Inherited: I made very few changes. Some cities with happy to spare got food increases or minor MM action.
Early: I sell dyes to the Celts for a worthwhile enough price, a wad of cash and 16gpt.
SunTzu is completed in Delhi! :jump:
I upgrade all our coastal spears to pikes and upgrade all our horses on the mainland to jumbos.
Ack, France cascades to Cop! They have Astro. This means they will start roaming around and the value of our maps will slowly bleed away. If there is a time to sell, it's now or never. Also, Celts and Russia have Printing Press, but France does not!
I buy Printing @3rd from Celts for our world map plus contact with Arabia and ~130g. I then buy Education @6th from France for Printing @4th, contact with Arabia, our world map, and ~80g. I trade Education and contact plus our world map to the Iro's for Gunpowder. I sell our maps to the English for enough to make it worth doing, though definitely a diplo price. I sold contact with the Vikings to the Aztecs for their treasury.
We have two saltpeter sources! Both are on the western segment of our continent, north of the FP. Sadly, one is on a mountain, the other is inland. We'll never connect the one, and the other can't be connected until we reach flight, and by then, likely not worth it.
Russia has two sources. One is on a mountain, the other is inland. Arg. Iro's have a source, it's on a mountain. I look around, and there is saltpeter inland, or on mountains. The only one I see that is NOT on a mountain and IS touching the coast, is a hill in the heart of French lands. Bottom line: if we're going to use any saltpeter in the middle ages, we'll have to trade for it, probably with Russia.
WE START RESEARCH FOR THE FIRST TIME IN EONS. Banking. Due in 11 turns? @50% science? Hmm, we have two libraries. The palace prebuild will reach 600 shields in less than 20 turns, though we have plenty of time before it actually runs out. We have a lot of markets in progress, but chances are this won't be the only time we need to do our own research. Hmm. Libraries bring in culture, and if we're ever going to build them, there is more cultural benefit to doing them first. Plus they are 20 shields less than the markets. We'll be running max affordable science for at least 20ish turns, to beeline to economics.
I decide to shift to library emphasis. Every town building a market is shifted to library. Delhi is changed to university, as is Calcutta, our two towns with libraries already done. Some other sites that can afford to do library start on them, including Pune (FP city) which postpones its granary to do its library first.
Middle: Lumberjacking, tile micromanagement. Train one longbow out of Karachi. Barracks complete at Ganges, units upgraded. I add one settler to Ice-olation Isle.
France DECLARES WAR... on the Celts. I sell ivory to the Celts to help support their cause. We pulled about 130g cash and 10gpt, hey not bad.
Late: France signs Korea up to be their ally. Not good, but the Celts have gunpowder and two saltpeter, and they're militaristic and religious. I expect both France and Celts to experience their golden ages now, which is NOT GOOD for our cause on the wonder building front. We'll have to see how it works out.
Ooh, France completes Sistine, and on the same turn, Iroquois complete Leonardo! That leaves only Cop's as a live wonder!
Next turn, France's Leo attempt at Paris cascades to Cop's, stealing it from their less ideally located site at Toulouse, and completes THAT immediately, killing the entire cascade!
Sirian gets visions dancing in his head about nabbing not only Smith's, but also Magellan and Bach.
Here's how it might pan out. We're researching banking, and almost there. (Shaved two turns off the ETA with pop growth and library construction). In fact, I had upped research speed to 60% science for a while, thanks to added income from Celt purchases of our fine dyes and ivory. I can lower back to 50% for ONE TURN now, and have the tech come in when Charis hits next turn. Then it's on to Economics at 60% science (or thereabouts), with Smith's to complete perhaps on the same turn the research comes in if Charis lines up a way to finish something and scroll ahead. If not, then the turn after the tech arrives.
Meanwhile, prebuild starting with university in Pune (not immediately, finish granary first, then maybe cathedral too), aiming for Magellan's, switches to using the palace once that has been freed up by Smith completion. Delhi completes its university and SAVES the option to build a bank so the bank can be used as a starter prebuild toward Bach's, with Music Theory researched at our best rate and timed to come in just before the bank would run out of time. This gives us the jump on Bach's, and in our best city. We ought to be able to get both Bach and Magellan this way. That would be huge! More happy for our homeland, plus continuing our bonus movement from the Lighthouse for the rest of the game, here on this big naval map where ships will be so important and movement speed of ships could make the difference if we run up against the clock in trying to win.
Heh, and get this. It takes SO LONG to walk across our landmass, that we'd save time to have some ferry ships around, and load them up and ship troops along the coast, they'd arrive sooner. How sad is that?
Bottom line, I skipped the war idea. Russia was on the doorstep of gunpowder and would surely get there before we could mount any kind of offensive. (They did, in fact, get to gunpowder before my round ended). Germany isn't worth taking, frankly. AND they developed feudalism as I was considering it anyway. Since they have iron, I did not relish the idea of going up against pikes and midievals just to fight for control of some blocks of ice. I went the library route instead.
Cities with happy to spare saw high food rates this round. Not all of them max food. Some where a lone forest netted two shields, no corruption, saw that happening. Still, population equals power, and every coastal tile we work is two more commerce in the economy. Almost all of our entire economy is coastal in nature. The rest is rivers, with tidbits from resource tiles.
Oh, I rushed a pack of harbors in there somewhere. All three on Lush Isle, and some on distant corners of the homeland. I spent nothing on the colonies this round, and in fact I swapped many of them from working tiles to collecting taxes. What's the use in having the population climb to max, leaving no food in the box, and gaining absolutely nothing at all from the worked tiles? All we get out of the population is higher prices on any goods we buy from the AI's (we PAY MORE, that is) and the scoring value of an extra content citizen or two. Blah and Hlumbug to that, says me. I pulled the Jaffa Tamarin move and hired a pack of tax collectors to improve our yields out of these colonies. The fact that starting our own research caused the income to dry up meant putting a halt to impulse purchases. Everything that got rushed had to bring in definitive returns. I thought about rushing some of the courthouses, too, but decided we couldn't afford it.
What to do with our monopoly on banking (whether to sell to France and others) will be up to Charis. Most of these customers can't pay a fair price, so the strategy of selling to the AI's and using their payments to fuel more of our own gains doesn't work so well at this level. He'll have to decide what to do on the fly.
I sold our world map to Korea for ~100g. Yes, it's worth more than that! Russia is the only significant power left who has not bought the map yet. None of the small fry, either, of course.
I started barracks on Yankee Isle. I considered rushing, but we didn't have the dough to spare. Although we can't produce pikes and such, we can produce spears, cats, longbows and jumbos, at ANY city, and actually those ought to be enough unit types to fend off minor invasions. More dedicated invasions of, say, a couple caravel-loads of knights and midievals could be a problem, though. I was tempted to declare on France and try to sign England up to fight for us, give Joanie two targets and two opponents, and help out the Celts. However, if France sent even small shiploads of units at our colonies, which they CAN now reach if they want, we might lose the ground. Or worse, be able to hold on to it, but at the cost of huge amounts of dough spent on rushed units and improvements. I passed on the opportunity. It seems to me that the Celts just may be able to defend themselves adequately. Only if they start to collapse, having cleared become gassed and in serious danger, do I think it would be worth it at this point to get directly involved. We're already supporting the Celts with two lux, which should enable them to field more tiles and better production.
And if Joanie should be the one to collapse, well, in this case I would not be shedding any tears.
No cities need MM tile attention THIS round, but I have some doing odd things like max food min shields, to grow faster, or the opposite, max shields to build something faster, and these will need to change once the immediate goal is reached. Some cities are also working on happy or granary, and need changes to higher food OR higher shields, as applicable, once these are done. Ganges is in danger of riot, keep an eye on it.
Oh, and there's one crucial city that is currently EMPTY, because the neighbor location needed an MP unit urgently and none were nearby. Wth SunTzu, we can build units anywhere, so slip some extra pikes in there when convenient, especially in the west. I have Lush Isle on barracks now too. They need pikes, and soonish. I have them all on high food, but that will run its course when they get to size 6.
Cathy wanted about 1000g for saltpeter. (What is she smoking?
)
I figured that with the window now apparently closed on going for early attack, that we should slowly slip some military in there to avoid too much weakness, but otherwise press on toward maxing pop and economy, and continued pursuit of peaceful wonder-building. All of these wonders are big time long term boosters. Smith's especially, but SunTzu is also a biggie. (Imagine if France had gotten it!
) Would be nice to get some more, though.
I THOUGHT about gifting the Iro's a round of dyes. We have two spares. Anything to get rid of that scowling face they have, with them now inches away from having the means to invade our distant, poorly defended colonies. You can think it over and decide whether improving relations is worth that much.
I did sell contact with Arabia to some civs as part of the brokerings early in the round. A couple others bought the contact from somebody, don't know which, so I gifted the last few contacts to Arabia to get something out of it: improved relations.
A lot of lumberjacking took place. I updated the record, and started a new lumber record for our five island regions, one graphic covering them all. Both are included with the save file.
FRFR - 1150AD
- Sirian
This is corrected, seeing Ganges increase up out of the drink on spt. Both Ganges and Forbidden Isle will be GOOD locations, capable of barracks and their own defense, after harbor and courthouse. Of course, now Stoplight is in the drink, but them's the breaks.
(Remember you can't veto or nono mentioning an option which I have no intention of doing! 
)
Also forgot to mention that I haven't sold the world map to anybody. I have sold territory map, though, although I won't any more to keep Sacred Cows in the dark. Not that the AI really cares, it can "see" the map anyway, as most of us know.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
[dance]
:fish:
