Meanwhile, back in Arabia the Sultans of Swing are getting restless. Here's some more food for thought:
We are only three techs from the Middle Ages and the barb uprising that will take place then. We need to build our defences against a few big stacks of barb horses coming out of the east and/or the south. Ideally, I guess we should try to position to attack them as they appear by surrounding their camps with swords at distance three. But I'm not sure we can predict where their camps will appear. I don't know whether they will build new ones or burst out of their existing ones. Anyone know? If the latter then we need to make sure we know where they are. Each time we buy an AI map we get an update on all the barb camp positions not covered by the Fog. We need to minimise the fog and buy the world map regularly as we approach the new Age.
Apropos of which, we still haven't explored to the coast that must exist to our south. Probably a breeding ground for barbs as it's a long way from Egypt and Ottomans as well.
I've been checking out city placement issues, and it's interesting to note that Carthage is actually crowding us worse than the Ottomans. If we build cities at radius 7 or 8 to the west they are nearer to Carthage than they are to Makkah, so we may be glad of that strong culture we are growing, to help prevent flips.
We have one city missing from the north east of our first ring, and I am assuming the settler in transit is going to build where he now stands. There's a radius 7 site on the river bend north of Uskudar that would put more culture pressure on Uskudar to maybe flip the horses to us. There's a radius 7 site south of Madinah in the desert on the lake, and one to the east of that to grab the olives south east of Diriyah. That's five more sites with some resource/terrain/strategic purpose, giving us 14 total. That is actually about the optimum city count for a standard map at monarch level (85% of 16), so additional cities will run at high corruption levels. There are no other compelling city sites that I can see, so we can just place them where they will do most strategic good, as they won't benefit from any attempt at RCP. Examples are:
the southern end of the Persian lake, the eastern end of the lake east of Baghdad, the southern horses and associated lake, plus one between that and the southern radius 7 ring cities at about 10 from Makkah. These are all for denial and rapid transit as much as for our own purposes. I've tried to do a dot map, but it's a bit messy, and I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow ....
We are doing well in military strength. Rome is the only civ we rate Average against in F3, we are stronger than all the rest. I'm wondering if maybe we should declare on Rome soon and buy an alliance with Ottoman. Rome is a fair way distant, and they'd have to come through Ottoman to get to us, so we could let them wear each other down for 20 turns, then turn on Ottomans and cut them down on our way to Rome. Of course we'd need to be ready in case Rome cut Ottomans to pieces, but they don't have iron hooked up yet, so they don't have legions. I think they'd just bog down and kill each other slowly.
We are low on workers. We only have four, for a city count of nine and rising, and the terrain is getting more labour intensive. I would have suggested getting a ROP with Ottoman during the 20 turn alliance and building some roads to help our mobility, but we can't spare the workers we have.
Just some random ramblings to stimulate some discussion ....
We are only three techs from the Middle Ages and the barb uprising that will take place then. We need to build our defences against a few big stacks of barb horses coming out of the east and/or the south. Ideally, I guess we should try to position to attack them as they appear by surrounding their camps with swords at distance three. But I'm not sure we can predict where their camps will appear. I don't know whether they will build new ones or burst out of their existing ones. Anyone know? If the latter then we need to make sure we know where they are. Each time we buy an AI map we get an update on all the barb camp positions not covered by the Fog. We need to minimise the fog and buy the world map regularly as we approach the new Age.
Apropos of which, we still haven't explored to the coast that must exist to our south. Probably a breeding ground for barbs as it's a long way from Egypt and Ottomans as well.
I've been checking out city placement issues, and it's interesting to note that Carthage is actually crowding us worse than the Ottomans. If we build cities at radius 7 or 8 to the west they are nearer to Carthage than they are to Makkah, so we may be glad of that strong culture we are growing, to help prevent flips.
We have one city missing from the north east of our first ring, and I am assuming the settler in transit is going to build where he now stands. There's a radius 7 site on the river bend north of Uskudar that would put more culture pressure on Uskudar to maybe flip the horses to us. There's a radius 7 site south of Madinah in the desert on the lake, and one to the east of that to grab the olives south east of Diriyah. That's five more sites with some resource/terrain/strategic purpose, giving us 14 total. That is actually about the optimum city count for a standard map at monarch level (85% of 16), so additional cities will run at high corruption levels. There are no other compelling city sites that I can see, so we can just place them where they will do most strategic good, as they won't benefit from any attempt at RCP. Examples are:
the southern end of the Persian lake, the eastern end of the lake east of Baghdad, the southern horses and associated lake, plus one between that and the southern radius 7 ring cities at about 10 from Makkah. These are all for denial and rapid transit as much as for our own purposes. I've tried to do a dot map, but it's a bit messy, and I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow ....
We are doing well in military strength. Rome is the only civ we rate Average against in F3, we are stronger than all the rest. I'm wondering if maybe we should declare on Rome soon and buy an alliance with Ottoman. Rome is a fair way distant, and they'd have to come through Ottoman to get to us, so we could let them wear each other down for 20 turns, then turn on Ottomans and cut them down on our way to Rome. Of course we'd need to be ready in case Rome cut Ottomans to pieces, but they don't have iron hooked up yet, so they don't have legions. I think they'd just bog down and kill each other slowly.
We are low on workers. We only have four, for a city count of nine and rising, and the terrain is getting more labour intensive. I would have suggested getting a ROP with Ottoman during the 20 turn alliance and building some roads to help our mobility, but we can't spare the workers we have.
Just some random ramblings to stimulate some discussion ....