I'm afraid I'm not too happy with the situation at closer look.
Is it correct that I can switch production off a build that has no hammers invested? I ask because those monasteries don't help at all. Example delhi (#1 science city): building a monastery gives roughly +4 beakers. At 100%. Which we can afford for maybe 1/3 of the turns. So we get around 1 beaker per turn for 60 hammers. For that amount of hammers, I can send those citizens on holidays for 54 turns while having them build research on the other 6. The only reason I build monasteries is when it's from the AP religion or in border cities.
Well, the previous player may not be playing for the same goal as you, so what does not make sense to you might make sense to them.
I will, say, however, that:
- One of the first 3 Religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism) is almost certainly going to become the AP Religion
- With a settled Great Scientist and 2 hired Scientist Specialists in the capital, that's a guaranteed 1 Flask per turn, with more coming on turns where we flip to 100% Science. It won't take long to return the investment compared to building a Research build
- Monasteries produce Culture
- Monasteries allow us to build Missionaries as soon as the AP is built
I don't see us recapturing those bananas (or the iron near varanasi) peacefully. Both cities are ~40 turns away from border pop and around 40% ours.
Even if we don't get the Bananas, which we only *just* lost during my turnset, so we might get them back. Even if we don't get them back, we want to avoid losing additional squares.
Our next GP is 40 turns away. Our (by far) best GPFarm has the note "Build Heroic Epic here"......
Well, it's just a sign and it was just an idea. EITHER Epic could work. I just figured that:
a) With the possible permanent loss of the Bananas
AND
b) Without a majorly-awesome Hammer-based City elsewhere, and if we stayed at war, then we might go with the Heroic Epic there
It's not like we started on the build item there, so for now, it's just a possible idea. I would be fine with putting the National Epic there, instead.
Is it correct that I *could* change research to something else?
Yes, because technically, the closest to "break even" Science has us learning Civil Service in 18 turns. If I recall correctly, it comes down to within the 15 turn mark only at a +10% Science Rate, at which point we'd be losing 7 Gold per Turn.
So, yes, you can change our selected Research item, if you would prefer to do so.
Regarding the war situation, we can't give him back any cities, right? That means we'll bleed cash for augsburg forever and not even have it connected to our empire.
Uhhh, well I told you guys of my plans. No one said "raze that bloody City!"
I actually thought that I would still be Bombarding in my turnset.
The City IS connected, via Babylon and the Netherlands, as far as Trade Routes go. It's not like you get additional
Corruption Maintenance because a City is not adjacent to the rest of your Cultural Borders. If we were to capture more of Charle's Cities, it would be a great area to build The Forbidden Palace.
One remedy that springs to mind is a short trip to babylon. Nippur and Opis are not on hills and not far into the border. Babylon is on a hill but would be the icing on the cake, with its shrine and all those other shiny wonders. By capturing those cities we'll have a proper empire. Nippur could be taken out with a few HAs, Opis as well I expect, and both on the first turn of war. Opis looks to be culturebombed btw. Could be worthwile teching archery and upgrade a few chariots or build HAs. Main stack with infantry/cats/phants could head for babylon.
As I said above, you are free to slot in research on Archery. I made sure of it by checking that I picked an expensive enough tech (Civil Service).
At the time, I was racing to War Elephants and didn't really want to slot in Archery, but you can do it now, if you'd like.
You are the current Military Commander. If you would rather make an enemy out of Babylon as well as out of the AIs that like the Bablynians, it is your choice to do so. Note, however, that since Charle declared war on us, it is like a "free war" in terms of diplomacy, since we didn't anger anyone due to not having made the war declaration ourselves.
As we can't get any techs in exchange of peace I don't see a reason to keep up the war with charly.
The last that I checked, he still wanted one of our Cities, but I admit that I didn't check after capturing Augsburg. According to the rules, though, we can't hand over any Cities for peace, even ones that previously belonged to an AI. Things can get pretty tricky on the capture-and-must-keep-if-not-razed front, huh?
I couldn't slot in any builds in the city building Moai to get more hammers into moai by whipping those other things? Like a WB for tundra city?
Oops, nope. You can build one in Bombay, though. I thought that we were going to keep capturing Cities, so I figured that there wasn't a major need for a Tundra City.
All those cottages make me feel sick. I understand we can't build any other improvement but still... Guess we built too many workers.
Perhaps we just didn't capture enough Cities yet?
Honestly, I can't remember, but I remember doing a few Resource trades, so they might have included Ivory.
) are not really our allies, so keeping War Elephants out of their hands would be a good idea. The last that I checked, only Justinian had Horseback Riding but we were definitely not trading Ivory to him.
Of course both would take a detour on techs to get to, glad the trees i left at Bombay are still standing, about only place i saved them for health 
