IT 630BC: MM to halt starvation at Utica, increase food in cities that can, and change to taxmen in cities that can't.
570BC: We enter Republic. Massive Uprising at the camp north of Hippo. I check. Four civs have changed ages. India has not, but has Monarchy.
Currency @5th from Korea for ~330g.
Monarchy @6th from India for Currency @6th and ~320g.
19g from Germany (all the had) and RoP, for Currency @7th.
Monotheism @5th from Germany (scientific) for Republic @7th and Monarchy @7th.
All of Ghandi's cash (what we paid him, plus change), and RoP, for Monotheism @6th.
76g and RoP from Mongols for Monotheism @7th.
We have picked up three techs and three diplo-boosting RoPs for ~200g net. No gpt payments. All civs but Russia now tech-parity in the middle ages.
I then take our cash and rush three important temples: Rusicade, Sabratha, and Hippo. Our current income is 37gpt. Start lone scientist on Engineering.
530BC: Rush walls at Hippo, as 8 barb horses move into view. We have a nume and two other units here, and its on a hill. Here's hoping.
510BC: The barbs headed for the Mongol town.
One lone barb penetrated past L Magna, though. We lost a warrior attacking, but did win with our nume from L Magna.
490BC: Well, some of the barbs are back. Situation is a bit dicey with several horse floating around on our north border.
470BC: Korea has settled the iron south of L Minor, in overlap range. At some point, we are going to want to attack and take over this town and the cattle site, but it will take a little while before we are ready. How long to wait will depend on a lot of things. Korea will probably be perm-furious with us after this, so don't act rashly. Certainly the early industrial age is the longest I can imagine holding off, though.
Also, I took a look at Scandinavia... they are rather closer than the map indicates. If they picked us as a target, sailed their ships across the bay and attacked amphibiously with Berserks, we'd be in a heap of trouble. I decide to pay 3gpt for RoP, to try to improve relations. This brings them up to cautious.
450BC: I attack a barb horse in our territory near Hippo with our vet archer. He loses 0-4.
430BC: The Mongols have arrived! They lose one archer attacking the barb horde, but eliminate all but one unit, which then races deep inside our borders. I had sent a spare warrior up from the capital, he attacks and wins, eliminating what looks to be the last of the uprising. The camp is still there, so we could see one or two more harassers, but the big threat is gone.
Our settler has arrived at the yellow dot in the desert, last dot left from my old dotmap. Next player will have to settle. This site sucks now, but could be near oil or saltpeter, and with electricity and rails, will eventually be useful. Might as well get it, and then cash-rush a temple and try to stay ahead culturally of the equally bone dry AI competitiors on the coast. There are no other useful sites. The far north is still open, but sure to be highly infested and too dangerous even if we did send a settler pair.
I also rushed the temple at L Minor (our main wine town). I took a screenshot on my final turn, but forgot to paste it to file and overwrote it when I pasted my report from the text file. Oops.
I'm not going back for another one, though. Sorry.
Our capital is size 9 and capable of reaching 12 most easily. It's so strong on food, it can even do settlers or workers from there if we need them. I have it as one of the cities where I am building a barracks, currently. It already built a temple.
I emphasized temples on my turn, and barracks. I got units into all our towns, but these are mostly cutouts. We have a few barracks due to complete and our border situation is in good shape. Barb threat is under wraps. I deliberately avoided connecting any iron for now. We don't need them for Numes, which replace pikes. We don't need them for swords, with no military campaign on the horizon. I did connect the horses, I urge training of horsemen and numes for now.
Oea, the much-disparaged LK-disapproved-of island village, is bringing in 2 gpt income and hosting our lone scientist, so that important cities don't have to slow their growth to keep our research going. It is also now impregnable to invasion from all but the Vikings, and being farthest from the capital, is not even adding corruption anywhere. With us being commercial, it is even short of total corruption, incredibly enough.
I'm afraid the AI's have already discovered Feudalism, not six turns after they got to the middle ages. That is quite a tech pace. If you see a chance to get two-for-one on techs, go for it, but otherwise we're good for now. We can build numes, horsemen, courthouses, aqueducts, cathedrals, harbors, markets, libraries... we have plenty of tech to hold us for a long time, in terms of what we can actually USE, so I urge saving cash and using it to rush courthouses, harbors, temples, for the next period of time, taking a longer view with our short term economic resources, and only move up in tech when truly choice opportunities present themselves. With the current tech pace, we won't get engineering before the AI's do unless they beeline up the education branch, but you never know. 33 turns left to go.
I also looked at the FP situation. This being deity, we're not likely to expand beyond our current territory for some time. The only site I liked at all was Leptis Magna. It's a little close, but there is a lot of fertile land up there, should we eventually challenge the Mongols for the dyes, etc. This is also the most fertile part of our outlying lands. The wine region is very rugged, and it's closer on the map to the capital than it looks, because of the parallelogram aspect of the tiles. (The world map is mathematically square). On Deity, early FP tends to be more urgent than ideally located FP, and this site actually has strong future potential if we can ever take some of the jungle away from the Mongols. With no rival site even remotely close in total potential, I went ahead and ordered the FP to be started. There is also a harbor underway so that we can get some trade going here soonish.
If Gothmog takes only nine turns this round, we'll have the turn numbers back to normal and not have to bust our brains tracking how many turns are left in the round.
LK38 - 430BC
- Sirian
I left my PTW disk at the hotel, so I wont have access to it again until late Sunday night (playing time doubtful that night). To avoid delaying the game, I will swap places with Reagan. No rush for Reagan to get back, as I will be stretched on Monday with 3 games due. I am glad to pick up some part time work, but I already squeeze 3 billing days in at night (this year 
) which really eat into my gaming time.
I can't figure out what we are up to with settlers - we have a first ring spots unclaimed, but there a settler to claim a 2 square island?
We had another Settler due from Carthage in 4-5 turns who was slotted for the first-ish ring city site to the west. Unfortunately, the shifting barb camp changed that plan. Rather than waste several turns waiting to :slay: the camp (or, worse, lose the Settler to a barb), I sent him to the island and figured the next Settler would catch the close site. Because of their proximity, I figured the Koreans would send a boat to the island if we waited too long. As it turns out, we got all of the city sites we wanted. 
By the way, the Settler was on the Wines because I had to [dance] around the warring Mongols/Russians/Germans and there was a Russian Archer parked on the best city site. I moved out of their path hoping we would be able to take their spot the next turn. 
