Preturn: A few changes. Nothing major.
650 AD: Capture Gao.
670 AD: Capture Ulundi and Kuyika. Ulundi gives us Wine.
We step next to a Persian town and they already have Muskets!
Use the leader to build our 8th Army.
IBT: Mongols finish Knights Templar.
680 AD: Capture Ghulaman (for now at least - it is Persian so we may want to replace) after killing 2 Muskets.
690 AD: Capture Nioro and Jenne.
710 AD: Auto-destroy Isipezi, Tagazand
Capture Hombori
720 AD Auto-destroy some town or other.
730 AD: Capture Walata.
Ghulaman abandoned.
740 AD
IBT: I miscalculate and we lose the wines town.
750 AD: Thebes riots - adjust rest. I was unable to take wines town back this turn.
Notes:
Rounded off years to 750 AD.
I rushed the kill for Songhai. We have an army next to the last Songhai city we can see, but that doesn't mean it is the last one. There are Archers around - if that is the last city and we can take it next turn, we don't need to worry about it. If there is another city then we need to track them down. I think we have enough units to do this if need be, but it looks a bit chaotic.
I built a goodly number of libraries and less markets which we will need. I am thinking that once we settle Africa, there will be a pause where we can build the Markets. (also once we have 4 lux they make sense for happiness).
We are definitely behind in tech. We have 2 1/2 more techs needed for the middle ages and Persia at least has Gunpowder. There is a solution to this - Take 4 armies after we conquer Africa and walk them until we find the GLib - then take it. If we heal up, I think we could wear it down and grab it for a turn for tech parity. This will take a while so we may be using Knights vs Cavalry and Rifles before we get to it. It does seem our best bet though. Catching up via research will be difficult even with all of Africa.
We have 2 Lux and there are two more (the wines we lost last turn and Spices within visual range) so Africa has at least 4 luxes.
I have been recently working on settlers - we have 5 with 7 in production. We also have 2 backup iron to connect - first one connected in 3 and the other one has enemy Zulu on it. I think we have enough space for all those and it allows us to raze the high culture civ cities.
We need to close the choke again. This last turn I needed the unit that was keeping it closed.
Persia is definitely the worst civ actively attacking us with large numbers of knights coming at us. The 8th army went North so again we have 3 armies at the choke. Since we have been building Libraries most recently we need more swordsmen up north. Army absorbed a lot of the existing ones.
The 750 AD save