First question I would ask is what is the reason for the RoP deals? Is it just to be friendly? You are in Monarchy, that sort of implies war is the goal. I would not see any reason, other than to be on good terms, to have RoP's with nations not on your land mass.
Well if you were planning to invade someone and wanted to use the RoP to get to them, not a rape deal though. Just to cross a friendly empire to attack someone else.
MPP deals are not in my plans, except for some very delicate games like a Sid pan map. Something like that were I may have to prostrate myself a bit to stay alive. Here you are MPP with Inca and that is surely going to get you into a war with Smoke. Maybe that is what you want, but why not just DOW? I mean after all deals expire.
I cannot know the events, but I would expect you could have gotten a town down to prevent Smoke from being there or someone else if Smoke captured it. Was it just left due to the tundra? Is so, you can see what that leads to down the line.
Rusuccuru, not sure about that name, was that a land taken from Hannibal or did they squeeze a town in on you? I try to build out and not let anyone horn in after I expand. If you have been at war, I would have been sure to get that town removed.
I just do not like to have a back door available to them to sneak out on me or force me to beef up those towns on defense.
So where are to go next? I would for sure want to get all of my continent, so Hannibal is the target. It looks like if you DOW Carthage, you get Inca in the war at some point. That should not be an issue. The part that is open is what does Smoke do about things.
It looks like he will have to jump in on Hannibal as Carthage has no gold to bribe with. No matter either way. I just would not like to see Smoke has an excuse to jump on the Inca and get stronger.
I dial up the Inca people and end the MPP, left the lux deal till it dies.
Dial up Smoke and end that RoP.
Now what shape is the empire in, well the first thing I note is the dead tiles all over the place. Ergili, why was it placed there and in 110AD? It is next to the capitol, that is a prime site. It is a very distressing town.
It is not on the river and to top it off, it is on a grass tile. One of the few around? It is size 1 and has everything, but the kitchen sink. It has an aqua, which it would not have had to build, if it was on the river, one tile over. It has a cathedral. I guess it must have been larger at one time. It is making a cav at size 1 and it has no barracks. That makes me pull my hair out and I cannot spare any.
I would flat sell off everything and abandon it and found a new town instead on the river. You gain back the grass, the lib is doing nothing right now anyway. The rest you do not need in the new town. I would not make units here, with out a barracks.
More hair pulling, you may want to read my tutorial on Regent games in the strat forum. This time it is techs. We see Medicine, Steam, Nat, Industry, Espionage. You got one for a free tech, so I hope it was Nat.
I would suggest you not research optional techs in the IA, there is none you need. You could have been working on RP or already have it by now if you did not do any optional techs.
What would that do for you? It would mean that with rubber you would be pretty safe for few units. You would have artillery and infantry. You would have a boost in worker speed. These are very important.
Not only all of that, but you slowed your race for ToE. That may not be an issue in this game, but it has to be considered. You had selected SciMeth. I selected Electricity for now. Check later to see if you can afford to grab RP first. I would think so, but I have not tried to gauge where the AI is at.
Just that a pre is probably enough, even if they get to SciMeth first.
7 workers and 20 slave at a time when Steam is learned? A big handicap.
I do not like to see very many defenders at this level, attackers are better and you can manage the AI. You are over the limit for support and should have at least 20 more workers.
A lot of dead tiles, do not be afraid to slap a town down in the desert. You can just flip the 1 pop to specialist and let it sit. You gain support and a few beakers.
Workers are spread all over the place. I would want to have them gathered for the most part as I get close to Steam. It looks like some are working mountains already?
A lone worker making a road in the desert, not real important right now is it? A worker and a slave making a mine in a 2 net shield city? Again this is not good planning. It must be a critical task or else a rail. Mostly a rail. A rail net will turn the game for you, it must be top priority.
I only looked at two worker groups and I see others I am sure I would not like. Workers are the key to the empire.
I won't bore you with going through all the cities, but I see a lot of cavs going up in places that should be doing nothing. I think most should be turned into worker builds or settlers. Drop down as many towns as you can fit, get the support up and then get some farms.
Get rails from the core to the Carthage borders. Get units, attackers mostly, moved to that front. Have a crew that works core tiles as soon as you can free them from the rail net.
Disband for shields some of the old junk units. If you need to up lux, do that over MP's. Troops are need to fight. DOW Hannibal as soon as you can. You are more familiar with his status, but I would not think he could be all that strong on offense.
Sorry I was not able to give it better look.
The reason for the ROPs is because I was going to attack Greece,(the cavalry on board the galleons). The MPP is just to keep me safe from the Inca. I left the tundra area alone. Rusuccuru was placed there earlier in the game, before I was too expanded.
