Turn 1 (211), 565AD
Decide that Shaka is going to want military help. Darius will have xbows in 2 turns and is already militarily superior. The deciding factor is an err on caution: I'd rather have Shaka take it to Darius than Darius take it to Shaka (and become a superpower on the continent).
Perhaps I should have just gifted it to him. But the miser in me won forth, and we took Shaka's 120g in exchange for HBR.
Turn 2 (212), 580AD
A favorable event.
Shaka is sending stacks of Impi and Archers against Axes & Swords
Turn 3 (213), 595AD
Seeing how Monotheism is ultra-cheap from Hatty (80EP!) I try to steal it but am caught.
Darius now has Machinery, which will cost us a little over 900 EP to steal. If we had Iron I would give it a try, but our borders won't pop to the iron on the east coast for 4 more turns.
Turn 4 (214), 610AD
Turn 5 (215), 625AD
We lose another spy, this time at random. Egypt knows it's us again, putting us to -4 for pie making.
Whip the market in Thebes for 4 pop.
I see it's time to steal from Wang:
Success! Raise Espionage to 70% to celebrate.
Hatty's research has been getting worse. She went up to 28 turns for Const and is now to 18. It will probably be faster to put more EPs into Wang and steal from him.
Turn 6 (216), 640AD
Can someone explain this for me?
I got the message saying that Korea won the town. But no message saying the barbs took it back, and I never saw blue borders.
I know the plan was to steal Construction from Egypt, but I can have that faster from Korea. So when I saw Machinery cheaper in Heliopolis than anywhere else, I went for it:
And succeeded. We built a couple xbows to celebrate.
Now, I'm trying to decide which would be better. We have to put EPs into some opponent to get Construction. Shaka has it now; Hatty will have it in 11 turns. Wang has it now.
Decide to go against Shaka. We will have enough EPs to steal Construction in about 5 turns. His multiplier is a little more favorable right now as well. Plus we'll be eventually taking him over as well.
Turn 7 (217), 655AD
Darius asks us to cancel with Shaka. Considering we're building up to backstab Darius, I tell him no way.
Wang is 3 turns from Machinery and will buy it for 320g (he has 410, so I know it's max money). After that he sets his research for Compass.
Mayapan is our heaviest hammer producer, so I order up a Forge there.
Turn 8 (218), 670AD
Darius asks us to attack Shaka. No, no, no!
Turn 10 (220), 700AD
Shaka starts by demanding we attack Egypt. Sorry buddy, not until you cough up Construction.
And he does!
Then Wang Kon demands Feudalism. I give it to him as everyone else already has it.
Going to stop after 10. I always play SGs a little more dilligently, so 10 took me long enough.
Cause for concern:
Most of those units are running around in the west against Shaka. There is actually a large stand-off between a Zulu stack and a Persian stack. The upswing in Shaka's power is that he just built his first elephants. I hope they keep him alive. Actually, I hope the AIs will sacrifice some units against each other instead of just building up stuff...
If we want to give Shaka Feudalism, we need to gift him Monarchy first. And so far neither AI has done anything but build up (which is exactly what we don't want)!
Here are the units I completed in these 10 turns. 2 xbows are due in 3 turns. We now have the wonderful choice of building: Courthouses, Ball Courts, Catapults, Elephants, and Xbows! Have fun with the variety!
One more thing to worry about. I notice we are losing many of our cultural battles, probably because we aren't building Libraries for this variant. (And because Darius is building every wonder known to man.) The war will solve that, of course.
The Save, 700AD
EDIT: One more details about the war. It's going to get worse for Shaka as Darius is 8 turns away from researching Guilds.