Yay! Big reply. I'll break it down into segments to make it easier.
And this reply would have been posted last night had the forums not gone down and erased most of it...
Do you have a feel from your tests what Gandhi will do with the galley and settler? I worry that he might sail out and deposit a settler and Lbow.
My feel is he won't send out his galley with the settler for two reasons. One, he'd have his clams hooked up already and two if he didn't hook the clams up for fear of losing them he's not going to send the galley out. If he was planning on using the galley to transport him over, he would have done it already. As you can see the AI aren't too bright when it comes to breaking chokes.
The best solution, of course, would be to post a caravel or two offshore of Delhi, but we need to take care of his wounded caravels first. What were you thinking for that?
I was hoping to have three caravels for that, and I was planning on using the one exploring before he ran into them. The best laid plans of mice and men...
I forgot to check where our galley is. If we don't mind stranding our Silverton workers for awhile (or maybe we could carry one back to the mainland) then we could send the galley south along the coast so it would be available to transport units to the western island(s).
He's chillin' on the fish by Silverton. The workers are almost done with what they have to do - probably four more turns or so.
Yeah, Caste System. Obviously not before National Epic is done (4 turns) but maybe wait a few more turns until Seaside has more pop to run specialists, and maybe even wait until we get Astro to switch out of Mer'lism for the overseas trade routes (but see below).
This was the basis of what I thought, but CS won't be dependent on getting Economics for Free Market. Overseas trade routes are only nice if other civs are not in Mercantilism too. We can expect Roosevelt to stay in Mercantilism - it's his favorite civic iirc. I was thinking sometime around when NE finishes - plus it'd give the three workshops by Moscow an extra hammer.
I (or you, hmm?) need to work out the next GP pop. St Pete has 207/270 at 3 GPP per turn (21 turns) while Seaside has 81 (63 turns). Seaside will really be cranking out the GPPs once it gets going with Caste System, but if we do things right St Pete can still pop first with nearly 100% chance for a Great Eng, which we want for Mining Inc (or perhaps Taj Mahal if we get Nat'lism in time??); we'd just need to run a food deficit in St Pete for a few turns to run more specs to beat out Seaside. Currently Seaside has 29/45 food in the bin at pop 7 with 9 excess food, and 3+4 more when we get the other seafood hooked up.
St. Pete really isn't set up right now to run specialists. The farms are all but gone and we're working cottages there now. We pull a citizen from a mine or camp and now the city has no production. Unfortunately it can't have both. I'm fine with having Seaside pop its before GP before St. Pete anyway. We want the GS asap, though for different reasons (see later). We'll also definitely want a GM for Sid's Sushi, so that needs to be planned in later (though Seaside could always switch out Sci's for merchants once we have corporation and are close to teching medicine).
I didn't check on Moscow carefully but a library isn't a bad choice. The alternative would be a gold multiplier, but that wouldn't do us much good if we plan to run 100% research starting soon.
Yea, we'll want both, but I think we're closer to running 100% than we are staying at 0% and building a Bank. We'll want both for sure since we will run out of cash. I think going library -> settler -> bank would be fine, just Seaside will likely grow unhappy in the meantime as it waits for the fur to get hooked up.
I'm not sure what to do there, but am getting antsy to seriously work on Astro. It would take us 26 turns at 100% but we'll run out of money before then. Scientists in Seaside will help a lot.
Patience
Our teching will be fine once Seaside is running scientists. Not to mention Horsetropolis as well.
But how valuable will Astro be when we get it? We might well want to switch out of Merc'lism for the extra trade, but we'd lose the free spec in each city and we might want to wait until Economics is in to do a double revolt.
Unfortunately not very valuable considering every civ in the game right now is in Mercantilism. We'll get galleons for settler transport and observatories in the science cities, but as for the value of Astro for trade we'll get next to no return on that in the near future.
...we'd have to throw in Edu (which I'm assuming we'll bulb with our first Great Sci because uni's can be built in all our cities but an academy can only go in one...
Here's where we differ the most. I'm pretty against bulbing education on the basis of getting access to universities. First, we're not going to be able to leverage education to trade around to the other civs since we're going to be last to acquire it. Second, our cities are woefully hammer short to build universities. Plus we have no shot at Lib so that argument is moot as well.
I'd rather use the first one, maybe the second one as well, for academies, with the first in Seaside and the second probably going to Moscow assuming we stay in Bureau the whole game. Why? Figure Academies give +50% beakers and universities give +25 beakers (and culture for each, but not important here). Academies can get built the turn the GS is popped for a higher return immediately. Universities on the other hand, cost 270 hammers (with Oxford coming in a 540 hammers though IND speeds this up by 50%). Aside from Moscow where with CS can get a university up in roughly 4 - 5 turns, everywhere else doesn't have the raw hammers to get these built in a reasonable time. Seaside if working all the hammer tiles is looking at 15 - 16 turns of it, and if it's working the hammer tiles for that long that means it's losing 16 turns of 4 specialists. Broberg is around 20 turns or so (plus it needs a library), and St. Pete is looking at 18 turns for it. So the research bonus from universities is going to be slow in coming whereas academies in our science cities is going to give us a much bigger boost short-term and long term.
The shot in the arm from Edu isn't going to help us any since we won't be able to trade it for anything and the universities are going to take so long to build. The Academy and its +50% is pretty darned significant and will help us tech something we then could trade for other techs.
Once Moscow finishes whatever and has grown a bit it's back to settler building, yes?
That's the plan. The extra pop isn't going to help settler production too much, but the infrastructure we gain in the meantime will help us in other facets.
Where do we want to settle next?
Darn good question.
If we find something juicy out west (or elsewhere) would you be willing to grab that before filling in our continent?
I guess it'd depend on how juicy the site was and how far. Maintenance costs are a killer as it is. We settle too far for not enough bang for our buck and it's liable to cost us more than help us.
Gandhi isn't a threat (especially if we can box him in by sea), and certainly not to the SE furs, but barbs might try something. It's not that great a site, though, and we have those other furs out west as a backup.
It'd be the cheapest though as far as costs go. The other intriguing/AI denial spot is due east of our capital. There's two fish resources accessible from that tiny spec of an island. Build a library (I don't know how though - whipping it would be the easiest way, but then that means another turn of Anarchy. If we swap to it during a GA, that's five less turns of +100% GPP from the GA. We switch to it at the end of the GA, we'd have to switch back CS at some point, and that's another turn of anarchy... Rush buy is the other option, but that's way down the road as well) then run a whole bunch of scientists. Plus it's two more resources of fish for Sid's Sushi (that's the other thing we gotta figure out - when do we plan to pop the GM needed for it?).
Wine for iron trade: hmmm. We don't need the happiness now, right?
Seaside will need it for max scientists assuming no Globe Theatre. We're up to 10 cap there - my early guesstimate says 14 would be optimal for max scientists (but not enough for hammers too).
And we'll likely have another lux resource (furs or offshore goodie) within 20 turns.
Probably the furs. Sugar is a ways off and will cost much in terms of maintenance. The dyes by De Gualle have very likely been settled (the settler I saw was near there and heading in that direction). Which brings us back to where we settle the furs site. Both sites on our side suck unfortunately. The other option is to run the setter out west to nab the crabs/copper/furs site. It'll permanently prevent Gandhi from settling out there. It's still going to cost a bit, so a courthouse is in its future, but the site itself isn't too bad compared to what's left. It has my vote.
I'm also reluctant to trade a weapons ore unless the recipient needs it to hold off a more powerful foe. Seaside can grow from pop 7 to 10 (?) with its current happy cap and that's enough to work all the seafood tiles and run specs, which we want to do ASAP, right?
I'm not, especially since none of these guys are on our continent. If it helps us out by allowing another specialist or working another tile I'm willing to accept that trade off. Hell, I'd even consider selling them off for GPT if we didn't need the long-term happiness so bad.
@ CommandoBob: Actually, we have 6 cities: the silver island as been settled and just this turn the horse site has been settled. St. Pete is slowly being choked out from cultural pressure from Bombay and the fixes we have are only to slow the damage, not reverse it unfortunately (makes me wonder how the city would be doing had we settled it even further west like we were discussing...) Gandhi is pretty well stuffed, and we've met Mao and De Gualle.
One last little blurb: I'm going to run some tests to see what is better for the chop hammers to go to for Horsetropolis. I'm debating between chopping out a work boat next turn (to net the crabs the following turn) or to use both chops towards the library, which would speed up it's production from 18 turns to about 4 or 5, and thus would cause the borders to pop that much sooner so we could work both seafood resources and start to retake the horses. The pros of the library first approach are faster border pops to then encompass the clams and horses sooner and the pros of the work boat first approach would be food first for faster growth. If we use a chop for the work boat next turn, that would mean we'd want to build the library this turn to get started on it (since the 44 hammers from the forest is enough to complete the work boat by itself).
Well, we'll want a theatre for the Globe (Seaside is looking better and better) eventually. On the other hand, if we build a temple we'll get 1
But take care of caravels and other more important stuff first. Speaking of units, are you planning to shift the units around Dehli westward to fill the gap by the sea?
Where's Rolo and other code diggers when you need them? 
). Printing is only 1200 on normal speed--can't we bulb that in one go? Lib'ism is 1400, like Education. And it can be bulbed by Sci's 
Ack ack ack. I'll edit the bulbing list in the earlier post and think about this some more, but it's not looking good. 
