Pre-flight:
Plan to
- pillage a bunch of the free zone to cut down travel and keep cities from taking away our dyes.
- finish improving all our tiles with rails. This will help us save units if we get into a war with Germany
- Avoid a dogpile
- Plant some spies and steal techs
- we could use more units – not sure how to do that quickly
-Celts will not talk
-Russia will give 4gpt and 23 gold for peace – we take it.
-Hittites have nothing to give except peace so we take it.
-Aztecs will give peace for 60 gold, but we wait since there we have MA against them for a little longer
-Byzantines give democracy, 22 gpt, 40 gold for atomic theory
-We have 27 cavs, 15 inf, 28 arty, 8 bombers, 4 guerilla, 3 flak and the army.
-Put all our sleeping workers to work except four – which join into Pyong and Bouncing Bucket. Gold is up some to +468 per turn
-Change two builds to infantry and one to cavalry
-Put bombers and cavs to work pillaging stuff – particularly outside the German border and near our dyes.
-Starting to move on Grand River with our arty stack defended by infantry. Cavs will catch up
IBT
Argh, Seoul riots. MM all the cities - must have lost war happiness or a lux somewhere
Pyong: inf -> inf
Rojo: Wall St -> cav
Nampo: bomber -> inf
Turn 1: 1455 AD
We are still stuck at 3 gold for 1 gpt on trades. I guess there is no recovering from that after all.
Iroquois have TOW infantry
Lost a cav to TOW inf on a hill near dyes
Army is healing, 38 units are moving toward Grand River, offense is 6 cavs and army can reach next turn
Celts still won’t talk
More pillaging. Maybe need an airfield near the Iro border?
IBT
Choose not to renew MA with Germany vs Aztecs
Flak shoots down Iro bomber [1-1]
Seoul: cav -> cav; Rojo: cav -> cav; BB: cav -> inf
Turn 2: 1460 AD
SOD in range of Grand River. Launch all 28 artillery. Yellow infantry on top of stack. Army goes down to 2 hit points but takes it. Took 3 cavs to take out a redline TOW inf [2-4]. I don’t even bother continuing since there are more units in there than I can take with remaining cavs. Sending reinforcements
Give Aztecs 5 gpt for peace
IBT
Aztecs and Iroquois make peace. This is bad as free Iro units start attacking our Grand River attack force. Best I can recall, we lost a cav and an inf, costing a couple TOW inf, though some of our other units took damage and army is at 1 HP (it retreated) [4-6]
Seoul riots again – MM cities again
Pyong: cav -> cav; Nampo: inf -> inf
Turn 3: 1465 AD
Aztecs have motorized transportation. I want it. Try spy plant and it fails – he DOW on us.
22% of citizens are saying give peace a chance. Increase lux to 10% and MM
Try again on Grand River (size 18?). This time I launch artillery, then lose 8 cavs trying to get rid of redline TOW inf – may have succeeded once [5-13]
A freebie city named Oswego shows up on Iro border. There is just one infantry in there which is killed and we get 1442 gold. Used a few free arty pieces to redline then attack with remaining cavs
OK now I am concerned about the arty stack, and I do not want to see any Aztec units. So I sic the Iroquois on them. In the peace deal, I pay 300 gpt for motorized transportation and 2400 gold. The ratio of gold to gpt is about 85% as best I can tell, way better than the 15% we can get outside of peace negotiations. So our arty is safe and Iro have something to do with their free units. Its all good
Missed the age change opportunity, as the next thing I remember was seeing rocketry as our free tech. Iroquois also have rocketry.
Change city builds to tanks
I can sell mot transp to Germany, but after some discussion and thinking, this seems like a bad idea.
Decide to gift the meek into the next age, as I smell a tech trading opportunity.
Can you imagine gifting a deity level AI forward in tech?
Sell refining and steel to Russia for 22 gold, free artistry and fascism
Sell the corporation to Byz collecting 24 gold, 3 gpt, WM
Sell combustion to Babylon, collect 33 gold, ivory, WM
Splurge – spend 83 gold on embassy in Constantinople. Byz have horses and coal in the box, and are building guerillas
Change to palace pre-build in Rojo (for UN), due in 2
Gift the rest of the required techs to Russia, Byz and Babs except mot transp. Will give them mot transp next turn to give our pre-build more time to build
IBT:
Babs and Byz make peace – there are some world powers at work!
Iro kick us out and we go
BB: inf -> tank
Turn 4: 1470 AD
Germans finish mot transp (or steal it from us?) and get computers as their free tech. We can’t trade for it.
Assume this is turn 1 of the German golden age
Celts still won’t talk
Hey – notice our score is up to 1165 – ahead of France! Maybe we will catch England
At 100% science space flight to take 32 turns. I leave science at 0%.
MM Rojo to finish palace in 2 – going to hold 1 more turn on gifting the meek scientific forward
And the free zone pillaging continues, along with internal railroading
I digress...
I would use your best judgment here Zerksees. If we need to pull back troops to consolidate then that's what I'd do. Gifting to the other civs would make sense and see if we can trade them around. I don't think I'd trade a lux to the Germans and wouldn't trade MT until the other scientifics are in the MAs. Once we've traded around some MA techs then you can sell it to Germany and have greater bargaining power with them. 
Having a couple of optional techs to trade is what does the trick.
