Played 15, pretty interesting set
We do no longer break even at 50% but continued expanding and exploring. But everything in order:
IHT
Switch moscov to corn and settler to be whipped for 2pop some time later. As I said not working a 5F is a minor offence and we don't want to run into unhappiness. Switch research to 0%.
1
Switch research back on. Did this to complete priesthood on 0% next turn but should've waited until the GS.
2
Crazy Horse City founded. Barb city uncovered btw, defended by 2 archers and watched closely by a portugese archer. 1 axe from st pete deployed to help get rid off the barb city.
Don't remember the turn (and that
BUG percentage hides it in screens) but the axe kills the portugese archer. Moving the 3 settler guards next to barb city as well. I decided to have a go, suiciding the spear and archer to mop up with the 2 axes.
Same turn, GS pops
I had him build an academy in moscov to help push towards monarchy. Bulbing is out of the question and academy benefits us more in short- and long-term (but maybe not in mid-term though).
Finding out whether the mountain range closes off completely down south proved trickier than expected, until finally....
Should be easily defendable though. That stack didn't head our direction, or at least it didn't take the southern route.
In the meantime I sent a stack of an axes, a spear and a guerilla archer (IIRC) to have a look around in portugal. They did find the vikings but on that very turn joao kinda did the same as me (though he had 2 spears, 2 archers and 1 axe). Those attacked and died on the IBT to the 15th turn, no losses. The last archer is fleeing though.
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Overview and comments:
Moscov should grow as large as possible while building archers for MP and city guards in new cities (as soon as we are in HR).
Rostov is running a scientist for lack of good tiles.
Yaroslavl will pop borders in a few turns, worker is ready to road and mine it then, unlocking swords. Builing a library since we're paying plenty of unit maintenance.
Novgorod is building the oracle in hope of failure cash and since it is running out of useful infra to build. There was a barb warrior approaching at some point who is dead by now.
Our two southern cities are getting set up, horse city has a granary already. 1 worker connecting those to the Main Highway while the other connects it to the river and thus to the ex-barb city.
The settler party for pig/iron is ready, accompanied by a worker. An additional axe is on the way as you can see. Not sure we should settle it just yet as we'll be bleeding cash but definitely settle sooner rather than later, this will make a good city.
Something a little more general: We had far too few workers. Lots of cities were working crap tiles for the benefit of a decent road network it seems. I built a few more workers, that is looking way better now. I tried spreading them across our empire, especially west.
HR is great for our empire as we have several cities at
-cap. But what we really need now is alphabet and then currency to build research/wealth for our cities that aren't really doing anything useful (like building library in a zero-commerce city) just to avoid increasing unit cost. We shouldn't have any problems with keeping our empire defended. St. Pete can build more units, especially swords soon, as it has a settled MI.