Pre-turn: Ok my task is to improve this:
I first note that we have a ton of military. My first task is to delete the 4 warriors we have sitting around. I ship some of the units from the north to the south. We still have military units being built. Sure it sucks to waste the production on them but what good are they going to do us? All they will do is drive our unit support costs up. 4 caravels is a bit much also. Ok I check diplomacy. Everyone hates us because we're trading with Mansa Musa. I know he has the tech lead but I'd rather ally with the other 4 leaders and screw Mansa Musa. I cancel open borders with Mansa Musa. I gift Philosophy to Mao and sign open borders with him. I gift Philosophy to Monty. He still won't give us open borders but our relations should improve soon if we avoid trading with Mansa. I do the same with Huayna Capac. I gift Music to Tokugawa. Each of these gifts nets us +4 relations with them and we still have a sizeable tech lead (which I have no doubt we'll extend) so it's no problem to do it.
Ok I'll go city by city and mark my changes:
Madrid: Building a Hindu Mandir, which won't be useful to it for many turns. But it has nothing else useful to build. So I change tiles around to max food/commerce. I also hire another merchant so it has 2 merchants and 2 scientists hired. It's also growing in 8 turns with Hindu Mandir in 17 turns. It's likely going to switch to a University before it finishes anyway. Keep in mind once we get astronomy we'll be trading for resources and happiness probably won't even be a problem, not that it is right now, despite us only having 3 happy resources.
Barcelona: This city is stagnant. This is our production powerhouse of course. It has a hill tile it's not even working though due to lack of food. Getting irrigation down here is high priority. It's building Hagia Sophia, due in 2 turns. Sounds good. The tiles being worked are fine, not much else we can do with them with the food shortage.
Seville: Building a longbowmen. Cancelled. This city has nothing really useful to build either. Seems we either didn't optimize what techs we chose as we went or we researched too slowly. I'm not used to having cities with nothing to build. Since it has nothing to build I set it to max growth/commerce. I also give the iron tile away to Salamanca. We'll see if it has a use for it when we get to that city. Seville now has 6 food surplus and generates 30 base commerce. Changed to build Hindu missionary. We have 5 cities without Hinduism in them.
Cordoba: Ok this city is not in good shape. It's one tile from the coast so has 2 useless coast tiles. It has 3 useless desert tiles. And due to overlap it's giving up 3 tiles to Murcia. That's almost 50% of the tiles lost. It also has unimproved tiles that it was working. I would rather halt growth with a specialist than work a 2 food, 0 hammers, 0 commerce tile, let alone the 1 food, 1 hammer tile. I steal the gem tile away from Murcia. Murcia doesn't even have a library built yet. Cordoba can make much better use of that commerce. I leave it building the market now that it's working the gems. I hire an engineer and a priest and stagnate growth until a worker can improve the tiles. We get 3 extra beakers for each specialist with representation, let's make use of it.
Toledo: Building a conquistador with no barracks? I thought we went over this one already?
These overlapping tiles are disturbing me. If I had settled this I would have built one city one tile NW of Toledo and not built Salamanca at all, but c'est la vie. Toledo is set to build a market. Not that useful but it also suffers from the nothing good to build syndrome. I change it to a Hindu missionary. I work all the coast tiles + the village and town and a couple forests for production/growth. I'd like to chop one of those forests and irrigate it along with the other plains tile that's currently unimproved.
Santiago: Now this is a super town. But all that irrigation is wasteful. We must get some more cottages built here. But our workers have so much other stuff to do at the moment. It could be an ok great person producer with all the irrigation but IMO that's a waste. First of all it's not super food location, decent, but not super. Second of all it has all those nice hills for production. If we turned it into a great person city it would be wasting a lot of tiles. It's building a christian monastery which is fine with me. It's set to max growth which is a good idea until it his happy limit. I only move one tile off of an irrigated grassland onto the grassland cottage. All these grassland river tiles..this can be an amazing science city if we get all cottages built.
Salamanca: Ok this city is unhappy and building a hindu temple due in 3. I'll queue up a forge after that which will net us another happy face. I work the iron tile I took from Seville and also steal the hill tile from Toledo since it wasn't using it. Temple due in 3 turns. Generating some decent commerce as well.
Murcia: Ok this guy needs some serious worker improvements. Stagnant since I took the gem tile away and building a lighthouse, due in 4. It will then be able to grow and will have some tiles that are worth working.
Valencia: Desert city. I can stagnate this city and get the courthouse in 13 turns instead of 19. That would lower expenses by 3. It will take 14 turns to grow anyway and will only have coastal tiles it can work. I'll stagnate it until it builds the courthouse, then it can go back to growing. I think that's the bigger benefit in the long-run.
Bombay: This city badly needs irrigationg. It's going nowhere fast. It has some nice silk tiles to work but it can't work them due to lack of food. I will send a worker down to this city pronto. Hell I might spend my whole turn just moving workers to cities that need help.
Otherwise I fear we'll just improve the cities the workers are currently at and neglect the ones that have no workers near them.
Madras: Another glorious city location, easily rivaling Santiago. I cancel the market in this city. It has much better things to build. I would build a library before a market (it's cheaper and we're not going to drop science below 50% so the library would net more than the market would). Although the market would give a happy face. But instead I'm going to build a forge for extra hammers + a happy face. Then a library or cheapo temple can come afterwards. I like early forges as it lets them build all the other buildings faster. I set it to max growth for the moment until it grows in 2 turns then I'll switch some food to hammers.
Zaragoza: Needs a courthouse more than a lighthouse. It has enough tiles to work for now without working coastal tiles. Our maintenance costs are so high that courthouses are huge bonuses. I'll finish the lighthouse only because it's 3 turns from completion and I'll queue the courthouse behind it. If anyone knows the rate at which partially built buildings decay in hammers I would love to know so I can better make these decisions. I don't think it's very fast or even noticeable but I'm not sure.
Bangalore: Another city needing irrigation. It's building a harbor. It's a good choice over a courthouse this time as it nets +2 commerce whereas a courthouse would net +3 gold. The courthouse is 50% more expensive to build, though and commerce can be multiplied by buildings. The trade routes will net much more commerce once we get astronomy as well. This city looks good. I move one tile off of a forest onto a grassland hamlet. Lose one hammer, gain 2 commerce and the hamlet will grow. It's doing alright on production anyway.
Pamplona: I would have built this town one tile to the northwest. It would pick up a grassland tile that's not being used by any city right now, while reducing overlap slightly. It would also net a hill tile to work for more production. I don't like founding on top of hills unless it's a poor food region. Hills are valuable tiles. This town will be short on production, even with watermills, although it can borrow the copper tile from Madras when Madras isn't using it. It's set to build a library which isn't a bad choice since the maintenance cost is only 5 and this will be a good science city if it can get enough science buildings built.
Lahore: Will expand in 4 turns and grab the clams. I search for a workboat or some city building a workboat but I don't find any. Set Lahore to build a workboat. It doesn't need a lighthouse yet anyway. It has a few grasslands it isn't even using yet. It's working two hills with cottages on them. I would mine over at least one of those so it has some production, but that's not a high priority task for our workers just yet.
Karachi: Pretty crummy town. Needs irrigation and is a long ways from getting any. It also needs border expansion so it can work the grassland towns to the east. Now that I think about it quite a few torns need Hinduism still.
Kolhapur: This city should have been razed. It's in a terrible location. 1 tile away from coast with severe overlap and several desert tiles. If we ever go to war with a civ I suggest we gift this city to them before declaring and raze it. I truly wish for a delete city option. This city needs bordere expansion to grab corn and needs irrigation as well. It's even farther from irrigation than Karachi though. Set to build courthouse which is fine with me. This city ain't doing much for a while.
Delhi: Resisting. Not much I can say except it looks like a great city location of course since it's a capital. I will probably start it off with a granary and max food once it's out of resistance.
Hyderabad: Needs a workboat. I take the tile off the fish and put it on the plains forest to get it done in 10 turns. Another crummy city but paying for itself which is all that matters. That great lighthouse is helping us a ton, too bad it will be obsolete with astronomy.
Jaipur: Holy overlap batman. I didn't know AI's went that crazy with overlapping their own cities usually. Oh well at least they found the coast for once. This one is also resisting.
Hmm our economy improved a little already:
(1) 1530AD: Caravel and worker movements.
(2) 1535AD: Barcelona completes the Hagia Sophia.
Haha I love it we build roads in one turn now. Barcelona starts Hindu Missionary.
(3) 1540AD: Out of cash. Science down to 50%. Education in 2 turns. Keep in mind since we have so many cities, even though our science slider is set low it doesn't mean we're researching slow. We're not researching fast either, but it's not bad at all.
(4) 1545AD: Find a goody hut on the uninhabited island. Lots of health resources but no sign of happiness ones. We'll have to pick up our explorer and pop it. Delhi ends resistance and is starving already since it doesn't have expanded borders.
(5) 1550AD: Hinduism spread in Pamplona. Start research on Banking. Banks will help us a ton. After that we can get Liberalism and Economics as our free tech. I queue up some universities. Switch Madrid back to production mode to get the university done quicker. Banking due in 4 turns. I guess our research is pretty decent if we're pulling in 4 turn techs. Can't trade Education to anyone except Tokugawa who has nothing to offer.
(6) 1555AD: Not much.
(7) 1560AD: Not much.
(8) 1565AD: Find another hut on the island to the north of the Incans. Missionary fails in Delhi.
Tokugawa has Printing Press now. Hmm maybe I should have done liberalism before banking. Most of our cities are too busy building universities to build a bank anyway. I don't want to miss the free tech from Liberalism but then we needed banking for the free great merchant for economics.
(9) 1570AD: Mansa Musa learns Astronomy and wants to trade health resources. I say no since we're not trading with him. But I note that he has 4 different happiness resources and 2 health resources to trade us. And we have an equal number of multiple resources trade him. But I still stick with it that we shouldn't ally with Mansa if it pisses every other civ in the game off. We learn Banking. I adopt Mercantilism until we get Economics. I change a lot of our free specialists to merchants. Start on Liberalism which will take 5 turns. Ouch Huayna Capac has Economics. Say goodbye to the free merchant. We should still take economics with our free tech though because that extra trade route will be huge for our research speed.
(10) 1575AD: Huayna Capac's golden has begun. Hinduism spreads in Delhi.
Post-turn: Well our economy improved quite a bit but only due to growth really. I didn't get a whole lot built. But there are several universities only a few turns from completion and once we get some banks in those cities as well our economy should improve drastically. I'm still working on getting the irrigation up towards the north. I would suggest trying to convert Tokugawa and Qin Shi Huang to Hinduism as they didn't found one of their own. Suggested research path: Finish Liberalism, take economics as free tech, then research astronomy.
Here's our economy now:
Mansa Musa gave us 300gold for their WM, I initially thought this isn't considered a trade and later realized my mistake. Well, things are improving slowly, but honestly I don't think we will have any issue to win this ourselves
