Suggestions for the next 20 turns of play, and sorry it does involve the leader.... I have a fairly clear idea of what we need to do, and how we need to do it. I'm looking at the save as it stands now, (okay, it's in Conquest because I dont want to change disk)
First we need to build galleys in the following cities:
Akwesane: Should be changed ASAP, and kept on galleys. is a perfect 6 turn factory.
Tyendenga: It's size 5, and even at size 6, which it won't reach for a while doesn't need a marketplace. a temple or library would be better to build in this city, but it's a 5 turn galley factory.
St Regis: Doesn't need an aquaduct yet... not the best land to it. It has a barracks, and is close to Persia. Should be making MW.
Panama: Should be making galleys to launch on Gordium. We can either try and get to Susa by land, or by sea, and sea is ALOT quicker.
Kahnawake: This is where we should launch our Zulu assults from. Is much quicker then using land... will take 4 turns to reach the first zulu city by sea... 9 turns by land.
We need more units in Zululand if we really want to fight them. We only have 5 units there, and we don't have any on the way. In fact, I can see us lossing some cities if we don't start sending more units to the west.
We have waaay to many cities building infra, and not enough military... we have MORE then enough MW to take on Persia... but not enough units in Zululand... we NEED to build swordsman and sent them to Shaka, unless we plan on sending MW and trigging our GA....
Switching to republic 2 turns before we declare on Persia. This will allow our MW to have one of the most commercial goverments during our GA... but we have to make it a quick war, or else WW will drive us down.
Any city that is not pop 8 or higher doesn't need a marketplace right now... we need units more then anything... the cities that are on our western half should build swordsman for Shaka, and the eastern half should build MW. WE DON'T NEED ALL THESE BUILDS!
Battle plans for Persia:
Hurry 4 galleys in Panama. Let them build for 1 or 2 turns, and then rush them... is cheaper this way.
Load up 8 MW into those galleys and send them towards Gordium. This should take about the same amount of time as building some swordsman and sending them toward shaka. We'll have to use galleys to bring them over as well... speed is the name of Republic based wars... hit hard and quick, and make their cities your cities.
We have 15 or so MW already waiting in Panama, and the choke point is held in 3 different places. Nothing will reach us this way.
I think we should go to war with them as soon as we have the galleys built, and bring our leader there. 4 galleys will take 7 turns about the same time to get our leader there. At that point we can load up 7 MW, and the leader and land near gordium... that should be enough to take Gordium as well as Susa, and hold at least Susa. We can then build our FP within 15 turns. It will take us about another 10 turns to take all but the outlying cities of Persia... I think Shaka may be a bit tougher then we're thinking though... mainly because we don't have enough units.
Battle plans for shaka:
kahnawake needs to build galleys to get units over their quicker. I believe we have 1 on there now.
The core cities should be making swordsman, and sending them to Kahnawake. I think we should swap Kahnawake and Panama between rushes... rush in one city, then build in another, then rush in the second, and build in the first... keep using that pattern and we'll be able to rush the galleys much cheaper then if we did it on the first turn, and we'll be able to have 4 galleys per a leaders turn this way... and we need galleys for exploration as well as warfare.
We need to starve down the zulu cities to help keep our cities free of foreign influence, especially if we're going to Republic.
our quickest and best bet is to farey galleys from Kahnawae to Hlobane, and use that as a launching point... we won't loose any movement points, and we have a road going right to the middle of the zulu lands.... but to do this, we'll need more then the 5 swords we have left over from attacking Japan.... even if we're facing just archers, we're only defending with spears.
We should preform this in a vertical slash taking first Mponde and ending in Intombe. 4 swords, that should come from Kahnawake can be sent to Ulundi to take them out about the same time as Isandhiwana is ours, leaving Intombe to fall like a rotten apple from the tree.
I think we may have a sea lane near Nara, but all the cities we have there are pretty corrupt so we'll have to send galleys from the east coast around the north to explore. We still need to work on the east as well, but I believe Nara is the way to go to find the other contient.
I think I covered everything I picked up from the save... just way to many marketplaces being build, and not enough military... we need swords!
Susa is where I've always wanted to build the FP. That's in the Persian homeland... all most in the middle.
