Round 16: 1810AD - 1880AD
First of all, sorry for not waiting for more replies. Since I had time to play the game during the weekend, I considered the advice I got and charted the way towards space victory. Espionage and war were on the cards, if it came to those. The research plan was:
Biology -> Electricity -> Industrialism -> Railroads -> Combustion -> Flight (traded for Artillery) -> Rocketry -> Plastics -> Radio -> Computers (as it turned out, traded for Communism) -> Robotics -> Satelites
Why Biology first? Many of our large cities could grow but was doing so very slowly. The extra food would greatly help growth empire wide since the smaller cities would also benefit from it. This would translate to a growth in output and commerce, more of which are what we need to win the space race. Railroads would also go towards improving output, and in addition it would help with defense in the case of future invasions.
Then why Flight instead of Artillery? I noticed that none of the advanced civs had Flight, so I thought that would be a good tech to research and trade away (high value), plus it led to Rocketry as well. I wanted to trade for at least Artillery (to cut down the research time of Rocketry) and Communism with it.
So I began.
The first thing that happened was we finally got another GS (in Thebes, which had been storing GP points with its wonders and a few specialists):
He was sent to Madrid to build an Academy. Rather late, I know, but at this point lightbulbing a tech would only save us 2 or 3 turns of research. An Academy at our teeming commerce city would, I reasoned, give us more benefit in the long term in our quest to catch up.
Then Mao came and made his demand:
Just another one of those. Bugger off, comrade.
We got our next GP shortly after:
Now we can have a golden age when we need one.
Gandhi came along next with this deal:
We weren't exactly running into happiness problems yet, so I rejected it. I figured it would only make Gandhi stronger at this point.
And guess who came next?
I was getting bored of his 'requests'. Didn't he take the hint? I guess since he was at war with Mehmed, he thought he could get a free ride to help him along. Well, that's just too bad for him.
Two turns later, it was Mehmed who came for assistance, but in a different way:
I decided to make him happy. Anyway, it was time for Mao to pay for his many insults to the Holy Egyptian Empire.
We switched civics since we were pumping out units again:
No telling where Mao would land, so Nationalism was just in case.
Mao did land on our shores, and on the same spot:
Gaul was going to starve again. It's a hot spot for tourists, huh? This time, however, we didn't need to draft units. Our counter attack was devastating enough:
And we got another GG for our efforts:
He went to Huamanga to be another GMI, making the city our military centre, in between its wonder builds.
His invasion force once again annihilated, Mao had no choice but to seek peace:
He must be getting quite a beating at home too. He wouldn't give us the tech, though. But he agreed to give us all his gold and 10 gpt.
We switched our civics back to help with empire development:
Notice we were still in Nationalism? I forgot about that!
We only switched back (accidentally) later thanks to the UN. And unbeknownst to me, it actually helped our larger cities keep themselves happy later on when I've traded for all the happiness resources that Gandhi and co. could offer (before he had Hit Singles and Movies). Would that affect our chances at victory? I hope not.
We got another GS next (we were running many specialists in our larger cities that had no more tiles to work for a while now):
Where were you guys all the while before this round? I guess this one would help by lightbulbing a useful tech. There's no candidate effective enough for an Academy now.
[to be continued in the next post...]