SGOTM 12 - Smurkz

[CommandoBob]

Will Niklas be finishing this set, or will sercer88 take over from here?

I think Niklas just wanted a short set to take out the Aztecs. That's the impression I picked up from his comments and his log. So I think sercer88 is Up.

But sercer88 may think different.

I guess we need to decide on the next target. India could be good, it's close to home and seems to have good lands. Besides, they might have no elephants yet. Rome is another option, but legionaries are tough to kill at this stage.

India should be easy to deal with, but at some point we'll have to stop France. Joan has three cities and a Wonder Addiction problem, which is good. If she's building Great things, she's not building military things. But if she decides to go a-conquering she could be making one turn swords with no problems at all. So I think she needs to be the next big target and the real question is how do we deal with France.

We at least need an embassy with France to see more of the French lands. (And perhaps other embassies also and for the same reason, though this is an expensive way to do fog-busting).

I might be overly concerned with France and I sort of hope that I am. If France is not a threat we can pretty much do as we please. (We'd pick off the AIs one by one and just stroll into the position of world leader. We'd start on one side of the world, build up our forces, pick a direction and steamroller over the AIs. And after the fighting was done the pre-selected surviving AIs would vote us in a world rulers.)

Should France really be as dangerous as I fear, then we have to be more careful and focused. If France were close we could deal with her whenever. But France is on the far side of the world from us with buffering AIs between Smurkz and France, going both east and west from Smurkz. So we just won't be able to react to France in a turn or so. We'll need a plan well in advance before we invade the shores of Normandy.

IBT Suggestion
What if we selected a few AIs and established embassies with them before proceding any further? We would establish the embassy(s), take screen shots of the capitals and then save the game while we discussed what we found.

I would select France, Persia and maybe Rome.

 

[sercer88]

Well, if Niklas is done, then I guess it is my turn...but I did think Niklas would be playing a full set.

 

[Niklas]

Sorry for my silence, I've had a very busy weekend. And the upcoming two weeks at work look non too bright either. I was asking for a few turns only, but since we decided for a swap I was actually indenting to play the rest as well. But since I'm in a bit of a vice here, it may be better to hand off after all. So sercer (hope you don't mind me dropping the numbers), take her away!

I don't think France is an immediate threat, but definitely a mid-term threat. We'll have to deal with her before she hits 20k culture, and the predicted date for that should be way earlier than we'd be comfortable with, maybe as early as 1000 AD. We should look that up.

As for the next target, I think either India or Maya/Inca. Regardless of which we choose, we should be able to play the same kind of trick as we did with the Aztecs/Japanese. Too bad they were brought up to tech parity hammerCF ), that will make our invasion a lot harder if we're facing pikes, and the signing of an MA might be hard too.

Anyway, we should be sure that we know what we're doing before we move on, and we should plan every move just as carefully as if we were in the middle of a burning war. In a sense we are, against the other teams.

 

[CommandoBob]

0690 BC

French Wonders

• 3 cpt Colossus (Flight)
• 6 cpt Great Library (Education)
• 4 cpt Oracle (Theology)
• 2 cpt Great Wall (Metallurgy)
• 2 cpt Sun Tzu's Art of War (never obsolete)
• 4 cpt Temple of Artemis (Education)
• 2 cpt Knights Templar (Steam Power)
• French Wonder Culture
  • 23 cpt

Culture Comparisons (Total/per turn)

• Smurkz 344/14
• France 2451/58

I should have checked more carefully, but I just assummed that all the French wonders were in Paris. Can't check the game from work; will do so when I get home.

 

[zyxy]

India should be easy to deal with, but at some point we'll have to stop France. Joan has three cities and a Wonder Addiction problem, which is good. If she's building Great things, she's not building military things. But if she decides to go a-conquering she could be making one turn swords with no problems at all. So I think she needs to be the next big target and the real question is how do we deal with France.

I agree with Niklas - a wonder-addicted France is far more dangerous than a saber-rattling France. We are already the largest and most powerful civ in the world, and the AI is pretty bad at conquering. There's no chance we would lose that race.

The cultural value of Paris has been like this in the recent past:

 Year     Turn   Culture  Average increase per turn
1000BC    80      1200     
 975BC    81      1235     35
 750BC    90      1595     40
 690BC    93      1727     44

This will keep increasing of course, so if we assume, say, an average of 75 cpt, then Paris has about 18000/75 = 240 turns to go.

I am not so sure about the embassies. They are not really needed yet, I think.

We'd pick off the AIs one by one and just stroll into the position of world leader...

Oh no, we won't be strolling. There are 25 AI's to conquer, so even if we count only 10 turns for each we'll be busy for the rest of the game conquering them. In this stage we cannot do one AI per 10 turns, but later on we can start attacking two at the time and can hopefully make up.

Our rivals hold some 900 tiles together, so we don't have to worry about hitting the domination limit.

Other comments:
- We can build the HE and I think we should, in FS. Takes 10 turns, or only 9 turns if we use the bg to get to 22 spt, and then mine one of the cows to get 23 spt for at least 2 turns (that means we need to get 3-4 slave workers up there soon).
- sci can go up to 100% now. Research needs to head for Education.
- India has no iron, so conquest should be relatively easy.
- We can sell ivory to India for 3 gpt. Just don't get upfront stuff, so that we can break the deal and keep our rep intact.
- Our workers are irrigating towards Theo's to increase food production there. It would be good to bring all our towns up to size 12 asap, preferably using the worker trick (build workers at size 6, and then add 6 at the time, like we did for FS). KZ would be a good place to train these workers (it has lots of spare food, and a granary.)
- Theo's citizen should switch from coast to ivory (will bring in more gold after 4 turns).

 

[zyxy]

dbl post

xclxcl

 

[ControlFreak]

Hello all!

I'm back at least in spirit and sporting a decent tan if I do say so for myself.

Sorry about the trouble I cause on my last turnset. I knew that taking Teot first and giving away all our tech advantage was a little against what the team was talking about. I do think things worked out for the best. I really think that swords against Teno without dromon bombardment would have failed miserably, even if the troops weren't kept in the town by my horse theiving. And then we would have been left with only the three cities, paying high unit costs and the Aztecs would be building in two cities instead of just one. Thanks to zyxy and Niklas, we got the same end accomplished.

I haven't checked the save yet and I need to get back into the swing of things. Will post back tomorrow at the latest.

 

[zyxy]

Hey, good to see you back!

sercer, I think it would be a good idea if you write a plan for your turnset. I think it would be good to focus on a naval invasion of India. Probably some 12 land units, mostly MDI/AC's with 1 or 2 pikes, and of course enough naval support to land them, and possibly bombard. How long until we have this together, and where to build it. Maybe some scouting plans as well (naval, probably).

Then, you can add plans for economy, research and workers.

 

[Niklas]

Glad to have you back CF.

I stand by my previous comments. I think your play was rash and not very well thought through. It is possible that you would have been right about Teno back then, but I strongly doubt it (and I intend to replay that to find out at some later point ). But what I really don't understand was the gifting of techs. We had discussed it already before my turnset and were in agreement then, and it has definitely put as at a disadvantage now. And for seemingly no reason other than a whim of yours. Not what I would have expected from the master of planning and MMing. I wonder if CB was right and there were foreign agents in your staff.

But what's done is done, everyone makes mistakes, and your presence here is invaluable. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter at hand.

 

[CommandoBob]

ControlFreak
He's back! He's back! More posts, less spam!

Next Target
I like the idea of India as our next target. We move north and still have the ability to move east or west without a lot of back and forth movement.

Rome/India/Portugal coexist on one island. It took about 40 turns to deal with the Japan/Aztec problem (CommandoBob - 10 turns, Niklas - 10 turns, ControlFreak - 5 turns, zyxy - 10 turns, Niklas again - 3 turns). We have better resources now but more targets. I would guess-timate about 40 turns to Smurkzify the R/I/P gang.

I haven't checked the map recently but are all their cities coastal? (Do we need to consider Cats/Trebs?)

 

[Niklas]

Not quite true. Rome is on its own island - but India/Portugal/Maya/Inca are all on the same island, Korea as well I think off the top of my head.

 

[ControlFreak]

Glad to have you back CF.

I stand by my previous comments. I think your play was rash and not very well thought through. It is possible that you would have been right about Teno back then, but I strongly doubt it (and I intend to replay that to find out at some later point ). But what I really don't understand was the gifting of techs. We had discussed it already before my turnset and were in agreement then, and it has definitely put as at a disadvantage now. And for seemingly no reason other than a whim of yours. Not what I would have expected from the master of planning and MMing. I wonder if CB was right and there were foreign agents in your staff.

But what's done is done, everyone makes mistakes, and your presence here is invaluable. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter at hand.

Niklas@ I conceed that you are a better player than I. But I don't think my actions were rash, nor do I think that they were not deliniated in my previous posts. I have been saying every chance I get that we need to gift the other civs all the techs where possible. We held back so many civs that we were still one of the tech leaders nearing the end of the Ancient Age. We self researched currency. I really wonder, if we had done a better job gifting all of the AIs to at least math if one of them could have gotten the job done before we had to research it ourself. There are precious few opportunities with weak AI's to steer them into researching the right techs at the right times so that we can each follow different paths and gain from cross trading. I'm hoping that the game will prove me right in getting a lot of the AIs to head toward invention while we research Theology and Education. I agree that France will inevitably get there first, but we don't want to keep buying from France, we want to get the other civs to research Invention also. I felt that we could get them ALL to research toward Invention while we went toward Education. Since our tech rate isn't very fast either, there will be (hopefully) a lot of civs with Invention by the time we get to Education so the cost will be cheap to buy it and some may even get to gunpowder.

I want to make sure we're doing everything to reduce the tech costs. When we had only one city, the best way to improve research was for us to conquer other civs. We still can gain from conquering more civs, but I'm not sure thats the strategy that will get the GAME to go fastest. We're coming up on building Universities in our towns. Libraries are needed in Aztec towns first and then we want to time the prebuilds with the learning of education so that we are always maxed out. I don't want to be in a situation where we're (again) building military units for conquest before building improvements that work to speed our research rate. If we really think that the Indian cities will provide more beakers than unis in our core, then I agree we build for war. But I don't want to get in the mindset that we can always chose war over improvements.

I haven't looked at the game recently so I don't really want to say if I'd rather go for war on India or an improvement frenzy (markets would also help research in gaining more gpt on the last turn of research, plus it helps happiness.

EDIT: I guess the next big thing would be to get to the point where we can build the FP so if India and it's neighbors get us there, then that probably is a good idea.

From this point, I would not be gifting everything to everyone, but I wanted to do it at a point where I felt I could steer the AI into researching a tech that we weren't.

We also need to find the best researchers with the bigger islands away from our area and get them to be conquered. The exception being France of course.

 

[sercer88]

Hmmm, there are definitely a few things to think about...

Well, here is my stance, sort of my pre-game strategy, if you will.

We will need to build many more units if we want to concquer anyone, next. That being said, I think we can still expand a little more (France still has more land and population than us!)

To successfully take over India (which, of course, is my vote for next conquest) we need at least:
-8 or 9 Medieval Infantry
-2 pikes (or upgrade the spears we have)
-4 Dromons

(we have 3 MI not in an army, and 4 Dromons, right now)

Since we need 4 more Dromons, I do not think we will have enough extra to scout around.
That being said: Do we know everyone??? If not, then lets find them so I can look at the First Spoiler Thread That would, of course, require some scouting

Since these numbers of builds are not going to be finished during my turnset, I feel that I will at least build half of that. That brings me to my next point:

Cities
Commando Zentral right now has a bunch of irrigated grasslands. I feel we should at least mine one of them, so we can get 8 spt (uncorrupted)
(as of right now, it has enough production to be at 7 spt uncorrupted)

Both Ozzy Smurkz and Theo the Wacka have jungle which needs to be cleared before I can make any clear decision on their maximum spt

Tenochtitlan (any suggestions for a new name?)
First: get it's borders to expand (it's building a Lib...should I rush it?)
After that: none of it's grasslands can be irrigated. For 1) that means it will have fairly high production (definitely greater than 10, maybe even hit 15)
, but 2) as soon as we hit our happiness limit (which could change as we go along) we would either have to jack the lux slider up, or, any 1 specialist would essentially KILL it's growth.

next: Research path: After Theo, I definitely think we should go max to Education.

Diplomacy: So, I have no idea why we should have embassies, but, if anyone wants to "educate" me in that department, go ahead
Also, do we want to rebuff any and all demands? For 1) we would get War Happiness, but, 2) now that our foes can all build galleys, we are at a small danger...

Micromanaging thoughts:
1st: Growth...get our # of citizens up! But don't go over 6 until we can add at least a few workers to it to speed up it's time until maxed out
2nd: Commerce...'nuff said

We need a few (veteran) workers to be able to do this...so I will build at least 3 workers.

Quick question: Furzt Smurkz is at -1 food per turn right now. Should I place a scientist on the coast as soon as I can (without decreasing science pace)?
(FS is at 43 bpt with the 3 scientists it has, but at -1 fpt. It is at 42bpt once I move one of the scientists onto the coast, but isn't starving any more.)

That's all for now!

 

[CommandoBob]

Not quite true. Rome is on its own island - but India/Portugal/Maya/Inca are all on the same island, Korea as well I think off the top of my head.

Well, that's what I get for trusting a map and not my own eyes!

The Land Masses in the World:

1. The island of Rome.
2. The continent of Spain, Korea, India, Maya, Portugal and Inca (SKIMPI ?).
3. The island of England and Sumeria.
4. The island of Germany and Zulu.
5. The continent of Egypt, Dutch, Persia, Mongol, Hittites and Babylon.
6. The island of the Celts.
7. The continent of France, Scandinavia and America.
8. The continent of Arabia, China, Greece, Russia, Iroquois and Carthage.

And zyxy's map of 1325 BC, a bit retouched to show who lives with who:



We are the guys in white.

 

[ControlFreak]

A little review of France tells me they started their GA in 1050:

French Wonders

• 3 cpt Colossus (Flight) built in 3100BC
• 4 cpt Oracle (Theology) built in 2590BC
• 4 cpt Temple of Artemis (Education) built in 1625BC
• 6 cpt Great Library (Education) built in 1300BC
• 2 cpt Great Wall (Metallurgy) built in 1050BC in Orleans. This triggers their GA.
• 2 cpt Sun Tzu's Art of War (never obsolete) built in 925BC
• 2 cpt Knights Templar (Steam Power) built in 750BC

Other quick notes:

• Building on what zyxy said, after science is raised to 100%, the coast with libraries are equal to scientists providing no corruption (150% of 2gpt is 3gpt, same as scientist which doesn't get the benefit of a library). We can change FS scientists to coast and stop starving the city.
• We should put at least on horse on the horse hill by Teno to prevent barbs from popping up (unless we want to barb farm for the gold and elites of our Medis). Same goes for the area around Kommando Zentral except it's going to take a couple of units and they will take a while to get there. If we do want to barb farm, we need some veteran units down there to take advantage of the farm.
• Watch out for the galleys near our wine colony. It's currently unprotected and needs a guard.
• Rush the library in Teno. The pop will take 2 turns to replace, but we really can't get any more sheilds or gold out of the town without worker improvements. At 100% science, the 1 gold lost by losing 2 pop is easily overcome by the 3-4gold produced by the library and it's expansion brings in all the ivory in the second radius which is already roaded. The drawback is the 20 turns it takes to replace the pop, but I think it's worth it. Teno's true growth will be fed from KZ's granary popped workers.

Basic strategy:
I agree that India is a logical next target. They should be easy with their close proximity, lack of iron. We may not even need any help against them. Next would be Incan's in my mind, because they have iron. I think using the Japanese/Aztec strategy, buying in the Mayan's would be successful who would hopefully cutoff the iron. (This may need to wait until we have surplus techs again. That doesn't mean I was rash in gifting mind you. sorry

Some strategy alternatives, not that I'm saying not to do India, first. I just want to avoid "Group Think":

1. G.Lighthouse - MAing the Hittites against the Mongols in our phony war, while we're taking out the Indian continent. Then when we're ready, backstabbing the Hittites to claim their territory (path to France) and the Great Lighthouse which speeds our boats.
2. Hit the Incan's first to claim the continents only iron supply. This would be in the form of an all out assault on Cuzco, followed by a quick peace to deal with Mayans then Indians, or finish off the Incans and work our way back up to the others?

Of course everyone on that continent is strong compared to us so we should work on the easy ones until we can MA the others against each other.

How's that for SPAM?

 

[ControlFreak]

OMT

I was just reading through Alexman's corruption article and realized that the placement of the FP is very important on this map. More so here than on normal C3C maps. The reason is because of the limited number of cities. With so few cities, the number of cities within a "disk" surrounding the palace is liable to be small enough that the rank corruption portion of the sum Cr + Cd does not necessarily swamp out the distance portion. So the cities in range of the FP may be greatly helped by lowering the Cd if Cr is not too high.

Something to think about, if we want to attempt a jump to Paris, or keep a leader to build the FP or Palace (can we do that with a military leader in C3C?).

 

[Niklas]

Very nice strategy post sercer, you're definitely learning. I'm sure you understand I'm going to have to pick it apart though.

We will need to build many more units if we want to concquer anyone, next. That being said, I think we can still expand a little more (France still has more land and population than us!)

To successfully take over India (which, of course, is my vote for next conquest) we need at least:
-8 or 9 Medieval Infantry
-2 pikes (or upgrade the spears we have)
-4 Dromons

(we have 3 MI not in an army, and 4 Dromons, right now)

Since we need 4 more Dromons, I do not think we will have enough extra to scout around.

How did you reach those numbers? I can see that we will need MInfs alright, and that we need Dromons to ship them, but your very exact numbers suggest that you've done some more in-depth analysis. How do you intend to use the mentioned troops?

That being said: Do we know everyone??? If not, then lets find them so I can look at the First Spoiler Thread That would, of course, require some scouting

We know everyone. Carthage was the last one, and once we met them we more or less disbanded all our scouting curraghs.

Cities
Commando Zentral right now has a bunch of irrigated grasslands. I feel we should at least mine one of them, so we can get 8 spt (uncorrupted)
(as of right now, it has enough production to be at 7 spt uncorrupted)

I don't agree about your stated goal here. KZ can do +5fpt for 2-turn growth, so the goal should be to get it to 10 shields over two turns. At size 6 we can work

6.0->6.5: CC, Fish, 2xG(i), 2xBG(m), Ivory => 6 raw = 4 net shields
6.5->7.0(5.0): CC, Fish, 2xG(i), 2xBG(m), Ivory, Hills on growth => 9 raw = 6 net shields.

So the goal here should be to get this town to size 6 asap, and start pumping those workers out. We have all the improvements we need for that, better use the slaves elsewhere.

Both Ozzy Smurkz and Theo the Wacka have jungle which needs to be cleared before I can make any clear decision on their maximum spt

True.

Tenochtitlan (any suggestions for a new name?)
First: get it's borders to expand (it's building a Lib...should I rush it?)
After that: none of it's grasslands can be irrigated. For 1) that means it will have fairly high production (definitely greater than 10, maybe even hit 15)
, but 2) as soon as we hit our happiness limit (which could change as we go along) we would either have to jack the lux slider up, or, any 1 specialist would essentially KILL it's growth.

You are correct in your assessment, which is why Teno's growth should, as CF says, come primarily from joining workers built at KZ. The library should definitely be rushed after building one turn on it (rushing from empty costs double, and short rushing via worker would still cost 3 instead of 2 pop). The ivory tiles are more productive so we need that border expansion fast, and as CF says the extra beakers from the library far outweigh the loss of some pop at this point, in particular since we will "regrow every two turns" through the workers from KZ.

next: Research path: After Theo, I definitely think we should go max to Education.

Definitely.

Diplomacy: So, I have no idea why we should have embassies, but, if anyone wants to "educate" me in that department, go ahead

Embassies are useful for a number of things. First you get to see the capitol and its "large cross", which can help you plan a conquest. Second, an embassy is needed if you want to sign either RoP or MA agreements. For instance we needed the embassy with the Aztecs to sign them in against Japan. Another tidbit of information is that you will see who else that civ knows, and who they are at war with. Also having an embassy with a civ slightly increases their liking of you.

That said, I don't see the point in creating embassies right now. They are too expensive to be worth it. The only one I could possibly see us creating is in Delhi, for the insta-scouting and also possibly, if we want and can afford it, an MA vs the Mayans to draw the Indian units out.

Also, do we want to rebuff any and all demands? For 1) we would get War Happiness, but, 2) now that our foes can all build galleys, we are at a small danger...

I think you should make assessments of the situation. If the Incas make demands, I would probably give in. If the Celts or Zulus do, never.

Micromanaging thoughts:
1st: Growth...get our # of citizens up! But don't go over 6 until we can add at least a few workers to it to speed up it's time until maxed out
2nd: Commerce...'nuff said

We need a few (veteran) workers to be able to do this...so I will build at least 3 workers.

What was said above. Workers in KZ to handle the growth of all towns. And build workers perpetually at KZ, nothing else.

Quick question: Furzt Smurkz is at -1 food per turn right now. Should I place a scientist on the coast as soon as I can (without decreasing science pace)?
(FS is at 43 bpt with the 3 scientists it has, but at -1 fpt. It is at 42bpt once I move one of the scientists onto the coast, but isn't starving any more.)

What CF said. When science is back at 100%, there's no point in having scientists around. (Conversly, when science is not at 100% and a few scientists would gain us a beaker or two, we should not be afraid to eat of our food surplus).

I have to agree with CF in general though - the University is the most important build ahead of us, and possibly also Copernicus? Or do we want that to end up in Paris too, so we can capture a super-science city later for our FP? Speaking of which, I think Paris alone is so obscenely overpowered that there's no chance we'd be able to beat putting the FP there.

 

[ControlFreak]

Before I forget (again), I wanted to say great job playing zyxy and Niklas to recover for my misguided play. And also to Poet Smurkz for engraving my blunder in the permanence of history. Thank you for implying that I could not have done these things without influence from an evil power. I actually was eating soup and realized I really needed a Wooden Spoon.

Some more (not Spam ) comments:

• According to CAII, we are 2 beakers away from getting Theology in 6 turns. I think the rushed library and growth in any of our towns within the next 5 turns should get the tech a turn early, so make sure the micromanagement of beakers ensures we get the tech in 6 turns.
• Education should take us 22-24 turns depending on how much growth we can muster. So we have 28 turns to plan the uni prebuilds. Thankfully we can use colosseums as prebuilds. For the acquired cities they are going to be lucky to make much more than 7spt in the near future which means we'll need 15 or more turns. That means we can build "other stuff" for about 13 turns in the captured cities which is on the order of about 65s per town. We can build "other stuff" in FS for about 23 turns. In 23 turns, FS can put out 460s in that time so we should have plenty of production power to get to the numbers that would be needed for India. The landbridge towns are going to be working on their aqueducts for the entire time (and may even delay the Uni). KZ will be building workers the whole time. So the only help that FS is going to get is from Teno. I think Teno lacks a barracks which means it's probably best to build Dromons from there and build all the units from FS.
• When we get to tech superiority again, I forgot about the little trick of gifting cash to a civ and then selling the tech back to them for the gifted cash. That way we get the AI friendliness, plus we get whatever they have to offer for the tech. (If they have nothing at all to offer, it's better to gift the tech to get the full value of the gift if we're giving the techs away.)
• At some point, to help keep the Science Civs alive, moving Babylon and Persia to the Roman and Celt islands would help. That means we need to kill the Romans and Celts and gift one of the cities to Persia and Babylon before we wipe them out.

 

[zyxy]

Adding to what has been said already:

There are three reasons to conquer other civs: speed up science by getting more towns (especially useful near our core), get more free unit support (though this is not extremely important), and eliminate voters for the UN. We cannot really afford a lapse in war, or we will not be able to conquer all in time - but of course we should take some time out from training troops to build those half price uni's. I am hoping that by this time we'll have enough units to just keep rolling.

I think a good attack order for now would be India -> Maya -> England. This puts us at the doorstep of France. Other good targets would be Rome and Portugal, because they are reasonably close amd hence productive. I would like to keep the Inca alive for now: they have three towns and could possibly research fairly fast.

I don't think we need allies against India, because they only have spears, archers and cats. But they will get longbows and elephants soon, so we need to strike asap.
I think the 4 dromons we have should be enough, or perhaps 1 more. We can ferry troops to India in two goes, which is not ideal, but the price of another 4 dromons is really a bit high IMO. We do need to build more dromons eventually, though.
Perhaps one of our existing dromons can scout India while we build up our forces.
We can do one MDI per 2 turns in FS, and we'll get AC's from Tenoch. (Would it help to build a rax here, after the lib of course?) This suggests we can definitely be ready to strike at India in about 10 turns.

I agree that FP or Palace in Paris would be good. It can be rushed with an MGL (if we get one).

Whenever we grow a town above size 7, the ideal situation is to immediately bring it up to size 12 by joining (native, not slave) workers. The extra income from the additional citizens will hopefully offset the gold lost on unit upkeep.

 

[ControlFreak]

England? England? Where the hell is England?...Oh I see! Great idea zyxy! Way to think out of the box.

I liked your strategy and agree with everyones plans so far with the exceptions that Niklas pointed out in sercer's plan.