If I am needed, it would certainly be helpful to have a listing of city sites to be settled and missionaries to be built and where they need to go to convert the heathens.
Liberations for Mao
What we've learned is that a Barb Unit, such a as a Barb Galley, being SW + S of a City can cause that City to not be Liberateable.
That fact is bad, as we'd ideally like to Liberate 2 Cities to Mao next turn. One City location, 4E of Marble City, can be settled after we Chop the Forest that is 3E of Marble.
We shouldn't have any troubles with this Liberation, as we just killed the nearby Barb Galley.
Testing shows that as soon as I place a Barb Galley using the World Builder, as long as that Barb Galley exists in a City's big fat cross, that City cannot be Liberated.
A Barb Galley being 3 squares away does not affect the Liberation.
A Barb Galley being 2 squares away diagonally from the City does not affect Liberation. To me, that's weird, but I suppose that they just re-used the big-fat-cross code. Of course, I also find it weird that an empty Barb Galley would prevent Liberating in the first place, but there you have it.
So, despite what the in-game signs that I wrote say, we should probably use our Horse Archer 1 to scout 1NE on T159, on behalf of our Settler 18 (Hun).
Ideally, next turn, we'll Liberate the City that Settler 18 founds next turn. There are no land-based Barbs, but just like at the southern end of our continent, there could be Barb Galleys.
Galleon 5 could head northward this turn in case of a Barb Galley.
But, using this big-fat-cross knowledge, and scouting from HA 1, we might not need Galleon 5.
Or, there might be 3 Barb Galleys up there and we'll want Galleon 5 to pick up the Settler and drop it off on the coast to the south-east.
Anyway, valid locations for settling are:
i. "in place," on the Ice Hills Silver
ii. 1N on the Ice (SW + S of the Whale)
iii. 1E on the Ice ( SW + W of the Fish)
iv. 1NE on the Ice (2S of the Whale)
Whichever location is reveled by our HA 1 not to have any Barb units within that City's big fat cross is a spot that we can get used for settling and then immediately Liberating the City to Mao. If there are no Barb units, then we could simply settle "in place" on the Silver, giving Mao access to one of his Silver Resources.
+2 Liberations will give us +3 Diplo, which puts us 1 shy of Friendly. So, we can try try to trade Mao up to Communism and/or try to get +1 for giving him techs.
Hindu Missionary 4 (NE + N of Marble City) should get spread in Marble City.
Caravel 1 (1W of Queen's Palace) has Hindu Missionary 6 aboard, which can be sent to the units by Phrygian.
Over time, when WE 9 heals, it can attack Phyrgian, while our Crossbowman 1 simply acts as a defender for our WE 9, as the Crossbowman 1 doesn't have great odds of winning (75% isn't great when you can't afford to lose a unit).
Then, when we capture Phrygian, we can spread Hinduism in the City and we can keep the City for an end-game Hindu gift City to Louis, so that we can keep Stone City and its Oil Resource plus its two Incense Resources right until the end of the game.
After we've built The Kremlin, we'll want to whip a couple of Galleons and a couple of Settlers, then send 2 Settlers toward the area to the north-east of Japan. If we can settle a City within range* of one of Catherine's Cities, great. After that, find an open space to settle a City for Toku.
* A City needs to be within 9.5 distance of an existing City, where 1.5 = diagonals and 1 = horizontals or verticals. Obviously, count the diagonal distance first, counting from the nearest City of a given Leader (Catherine, in this case).
We also have a Hindu Missionary that is waiting around at New Amsterdam, and it could go with the first 2 Settlers. Later, we'd send another Hindu Missionary, probably with a partial Galleon chain.
As soon as an AI gets Hinduism, that AI will meet all other AIs who know Hinduism, so we should probably wait until near the end of the game to give those Cities to the AIs. But, we should probably do so in the last, say, 8 to 10 turns of the game, just in case an AI decides not to accept a gift, so that we still will have time to do something about the situation, such as chaining a Hindu Missionary to be gifted to that AI or to be spread by us in their City if that AI isn't running Theocracy at the time.
Once we build an Airship, we'll be able to send it into one of Catherine's or Toku's Cities, and then it can perform a Recon mission to scout the nearby area to see where there are existing spots for placing Settlers. Since we cannot buy the World Map of either Toku or Catherine, until we get an Airship up there (I haven't pick a City in which to build one yet... we should pick such a City), then it's hard to suggest exactly where such a City would get settled.
But, we'll have time to do a Recon mission once a Galleon gets close to the area with 2 Settlers and a Hindu Missionary on board.
Before then, an Airship might be best used in helping out with killing the Barb Galleys that Shaka has lured our way near Surfin' Turf, or used to attack one of Shaka's units per turn.
