samarqand and the cities up there and eventually come back around and take Tabriz. I was unsure of how much land was up there but experience playing civ, the coastline around there I could see, and the fact that Genghis had stopped growing implied that there shouldn't be too much going on up there.
• Phase 4: The surviving troops would reconvene and take the final Mongolian city that was isolated south of Greece.

The first city in the campaign appeared over the horizon.



Meanwhile, Genghis prepared a small counter attack toward Turfan. (Note that the AI is incredibly stupid. My cities to the east of the map were both guarded by a few archers but the AI has a heavy bias towards its own cities).



Units were still being built at full force by my cities and I was not worried at all about my eastern flank.

Genghis also sent a counter attack towards his former capital. But my army of archers was up to the task.



Genghis didn't stand a chance against my city garrison arrow flingers.

Back at the front lines some bombarding happened. Three catapults then bravely sacrificed their artificial lives and the city was taken without any other losses.



You'll notice that there were some spearmen wandering around. My phalanxes ate these guys for lunch. Though the elephants were my main attackers, phalanxes played a key defensive and mop up roll in what was a second campaign for many of them. The phalanxes that did make it up to city raider 3 were very also very effective attackers.

In general, the promotions went like this.

• Catapults: City Raider I -> City Raider II.
• Elephants: Combat 1 -> Shock -> Combat 2. There was a medic elephant. My odds were never below about 70 percent so no elephants took flanking.
• Phalanxes: City Raider I -> II -> III. A few went up combat I -> combat II and served as stack defenders and garrison troops in captured cities.

The strategery being implemented by the Greek forces resulted in yet another Great General.



I sent him to Sparta to train units.

The war plan continued without hitches.



New Serai has beaten out Karakorum as the site for the National Epic. With irrigable corn, pigs, clams, and lots of green land, as well as a two hammer city tile and two grassland hills this city is a textbook GP farm.

Phase 2 of the war began at this point.



Not sure what Genghis thought he was doing. But he did that stupid AI move of taking out all of his non-garrison units the turn before I attacked. So naturally, I took the city easily and then beat all of his units in the open field with no city or fortify defense. And with that Mongolian stack destroyed the last real threat from the dreaded Genghis was gone.

It was at this point I realized I was falling behind in tech. After Calender I had turned off the slider. But I was expecting a Great Scientist soon and I wanted him to be useful. So I pulled an old trick.



Shift+any city+CTRL+build wealth. This allowed me to turn the slider up a little bit and power through Code of Laws and Civil Service. Which in turn let me bulb paper and also give my workers, who were just finishing up all non-irrigation improvements, something to do, namely get farms to all of my cities.

Phase 3 was implemented and a city successfully captured.



Here's the Great Library being built.



So I definitely could have gotten it. And with my philosophical trait it would have been really nice. But I chickened out. Ah well. The Great Library is built that late once every hundred games on Immortal.

Well I thought it was just the three of us. But I guess not.



Also, he's Buddhist. Dang, that Izzy girl is ridiculous.

Phase 2 of the battle plan finished with us capturing this craptastic city.



Despite the protesting of its citizens, it was raised to the ground.

Phase 3 finished a few turns later.



This city was also terrible. But I could see Stalin's borders and I wanted to keep him off my continent. So I kept the city.

With an 88% chance, a Great Scientist is born. He immediately bulbs paper. I set research to Philosophy. We can still get Liberalism folks!

I revolted into some come back from the dark ages civics.



Bureaucracy is great given the size and awesomeness of our capital. And Caste System will let us run scientists all over the empire to see if we can't pop out some more great scientists for a bulbathon.

Unfortunately, Stalin got Paper the very next turn. I was worried he might give it to Izzy so I stepped in and took what she had to offer.



This would allow for some serious religious building building. Unfortunately, the AP was built in Hinduism in a distant land. So the religious building will probably be kept smallish. But some high beaker cities are getting monasteries and the bigger cities are getting temples for happiness purposes. But just in case, and because I have nothing else super pressing to do, I'm going for the University of Sankore in Sparta.

Phase 4 comes and goes in the blink of an eye and the Greco-Mongolian war is over.



I waited a turn to let the war weariness disappear and ended the round.

The tech picture:



Stalin is going to be a threat for Liberalism and will probably get it. But I'm going to hope he's stupid and go for it anyway!

My units are as follows.



I thought about declaring on Izzy. But my forces are too small, she already has maces and longbows, and my empire needs some time to get back on its feet before we go destroying AIs again.

And here's the classic high field of view shot of the empire.



The key cities have notes on them for your perusal.

Overall I have nothing bad to say about Pericles. What a guy! I got two good wars out of his unique unit. His unique building is absolutely amazing and has great synergy with his traits. His creative trait allowed the first war to happen since otherwise getting that copper would have been annoying. And his philosophical trait is going to allow us to catch up in tech. This guy might be my new favorite leader!

The tech plan is to spit out those scientists, double bulb education, research/trade for Optics and Metal Casting, and then bulb Liberalism, taking Nationalism. This will likely fail in which case I will probably start a Golden Age with the third scientist.

After these next three scientists I will switch over to merchants who will help us keep our slider high for the rest of the game as we channel gold through our quickly developing capital. I think I'll keep one Great Merchant for Sid's Sushi. I'd also like to get Mining Inc. But we can worry about arranging that later.

In the near term, what do you guys think I should do. I could gun for cavalry and take out Isabella. But I think I'm more inclined to sit on my excellent land and high city count and just tech towards space. I'm part of the Buddhist lovefest this time and I might as well take advantage.

Any comments, criticisms, or ideas on how to proceed are awaited with anticipation!