I traded away MC quickly for diploboost and for some tech, can't remember which. Mostly because I wanted Qin to build colossus asap for failgold.
I ssettled Khurasan where I did, because it had so much forests, chopped a forge asap as soon as I had math, with the intent of building another colossus there for even more failgold.
The turn the forge was done however, shaka had built the colossus, quite a suprise!
So I build moai there instead, and finished them in our southern crab/whale-city.
Continued to work cottages in capital and mostly tried to ignore cottages elsewhere, tried to grow to happy-cap everywhere which was quite a challenge.
4 caravels where whipped direcly at optics to meet the AIs asap.
When I had the full picture I made the call that it was unneccesery to go for cuirs and that I could hit early enough with knights to make a serious difference.
So it was off to guilds and then massive whipping with police-state+vassalage <3
Tech situation:
Plan is to hit Shaka hard and take as many cities as is cost efficient before he gets pikes.
Qin is ready to be bribed against Shaka for guilds+optics+CS, but the price will go down as soon as I declare.
Army is standing by:
Holy city with shrine, spy ready to blow up walls.
I think this is his main stack, in an unwalled city.
Sorry for not remembering to build a road NW of this group!! Yayoi won't fall untill T161. :<
Units:
I think these 35 camels are enough, and it could be wise to just switch back to teching when we declare. Music isn't gone yet. Only competition is Isabella, but she is down to 3 cities and recently vassaled. And Qin, which is going for Engineering.
But it could be that just continue whipping and completely rolling over shaka is the best thing to do because...
Shaka has built GLH, and that would be very nice to have. It's in his capital far north though, so more camels are needed to get that.
Also noteworthy is that Qin has MoM.
Julius and Boudica has both made a demand/request which I obliged with, so we enjoy a +1 bonus and +4fair trade with them.
Once the attack on our homeland slows down, it could be an option to just ship the units over to either monty or boudica, whomever seems most behind at the moment, while we tech toward cuirs.
Boudica is close by, and almost all her cities are on flatland, and I think it will be quite possible to get julius in on the fun as well.
I think I would wait with Qin untill later, sice Itza is adding that annoying bonus everywhere on top of his PRO.
He is already friendly and will become ever more so with the shared war against Shaka, and later with bourocracy.