[BTS] Midgame Indecision - Help me bring home my first deity win

[earthy]

I started a fractal NHNE deity game with Gandhi, and I ended up in semi isolation with Charlemagne. He was stacking hard on my border in the early game so I was putting a decent amount of whips into axes and spears, but I managed to get a beg in after some autospread and he seemed to change his mind. Couldn't really gift him a city as my land was already so limited.

I grabbed optics @ 150AD, then grabbed 425AD astro(useless Charly doesn't tech alpha -.-). I met Monty, Hannibal, and SB on another continent, and all three were fighting each other.

In terms of strategic resources, I have copper and horse but no iron. I did find Iron on two different islands nearby, and my next move will be settling those.

Spoiler My Land :

Spoiler Islands :

The triple food island seems like a no brainer. For the Iron I'm inclined to head towards the sheep and ignore the barb islands. I don't want to go overboard expanding when I'll be warring soon enough, so I'm thinking I should only settle 2-3 islands.

and finally the tech situation:

Spoiler :

Now depending on what the two unknown civs are up to(probably not much), I can likely still grab Lib if I want it. Libbing steel or in a dream world rifling could be nice, but I think I'll only be able to get one bulb for education(not in caste and just changed to HR). Maybe if I go Philo after paper and start a GA with the next guy I can get two more, but not sure how the timing will work on that.

Really the main thing I'm unsure of is who to attack, and what units to do it with. My first thought is Charly, but I don't know if it's a wise decision. He'll never declare or get bribed on me, he's a bit of a unit spammer, and if I know his tech path like I think I do, he'll very shortly go guilds-gunpowder->MT and upgrade his HA hoarde. Cuirassiers likely won't work(100% culture cities with PRO LB's ). Rifles + Cannons could get the job done, but that's a lot of tech and who knows if Monty reaches astro and declares on me before I'm ready.

So then the other option is taking out one of the other continents. SB looks like an easy target and no one likes him, but if I do that I'll almost certainly have to continue into Monty who's sure to have a staggeringly large army. Cuir might do the job against SB, but I doubt they'll be enough to continue against Monty with. Knowing that Charly will head towards MT, maybe there's some play to be made where I tech towards rifling and trade for MT, then conquer the other continent with Cav.

Any suggestions, tips? The save is attached incase anyone wants to poke around. edit: and yeah, I know Agra should be working the cottage ^^ fixed that after the screenshots.

 

[sampsa]

Seems a big mistake to pay 9pt for a useless army for a long time. Well, now with galleons you might consider using them to raze the barb city (unlock HE perhaps?) and found one 2N to catch fish+iron. Not sure if going for liberalism is mandatory with such limited bulbs. The other continent is horribly weak for this date - Hanni at 4 cities and Monty has just captured 5th. You should have loaded a scout to a caravel to meet everyone asap. Pretty sure cuirs will cut through such backwards AIs if you just destroy their stack in the open. Note that Carthage has tons of wonders and even Monty has MoM. I don't think your tech advantage will fade away soon though so you can go for cannons if you want to be safe.

Edit: you also should've put only some into settlers and focus on growing instead of stagnating. Now you could whip them which is so much better than slow building.

 

[earthy]

I don't think the unit cost was quite that bad for too long. The three caravels, the galleon, and a few whips just crept up on me pretty quick! For the longest time I was scared to delete them because I didn't know if he was truly done plotting as well. It's going to get even worse when the 2nd galleon and two settlers pop, so if I don't go raze that barb city I'll definitely have to delete some.

Regarding the scout, do you think they're all on the same continent? On the far right of that barb city screenshot I can see a border, but it looks the same color as SB. I thought it was going to be 2 people on their own continent maybe. Also how do you know Monty only has 5 cities? I thought the # displayed on the scoreboard was dependent on EP or something. I've had a number of scenarios where it will say like "1" and then when I scout them out they have 6 cities.

Re:whipping settlers, you're right. In Delhi I was waiting for enough overflow to get a WB the next turn to follow, but It probably makes more sense to whip the settler and slowbuild the workboat while growing. Need a few turns in caste for a border pop anyways if I want all 3 food. Varanasi I didn't want to whip cottages, but I could have just avoided that by 3 popping the settler in Agra..

If I do go for Cuir, should I try to get pretty much all of the tech from Charly? I could head for music and trade that + optics for Nat most likely, then astro for MT if he gets it in time. I guess I'm not too worried about boosting Charly this game? Seems like we could just become monsters together and I can go for Dom without ever having to fight him.

 

[Fippy]

I would look at taking over Charlie, he's useful but here you only need Cuirs and not much Galleon transports.
Would make sense to build some cheap Cats and land them next to Vienna with Galleons when you declare later, along with Axes and other cheap units that can be sacrificed against top defenders (while trying to keep all Cuirs).

I would also switch into Caste asap, and create 2 GS for Edu.
1 GM if manageable, for upgrades.
Engineer in Delhi makes no sense, want GS

Calendar to SB for Medi + 50g, then focus on getting Philo in a trade for Paper + Optics.
Copper for happy + 4g with Monty.

This effort would not support settling new cities right now, but you could deliver one settler to triple seafood.
Only place worth settling imo.
Bring at least 1 workboat as well if you do.

Markets = nope, Observatory in Bombay can be finished, all other builds should then be forge, barracks, stables when available, HAs, Cats.
Mixing peaceful with war plans will get you into trouble on deity.