And in Indraprastha, in the thick darkness, the rain soaked Arjuna's peacock-feather hat, while under a leaky tree Krishna was telling him of their past lives together.
- from
the Mahabharata
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In this turnset I found out India's not isolated, not even semi-isolated.
Heeding lymond's advice and taking my own goals for this game to heart, I settled the stone/copper/cow site instead of the marked site Alfa. Barbs were creeping plenty and I thought it would be better to claim those two critical resources and establish a quick production city than claim only one and wait for a border pop to hook up copper.
T51 - Delhi finishes warrior, begins settler. We need copper and a production city, and our forces are strong enough for the moment.
T53 - India discovers pottery, begins to binary research hunting. Bombay finishes its monument and build a granary.
T55 - We hurry Bombay's granary for 1 population.
T56 - Bombay: granary > warrior. I shift our warriors more and more westerly as a barbarian spearman has been sighted in the E fog. I anticipate some effort at protecting the nascent 3d city while cows and copper are improved and copper connected. Our workers begin moving eastward.
T58 - Delhi: settler > warrior. Settler is sent E turn by turn. We must at least connect Delhi and Bombay by roads, otherwise this eastward settlement will be made even more difficult than it already will be. I'll build a fast worker in Delhi next and have it work on getting that road connection built. Give or take a turn it ought to be finishing the road when the copper comes online.
One of our several E loping warriors gives us our first contact - with a Japanese archer unit.
T59 - India: hunting > masonry. We have enough savings to research masonry at 100% immediately.
T61 - Barb spearman approaches our forest/hill positions. Warriors are not fully dug in so I prepare for a loss. Settler unit hangs back as both fog and open ground near the barb are dangerous.
T62 - Barb surprisingly loses to first warrior. Settler moves up.
As a side note, I find I'm more and more comfortable with mass warriors for a long time for basic barb defense. If I play the terrain correctly even barb axemen can be stopped for a little while.
T63 - India founds Vijayanagara, which builds a granary. 2 warriors in the rearguard go back, as Delhi and Bombay will soon be needing police units - plus there could be trouble from the NE before copper comes online.
T65 - Delhi: warrior > fast worker. This new warrior heads to the NE hills to watch for barbs just as the rearmost warrior comes into Delhi.
Bombay: warrior > scout. I'm feeling more confident and we need more fog out of the way.
T66 - India: masonry > writing. We'll need to build some savings for this, so binary research begins in earnest.
T68 - Bombay: scout > warrior.
T70 - Delhi: fast worker > granary. Copper is mined and roaded, so we have to wait 1 turn for it to be available in Delhi as fast worker moves and builds half the road this turn. Pretty good timing. We'll whip the granary as soon as possible.
T71 - Copper's online. Granary in Delhi gets whipped. Bombay is forced to switch production to spearman.
T72 - Delhi: granary > axeman.
T73 - Vijayanagara whips a granary for 1 pop as soon as it grows to 2.
T74 - Vijayanagara: granary > monument.
T75 - Delhi: axeman > settler. Bombay: spearman > worker. Also, a Turkish work boat has stumbled on our cultural borders.
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At this point we're behind: we ought to have alphabet and 4 cities, but we're still teching writing and at 3 cities. Simultaneous big needs are - in increasing order of importance - setting up libraries and popping the first GS, bronze-age defense, growth to happy cap in all cities, and settling quickly. The next idea is to switch worker/settler/unit duties between Vijayanagara and Delhi as they each grow to cap, while Bombay chops a library and pops the GS.
I think self-teching alphabet is the next step, and if the Bombay library and the stone hookup are in before we get alphabet, Bombay builds Pyramids for fail gold.
Overview, and regional views of the bare map with dotmap.
India's units and cities.