410 AD-Bactra and Kandahar flip. Score to 3689, 1374 tiles. First I gift Ottomans the silks city. Then I position some units in their territory, as I see I still have an RoP going with them. Next I ring up Osman and do the silks deal. The silks city ends up auto-razing. So, I end up disbanding East Bampur, and putting a new city near there. I recapture Kandahar, as well as Bactra from the Persians. I send another army over to the Persian/German island via ship chaining. I capture New Bactra from the Persians. I land four workers on an iron source.
From the Ottomans I capture Bolu. I decide I'll attack some wounded spears with rifles, but first a 3/5 calvary spawns another MGL. I capture Karabuk. I put two workers on a plains square near there to speed up my acquisition of ivory. I want more armies, but I feel as if I should get out more veteran calvary. I start thinking about cash-rushing an army every other turn, and doing some horse-calvaries. I also acquire Koningsberg from the Ottomans.
From the Germans I capture New Salzburg. For some strange reason I feel nervous about the Iroquois pike next to it, so I leave the army there. I capture New Leipzig. I use a 9/12 army to attack two 1/3 or 1/4 spears on a mountain near Koningsberg, just to dissuade the Ottomans stack from landing there. I capture Brandenburg. The Ottomans do have a lot of units, though mostly backward. I lose 5 rifles, I think with some 30+ wins. On the positive side, I feel comfortable dropping the luxury slider to 70%. I do buy settlers this turn, but no armies or units, and I'll employ some disconnect-reconnect here for more units faster, I might buy an army also then. I have 1468 tiles by the end of the turn.
420 AD-Tyre flips to the Persians. Sumeria blocks my rail network yet again. New Hamburg flips to the Germans. Score to 3783, controlling some 1443 tiles at the start of the turn. For anyone reading, it might come as interesting to compare my score increases over the past few turns with the other Sid games. I noticed the other turn Babylon had extra horses. Somehow, I only have one source. Babylon has 54 gpt available. So I don't cheapen ToG or Magnetism with anyone else, I actually decide to disconnect my horses. Oh drat, I actually have 3 horse sources. If you have your capital disconnected, it'll only say your cities have 1 horse source, even though you may have more. I won't disconnect that much. I have two 200+ gpt deals with Greece expiring in a turn, so even though I will upgrade horses to calvary and have bought settlers, I decline on buying an army this turn hoping I'll get a large chunk of that gpt back.
I do load another army to go over to the nearest Persian island. That army by itself takes out 4 immortals. I capture New Tyre of the Persians, and head towards New Sardis of the Germans. I load the army at New Salzburg back into the galleon. This city is in the wrong spot, I can't put rifles into it this turn sits at size three, and has an Iroquois pike fortified next to it. I just disband it. I recapture New Hamburg from the Germans, and then Tyre from the Persians.
The Ottomans unhappily pillaged out some German territory a while ago:
They had also pillaged my territory there last turn. I think it worth it take out that spear stack from the 9 spot easily enough this turn to keep that road in place, even though movement wise this isn't all that great. Even though I have to railroad a mountain to get my settlers on my rail network due to Sumeria, I decide it worth it:
Here's another good screenshot:
At mid-turn, and I think I've used all my settlers now I have 1524 tiles, 22.3% of my domination limit. The more I play this the more I think of what Moonsinger
wrote long ago with respect to her number 1 game:
Moonsinger said:
There were a lot of questions and usually not enough answers! Even after I had made a decision to invade Persia before Greece, more questions needed to be answered after that. Should I invite the Greece to join my quest for Persia or should I not? Can they be trusted? While most of my troops are away from home, they could easily storm my palace with ease! What should I do to prevent that from happenning?
In my game, I keep on asking questions like these: where do I plant settlers to best take more territory tiles? Do I plant this one settler in a spot where I can grab only 4 more tiles
this turn, or should I grab a 6 or 8 tile spot
next turn? Do I deal with a large stack of units so I can plant cities in that area, or do I just go at that AIs core and take cities? Where's the balance here? Where do I want to rail this turn to keep my armies moving?
How shall I spend my gold? Shall I cash-rush armies until I'm flat broke, buy more settlers (if a city has content citizens and the luxury slider won't do anything or bumping it one or two more ticks doesn't seem worth it, and I feel I have good cash, I'll buy a settler), or since I have Leo's employ more disconnect-reconnect for more units earlier since I face backwards spears, pikes, archers, longbows, medieval infantry, and muskets? If I face rifles the choice seems easy enough. But, with Leo's, and Sun Tzu's, I could theoretically cash-rush a horse-calvary for 116 gold, upgrade for 75 gold, for 191 gold a piece. Since armies cost 1660 gold to cash rush every turn, I have about 8.5 horse-calvary for the cost of one army... which is better? And even if horse-calvaries end up better now, will they end up that much better later on when I face more rifles, and potentially infantry? How do I factor in the number of workers I have to tie up to reconnect iron and saltpeter to do this in the first place? Do I attack with some rifles or not? Who do I attack next? How much should I put towards luxuries and how much towards taxes? How many units do I send away to try and finish off Persia and Germany for good, and how many do I keep at home?
Do I starve captured cities that I can, since they're in danger of flipping, or NOT starve them, so that once I finish off the target AI, I have more citizens for happiness, workers, settlers, potentially commerce, and unit support? I've started doing the later if the city won't riot more often than not.