(0)1250 Not a whole lot to do. Ky left things looking pretty good. I did go around to each city and micro things, mostly for growth. Wake a knight near Arabia and get him a bit closer to the front. Arabia has a LOT of spears, though, so the efficacy of knights is a bit questionable. I'll make do, though, once I declare there. Gonna focus on Gandhi first and let a couple units complete.
(I) Gandhi came wanting peace. He offered 202 gold and 18 gpt, as well as 2 iron, OB, peace with Venice basically everything he had. 700 gold would be nice, but... no. It's time for us to conquer our continent.
(1)1260 Explore the other continent. Always good to do. I'm glad we have a caravel over there already. Kudos on that. Delhi bombarded us a fair bit, but I use up a promotion to heal our treb (in a very dangerous position) and use our nearly red-lined longswordman to take the city!
Other than that, I work on getting all our units into position to hammer Arabia on the turn when I finally decide to declare. India shows up with another archer that could be a problem by Delhi, but I think we'll be OK. Arabia is showing quite a few units. I am hoping the soon-to-complete muskets will play a major role. Third academy by Paris gets its science up to almost 100/turn.
(2)1270 Healing by India. Watching Arabia move units all over the place. Sell one of our excess cotton to Darius for not-quite 150 gold. And sell Open Borders to Alex for 50 gold. No reason not to.
(3)1280 Meet Copenhagen. Decide its time and declare on Arabia. Maybe it was a bit early. I killed two spears and bombed two others down to very low life. Captured two workers. Set up in a good position on a number of cities. I don't THINK their counter-attack will be too painful, but I could be wrong. Still healing by India. LOTS of healing needed there.
(4)1290 Lost a catapult on the interturn. Attacking more. Kill a couple spears, capture another worker, wound more, move on Gandhi's last city. Move on an Arabian city. LOTS of open territory and few units. Good fun battle. I wish we had a few more ranged units, but it's OK.
(5)1300 Was well bombarded but lost nothing more than hps. Everything is still looking pretty solid. I'll have to be careful on a couple fronts, but as long as units aren't lost, all is good. Venice is fighting well with us, which is being quite helpful. Scientific Method completes as well.
Meet Monaco. No gifts. We can probably start in on a third city-state soon, if we want. Kill an archer, a longswordsman, keep working on cities, keep production managed, work on Machinery. Lots of things will start happening very soon. But before too long I'm going to have to take another heal break. At least the units from India will be able to join in against Arabia soon.
(6)1310 Few units around to kill. Kill a single spear. Arabia appears to be totally gassed, but I can only do Basra and get ready to raze.
Have to retreat a bit from some other cities. They're doing more damage than I'd expected. Oh well. Multiple other units are en route and we'll be fine. As long as casualties stay low/nil, we'll be good. I do hope to liberate Dublin, too, simply because I think city-states are generally worth more as allies than as taken over cities.
(7)1320 Basra is burning (and growing). The far continent is getting mapped. Units are dancing. Not much to say/do. Three cities should fall next turn, I hope.
(8)1330 I failed. I did discover Krakatoa, but....
Nasra survived. But.....
Baghdad has nothing. I'll burn. The pop just isn't worth the extra unhappies and the production cost.
But the last Indian city....
A wonder? I'll choose to puppet it for now. I think we may well want to annex it for the great person bonus. We can always raze later, if that's the team consensus.
Either way....
(9)1340 Now work on razing Najran. It has nothing.
Liberate Dublin, too. It had a colosseum, so I debated annexing it or puppeting it, but I think liberating is the right way to go. We are a bit unhappy as a nation now, with our recent conquests. We can trade for happies or just not grow as fast for a bit. Either way is fine. We do have at least one colosseum completing soon.
(10)1350 Well, Kufah doesn't fall, nor does Medina. I didn't expect them to. Actually, too, Arabia showed up with more units than I expected, so we might lose a unit on the interturn. We have a knight near a spear that can be double-bombarded. I was looking for flanking bonuses and rushing because I thought Arabia was totally gassed. I was wrong, apparently.
We are down to one smaller front, though. Arabia is broken, so they should be pretty easy to finish off. I only have one settler under production, but we have a number of cities to replace.
Team talk should include: 1700 gold, what to do with it? Buy luxuries? More city-states? Another maritime city-state would be really nice. Or we could buy some happiness. What about research path? I grabbed a bunch of cheap techs to make research agreements a better plan, because the random tech will at least be valuable. I also unlocked theatres, so we can get more happiness.
An overview of our empire for lurkers:
Arathorn
Corbeau -> UP NOW
ThERat -> ON DECK
Jaffa Tamarin
Kylearan
Corbeau, if you could move the DLC out while you play, I think that will lead to the best results for now. I don't want to have to retcon your turns out again. That was no fun. I think the best we can do is to just avoid the DLC, which is what Jaffa did and it seemed to work well.
I would also like some team input on some of the issues listed above....
Arathorn