Round 8: 160 AD to 385 AD (15 turns)
Okay, the ALC book club meeting is adjourned. Back to the game.
Boy, I am playing slowly and cautiously, ain't I? I'm not sure why, but the rounds
seem longer while I'm playing them; I feel like I've played many more turns than I actually have. Then I determine the actual number played when posting here and I'm surprised when it's so few. It could be because I'm played a couple of off-line games at marathon speed and that's throwing me off back here on epic speed.
In any case, to start off, as usual, I spent some time implementing much of the good advice many of you gave. I cancelled that gem tribute to Zara for starters.
I didn't cancel our Open Borders agreement, because I was building a work boat in Najran and it would need to go through Ethiopian territory to get to the crabs.
I had the Chariot pillage the hamlet and cottage outside of Etruscan, since I'll eventually be farming that tile around the time Civil Service comes along.
Other things I did based on your advice included shifting most of my cities to working as many food-rich tiles as possible, and breaking up my Worker pairs. The latter takes some getting used to, as I still prefer to have them work in pairs; when I move on onto another tile, I sometimes lose track of him and have to spend time figuring out where his erstwhile partner is supposed to go. But it does, indeed, save a Worker turn here and there, so it seems like a better way to manage the Workers even if it requires more micro-managment.
And I decided to finally trade away Horseback Riding.
Obtaining Sailing allowed me, on the following turn, to obtain Calendar.
A few turns later, I made another trade, a seemingly lopsided one at first glance.
But if you check the score display at lower right, you can see that I knew Suryavarman was researching Currency and was close to completion. In addition, he had 100 gold in his treasury but as you can see above was not willing to part with all of it. So this was the best deal I was going to get. And it worked out in another regard: on the next turn, Sury had 9 GPT to trade, so he now has a supply of gold (not GPT, but gold the resource--confusing sometimes, isn't it?) from me.
I then noticed that many of my cities where approaching the ideal spot to whip their Madrassas to completion, so I switched to Slavery.
Just after doing this, I gained access to another labour civic.
I didn't switch to Caste System right away, though, since I still had some whippin' to do.
My next Great Person appeared in Mecca:
Normally I'm delighted to get one of the very rare and elusive Great Engineers, but I'm not sure what to do with this guy. The only unbuilt wonder I have access to right now is Chichen Itza--ugh. I guess it would tie in well with the Protective trait, but I still think it sucks as wonders go. I suppose I could build it in Najran to assist its culture, but still--it seems like a real waste of a GE to me.
As you can see the GE will lightbulb Metal Casting--which would take me all of 9 turns to research, so that seems far from optimal either. I could settle him, I suppose... but I'm thinking the best use for him would be to research MC on my own and then use him to lightbulb Machinery. Thoughts?
With my whipping done, I switched to my newly-available civic:
I'll probably still switch into Slavery every now and then, however. Normally, when playing as a non-Spiritual leader, this is when I'd wave Slavery buh-bye. But I am Spiritual this time, and in addition, I've got an army to build, especially thanks to my next tech.
And I ended the round there, pending advice on what to research next, how to use the GE, how the builds in my cities are doing, etc. I chose Civil Service kind of automatically as my next tech, but while writing up the round I thought of the MC -> Machinery from the GE possibility, so I may switch to Metal Casting at the beginning of the next round if most of us agree that's the best way to go.
Here's a look at the Domestic Advisor:
I anticipate switching to all-military builds shortly--stables in a couple of cities, then War Elephants, while the others focus on Catapults and Swordsmen (Kafah's borders popped and the iron will be hooked up in a few short turns).
I'm gradually shifting into more of a SE--I'm running a couple more specialists--but I need most of my cities to grow just a little more for them to be able to strike the right balance between food for continued growth and specialist support, hammers for production, and so on. Several of my cities are working food-free gold mine tiles, so that's propping up the slider, my economy, and research.
Foreign Advisor, Glance:
Sury is now Pleased, which is nice, though I don't think with him it's any guarantee, while Roosevelt keeps alternating between cautious and annoyed--but he's kept the borders open and is willing to trade a tech now and then, as you've seen.
Current trade deals:
Techs:
Zara finished researching Machinery (yikes) and is now working on Engineering. Roosevelt, meanwhile, has just finished researching Feudalism. I'm hesitating about trading CoL for Monarchy since there's no wine on the map and I own the Pyramids so I don't need it to run HR (and I'm running Representation anyway). However, Monarchy does lead to other techs like Feudalism (Protective Longbows!) so I'm anxious to hear your advice here.
Power:
So I'm hovering around the same level as Zara and Roosevelt, and Sury is way above us. I'm thinking he'll be itching to attack somebody soon, and I'm hoping its Roosevelt or even Zara rather than me. Zara does have a couple of cities up on the northeast coast that Sury might be tempted to attack, so who knows?
Demographics:
Espionage:
So the settled GSpy has clearly resulted in visibility into the AI's research and, in Zara's case, his cities long before I'd normally have such things apparent to me. As you may have noticed, I'm building a couple of Spies in anticipation of further leveraging this windfall.
The map of the continent:
And of Arab territory, with a little more information on nearby AI cities thanks to explorations by my Scout and a spare Chariot--another beneficial recommendation from the ALC peanut gallery:
There's room for 2-4 more cities in Arab territory, but as several of you suggested, I'm focusing on other things for now. I anticipate building up my military in the next round and attacking Zara, though he will be more advanced than me (Machinery for Crossbows, Engineering for Pikes and Trebs). But I think the next round will only go as far as a military build-up, then we'll discuss the best way to use it before putting it into the field.
My opinion stands, though it's definitively one of the better Pratchett-touched books I've read.
