The Good Witch of the South is Dead (wait what!!!...which SG is this
)
I played about 12 turns. I was going to stop last turn when Rifling finished since we could decide what to do about bulbs and Sci Meth, but I was in position to easily take Mansa's last city. Even though we had tons of gold that turn, I ran 0% tax on Steam for the last turn. We have MoM now, so we may want to hold onto 1 GS for a Golden Age. Oh...despite running an engineer and 2 artists, I popped another GS. The NE city needs to grow back a bit and then we can push for an odd GP. When we obsolete TGL soon, then it will lower the odds for a GS. I haven't checked other cities yet though to determine if we might be able to pop one fast with some adjustments. Not sure if Parth is still active.
I made several trades in the early turns. Picked up Econ from Just and Optics from Pacal on the cheap and with a good bit of gold thrown in. I then trade Optics to Wang and Mansa for big chunks of as seen below. At one point I had close to 2500 gold in the bank. Except for the 1 turn I mentioned above at 0%tax, I ran 100% research the whole TS and we still have a lot of gold that we can use to upgrade Curs. Finished Rep Parts, started Rifling, then noticed Biz had steel and we had a lot to offer him, so I put a couple of turns into Steel to get a trade in our favor (see below).
Mansa Trade:
Wang Trade:
Pre-attack Mansa trade:
Biz to War:
At first I thought about putting Biz on Wang's case. There's a couple of reasons I didn't. First, Wang had a pretty good military tech advantage on Biz and with him already having units heading in his direction towards Just, I didn't want Wang to possible quick cap Biz. Second, since I'm attacking Mansa, I figured Biz might help out a bit. I bribed him to war a few turns before attacking so that he would get in position. It worked out well for us.....
Biz Trade:
I was surprised when Biz got Steel. Figured he was going for Nat or something. This was too good to pass up.
Djienne:
It took a few turns to get ready to attack. Obviously, I had to get Curs healed and moved from a good distance into position. I felt the best approach was to enter through Biz's land and hit Mansa in the center. Plus, I could shadow Biz's troops. It was less blind than heading straight for Kumbeh. Went I get near Djienne, Biz was already next to the city with a huge stack and he was bombarding and taking hits. I waited a couple of turns before attacking pretty good defense at this point, but did take out several Mali units in the field easily. I suffered only 1 loss taking this city, so it really worked out to save units for the next attacks.
So, I put the few hurt units into Djienne with the medic. Moved the sentry Cur up to a hill to check out Tim. Tim was decently guarded but I felt we had the units to take it, so I moved all healthy units onto the hill and took Tim the next turn. Quite a few losses on Tim as I did not have the luck I had with Djienne, but it fell and we still had plenty of units and a nice little stack of reinforcements just arriving via Germany.
Next turn I moved into position to take Kumbeh. It fell fairly easily but we took a couple of losses. With Mali culture in the area gone, I was able to move all healthy units into position to take Gao the next turn and fall it did. Mansa had nothing at this point. Last turn I ended Mansa for good as there were some healthy units that could move into position on that last city and it only had 2 LBs.
Other notes:
1) I spread quite a bit of Bud. Only build Temples now.
2) Cap got a grocer which it needed badly. Whipped a grocer in HE city as well and it has grown back nicely.
3) Windmills are built all over
4) Note that Medina has 2 settled GGs. I've started watermills in that city to beef up hammers. We might consider IW there, but may not bother. Regardless, we should max hammers and make it a unit pump city. It had good potential.
5) Biz ended the war between Wang/Just on the second to last turn. I voted no to keep Wang busy, but it was not enough. I actually thought about voting yes, since Wang took a city from Just and I don't want him capped. So really it probably works out for the best. Wang was going to destroy Just like we will next....
6) Somehow, that first west Arab city got visited by a barb galley. It had just come out of revolt so there was nothing I could do about it. I did whip a tireme and have the fish netted again. I building a settler for a spot just north to grab the fish.
Overall, I think we should definitely take out Just next. He has some nice shinies and it would clean up our back yard. Wang will be the most trouble by far I think. We can probably take Just and then grab Germany and the Mayans to win the game without bothering with Wang. Of course, we will have to keep tabs on our relations with Wang. Wang got up to Pleased with us, but I had to deny a couple of requests.
As for tech, I don't think we really need much. Probably Sci Meth and Physics for airships should be more than enough to clean the map.
I think we are fairly ok on troops for Just. I'd build/whip a few more Cavs to be sure and then we an pillage horse to build some WEs.
