STRATEGY DISCUSSION:
I haven't had time to give it a go yet, but my thought-up strategy is to:
a) Continue to cripple Julius
b) Get Pottery and Writing
c) Not capture any/many more Cities for now
d) Settle a City or two towards Germany, to secure some land
e) Anything else?--additional random comments
The details:
a) Continue to cripple Julius
In support of crippling Julius, the goal would be to explore his territory using stacks of Jaguars. Some Jaguars would have to defend Rome, while others would stand "guard" between Julius' western Cities and our homelands, preferably in Forests.
The idea would be to secure a Forest and "funnel" Julius' troops that head towards our capital such that they will have to walk onto flat, unforested terrain if they want to walk past our Jaguars. So, we don't need a total wall of Jaguars--we just need enough to force Julius' Archers to walk between our Jags onto flat terrain, where they will be relatively easy pickings and free Great General points.
We may want to try and capture ONE City between our capital and Rome, so that we'll be able to have a Trade Route connection between those Cities.
Otherwise, Julius will simply have Cities and Archers. We'll Pillage his improvements and use our Woodsman II promotions to keep hunting-for and stealing his Workers. Yes, that's abusive, but letting an AI get re-established by making Peace would be abusive and downright criminal towards OUR people.
b) Get Pottery and Writing
Pottery = Cottages. I don't care what anyone else says, if we don't have The Pyramids and if we don't have a lot of Gold, Gems, or Silver Sources, it's going to be hard to justify skipping Cottages.
Even WITH The Pyramids, Representation only provides a limited amount of Happiness, such that feeding Specialists off of Grassland Farms isn't going to work all that well when you're short on Happiness Resources, like we are.
So, to me, Cottages are the way to go.
Researching Writing will mean the time when we will have to decide whether or not to give Peace to Julius. He may not want to Open Borders with us, due to the War Declaration's hatred, but if there is a chance that he'll give us Open Borders, we can always take a Cease Fire for a couple of turns to see if he changes his attitude towards us. If we can get Open Borders with him, then Peace can last for a while, but if not, then we'll probably redeclare, to prevent him from building up too much again.
c) Not capture any/many more Cities for now
Like I said, we really want to connect Rome via Trade Routes. I don't have the map open in front of me, so PERHAPS we could use a really long, twisting, winding Road that goes AROUND all of Julius' Cities. More likely, though, we'll have to go THROUGH Julius' remaining land, which means capturing another City of his ONCE we have Roads built towards it.
Capturing said City BEFORE we have the Roads built will just hurt us. So, choke Julius, build Roads (say, on Forests while a Jaguar or two guards the Worker or Workers building the Roads) which will connect up our capital to the targeted City, as well as Rome to the targeted City (if Roads don't already exist there). It's your call as to whether or not to complete the Road fully right into Julius' territory before capturing the City--probably no need, as you'll have a few turns' worth of City Revolt in which to complete the Road to the captured City.
Surely, you'll be able to capture at least one more City, given enough time to build Roads to it, right?
The other Cities, unless you see Gold, Silver, or Gems, will be junk and just a big drain on our maintenance. It's better to use them as experience farms (killing Archers) and Worker farms (captured using Woodsman II movement).
I would also strongly suggest that you gather your roaming Jaguars in group of THREE. One to attack/defend from an Archer, while the other two to guard the wounded unit until it heals. You can feasibly still fight another battle with one of the two unwounded units while the first wounded one is healing, while still having a fully-healthy stack defender this way.
If you play it risky and send out lone Jaguars, you may lose them over time to spammed multiple-Archer attacks, which would then only serve to leave the rest of your army more vulnerable, as you'd have less Jaguars to defend the remaining Jaguars. Try not to fall into this self-fulfilling trap.
d) Settle a City or two towards Germany, to secure some land
Again, we'll want Road connections to these City locations, for Trade Routes, so continuing to capture and leverage Julius' Workers will help in this regard, while our Cities focus on producing Settlers. We'll also want to quickly set up and start working Cottages in the newly-founded Cities.
We should probably consider working a Riverside Cottage as our FIRST improvement in some of these distant Cities, then only switching to an improve Food Resource once our economy can handle doing so.
Our economy is going to take some balancing in this manner, until we can get the Foreign Trade Routes going (from Writing and a Road built to Germany). Don't forget to complete the Road south to Germany after setting up a City closer to down there. Or, even skip settling down there and just build a long Road (guard your Worker with 2 Jaguars, though, as a long Road without Cultural Borders spawn-busting will mean that Barbs will try and take out your Worker).
e) Anything else?--additional random comments
I see no reason to try to be the first to building a Wonder. For example, we're not likely going to get The Oracle in time to get a free tech from it, given our tech situation. The Great Lighthouse is probably far out of reach and we aren't likely going to have a ton of Coastal Cities, anyway.
I don't have the saved game open but I remember Obsolete mentioning something about getting access to Stone.
If we DO get access to Stone (which means also researching Masonry to build a Quarry) and if we have a City that has nothing better to build, then we could try and build a Stone-based Wonder for Failure Gold.
Sailing might also be useful for getting Trade Routes with Frederick, after we learn Writing, if we explore the western Coast. Still, given how our slow tech pace is going to be one of our bigger issues with this turnset, I'd rather just invest the captured-Worker turns into building Roads and skip Sailing for now.
Focus on working Riverside Cottages as much as you can and I think that we'll be able to recover reasonably nicely by the end of the turnset.
After Writing, what should we research? I would target Alphabet. We might or might not be able to trade for some techs (don't kill Julius off if you want to be able to trade any time soon). We might or might not also be able to steal a cheap tech using Alphabet's Spies.
After Alphabet, I would suggest targeting Currency. Chopped Markets with hired Merchant Specialists and/or extra Trade Routes will go a long way towards recovering our economy.
So, that would be my strategic approach and I don't mind if others try to follow it, or even just incorporate parts of it.
one day and -6
I would have played things quite differently if I'd not played half of the turn set before seeing your post.
