Pre-Turn
I surveyed our position to refresh myself on where we are in the world. We are still struggling to catch up but things don't seem utterly impossible at the moment. I'm still not convinced we can actually manage a win but I'm still willing to try. I made peace with Hatty since Cathy has already made peace and we are not in a position to get serious about war. I managed to get 60 gold in addition to the peace treaty. I noticed we are researching Economics. I don't think this was a bad choice but I think Scientific Method might have been better. We don't have The Great Library or a large number of monasteries so we're not going to lose much in the way of beakers. JC and Cathy don't yet have SM so it would be a good trade if we can get to it before they do.
Turn 1
Turn 2
Spread Buddhism to Neopolis.
Turn 3
Hatty asks for Open Borders. I considered it but decided to decline in order to keep Cathy happy. I figured she wouldn't be too happy with us if we started trading with Hatty. Cathy appeared to be upset with Washington though when I last spoke to her. Perhaps she's picked someone else to hate for a while.
Turn 4
Turn 5
JC asks to trade world map for world map. I chose to haggle a bit and managed to get 60 gold in addition to his world map in exchange for our world map. We finished Economics so I went to the civics screen right away and debated about our options. I noticed we had Serfdom available and could chose it for no additional upkeep and no anarchy since we are spiritual. I revolted to Free Market and Serfdom. We don't have any real way to take advantage of Caste System and our workers still have some improving to do so Serfdom seemed like a good choice since it wouldn't cost us any more, at least not at the moment anyway.
I looked at possible tech trades and noticed that Hatty did not yet have Economics. I wasn't sure if I should make such a trade since Cathy might get upset. I went to look at relations and noticed she is neutral with Hatty despite the war. Apparently, she likes Hatty's civics choices, doesn't mind so much that Hatty razed a Russian city, and isn't too awfully upset by Hatty's cultural pressure. So net relations are 0 with Hatty. Hatty, on the other hand is reasonably annoyed with Cathy but not furious. Cathy seems to be much more annoyed towards Washington and the feeling looks to be mutual. So, I figure she won't mind too much if we trade a tech to Hatty. I trade Economics to Hatty in exchange for Engineering, her world Map, and 450 gold. She wouldn't budge on any other techs. I tried to get Gunpowder or Replaceable Parts but would have settled for Liberalism or Nationalism. She was only willing to go with Engineering so I settled for that and grumbled a bit. We could use Engineering of course but its a cheap tech at this point and I would have preferred something a little more valuable to us. At least it's one more tech closer to parity with JC and Cathy.
Turn 6
Turn 7
Turn 8
Turn 9
Turn 10
JC asked for a trade embargo against MM. Our relations aren't bad with MM and I figured the -1 with JC wouldn't hurt us too much. Hopefully, it will fade soon. JC seems to be antagonizing everybody. I didn't really think it would be prudent for us to join him in that nonsense.
All in all, we are slowly gaining ground I think. We've passed Cathy in score for the moment since Hatty apparently captured and razed one of her cities. It would have been nicer if Hatty had been the one to lose a city since we will probably never get her vote. BTW, the war was technically illegal and therefore we've technically lost. It appears that Cathy was the one to start trouble by attacking Hatty. We aren't supposed to be supporting aggression. Unfortunately, being buddy buddy with Cathy is probably our one chance to get some votes along with JC. Of course, if JC starts a war and asks for help, we'll be in violation there too if we join the effort. From a normal game standpoint, it would be smart to help him and keep him happy but variant wise, it's against the rules. I guess we should decide if we want to pull this one out of the hat bad enough to say screw the rules or if we want to stick to the rules more strictly from here on out and probably lose.
I went with mostly infrastructure builds even though doing so is probably treading on thin ice. I'm torn between building units that will need upgrading or building science and gold multipliers which are sorely needed. We now have a market, grocer, and bank in Delhi which helped out a bunch. I was able to kick the science up to 80% when the grocer completed. We still have a decent surplus to support units or build a treasury for upgrades. I hate to drop our science to 0% for mass upgrading later so I've been gambling by not building medieval units when I am hoping to get the techs for grens and riflemen soon. As soon as SM is finished, we need to see what we can get for it from Cathy and JC. We should probably trade to Cathy first since trading to JC first and then waiting a turn to see what Cathy now has available would be risky. There is a good chance JC will be taking advantage of SM too and for free
However, getting GP and RR from JC and then picking up Rifling or Chemistry from Cathy on the next turn would get our military up to par quickly. I'm just not sure if we could pull it off without screwing ourselves. Cathy is bound to have something JC wants and he will probably screw us over by trading it to her first.
After SM, I recommend we make a beeline for Mass Media. There are some good techs that we can trade to our pals along the way. Military techs can be obtained through trade. Also, Liberalism would be a good tech to pick up soon in a trade or as a gift. Free Speech and Free Religion would give us a decent boost. I think we might have a shot at beating Cyrus to Mass Media but we need to act quickly which means we don't get ourselves sidetracked on techs which we can do without for now. I know we need to get current in the military department but I think we can do that by trading to JC and Cathy. Getting Emancipation soon will be necessary but I think we can get by without it for a little while.
Current Roster:
LuvToBuild -> just played
pigswill ->
UP
Krockel -> autoskip
FoolontheHill ->
on deck
omurtag ->
Cosmichail ->
)
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I've also thought about making it an OCC for an added challenge, maybe with a custom inland sea map and single city isle in the middle. I've thought it would be interesting to try Ghandi in Warlords with an abundance of food for specialists.
