PRETURN 1725AD
Saladin has four more cities left, three small ice outposts in the north and Mecca to the south. Should be no problem.
There are some Arabic caravels taking away our ocean tiles (fortunately they can't pillage). We're going to defeat Saladin before we can build any ships, but nevertheless we need a stronger naval capability, so I give Mao Chemistry for Astronomy. An unexpected bonus: we get ocean trade routes and we jump to +25 gpt.
A few Arabic cities just came out of revolt, but their new cultural boundaries are too small to support their population. You know what that means:
TURN1 1730AD
Move some forces around, revealing that Saladin's defenses are very weak everywhere except Mecca. I turn down Saladin's generous offer of 100 gold for peace. I think I read something about "consolidation and healing" in an earlier post ... I'm going to interpret "consolidation" to mean "kill all Arabic units now".
Some bad news: Huayna Capac completes Versailles (n.b. to make us feel better, rushing with our Great Engineer would have only gotten us 600 of the 800 hammers needed). Speaking of Wonders, we control Spiral Minaret but I think it's doing nothing for us because of our lack of religion, but whatever.
TURN2 1735
Time Passes ...
TURN3 1740
Razed Fustat, captured Anjar to the northeast. We have tons of military so I started to shift our cities to science / development
TURN4 1745
Aden is destroyed
The trade mission to Beijing nets us 1900 gold, raised to 70% research
TURN5 1750
Damascus' ungrateful citizens fail to appreciate the benefits of Russian society and revolt!
Mecca is conquered by our army, and the Arabic Empire is no more. We now control two more holy cities, both already with the appropriate shrine: Christianity in Medina, and Buddhism in Mecca. This should help our commerce-poor farmers, especially if we start spamming missionaries ...
TURN6 1755
War weariness is over so we can turn off culture and run 90% science to get biology in 4 turns. To my surprise, the end of the war doesn't end the revolt in Damascus and that city is useless to us for another several turns.
A new Great Engineer is born in Novgorod! That's four GP we are stockpiling. By the way, note that we need 3 GP for a Golden Age, not 2.
TURN8 1760
Buy a map from Mao showing the remaining world for 50 gold.
Rostov is starting to pump out a Frigate and Galleon navy to intimidate the AI and patrol our borders. With Heroic Epic we can generate one ship per turn. All other military construction is halted.
TURN8 1765
Mao asks us to help him war with the evil Incan. No.
The Russian Empire now contains 20 million souls!
Golden Age ends, and I spend three GP on immediately restarting the next one. I move one of the Great Engineers out of Novgorod to try to make sure he's not consumed ... and in fact he's not consumed.
TURN9 1770
Three Galleons are circling our continent: Caesar, Huayna Capac, and Hatty are all nosing around our borders with their settlers. Any city they settle will probably be easily swallowed up by our culture.
Turn10 - 1775
HC offers cow for sheep, accepted as we probably need health with our massive cities.
and ...
Short term stuff
I think we have enough universities for Oxford. We should soon have enough banks for Wall Street.
Wall Street: St. Pete's or Medina or Mecca?
Heroic Epic: already at Rostov
National Epic: already at Moscow
Oxford: Moscow?
Ironworks: ?
Globe Theatre: No-one really needs it ... maybe one of our high-pop cities can become Whipville
... and here's the save:
View attachment 120454
my last turn!
