Need help making decisions in my first serious monarch game.

[Alsn]

Greetings, I'm a long time reader of this forum and havent posted much except for the occasional "fun fact" post.

I would like some input on what options I have in this game im playing, settings are monarch, standard size continents with random leader, normal speed(leader is suleiman of the ottomans).

Some background to the screenshots first. Being philosophical and starting with pigs and a good flood plains site for the second city i managed to get a nice tech lead thanks to placing some strategic academies as well as bulbing philosophy(which, as it turns out, I havent needed to trade away for anything important). I started pretty lonely on the north half of my continent with some nice cottage city locations however so I initially went for code of laws and built up a bunch of cities. During my initial expansion ghandi, me and hammurabi formed a hindu block and we decided that we would all hate monty for ever and ever.

Now, my first plan had been to get knights and together with some spy riots take over my continent and out-tech the other continent and possibly win either via space race or domination. My thoughs right now are thus:

Who should I attack? If I look purely at location ghandi would be the perfect target, the only problem is that he is friendly to me and hammurabi likes him more than me.
Monty is much further away although vassalizing him wouldn't be very hard I believe. Hammurabi(who at this time I consider the greatest threat as he has the most advanced military techs of the three not to mention some good land) is by far in the most awkward position for me to attack since I will have to go through gandhi and my empire would be very spread out when I win.

Should I even attack at all? I do have some very good land to work with and winning via rushing mass media and getting ghandi/hammurabi to vote for me shouldn't be impossible either.

Oh and yea, as you can see in the screenshots i recently poped a golden age because i wanted to be able to spam knights quicker.

Anyway, any input appreciated, screenshots and save follows.

Spoiler :

Top part of my land.

Bottom part of my land as well as most of Ghandi's.

Hammurabi/Ghandi/Monty

Lower part of Hammurabi/Monty

Relations

Techs

Save file.

Oh and please excuse the FPS meter in the screenshots, its FRAPS.

 

[Cam_H]

Alsn,

Well done on your game to date - having the score lead is usually encouraging.

I think that you're really at a watershed point - you've got to throw all your weight behind churning out a SoD of Knights and 'going hammer and tongs' at Montezuma, or alternately consolidate your empire by expanding west and filling holes with more cities within your empire.

If you'd be satified with a spaceship win, I'd head west - there's at least two Barbarian cities there and probably room for plenty more cities. You've got at least one city site in the centre of your empire, plus a small Wheat-Copper coastal upstream from your capital. You could have a dozen or more cities under your control with this expansion. If Montezuma plays up you should be ready to strike and grab the Gems site too while dogpiling on him. From there you're well poised to just tech' on to a space win provided you can defend yourself.

A few observations;

Hook up and develop neglected resources; Wheat and 2x Incense.

If going 'developmental', then review your Civics - Golden Ages are great for racking up points - Pacifism & Caste for a few turns at least. With that said - still plenty of units required - your PowerChart is 'nothing to write home about'.

In addition to units, you need more Granaries and Forges - esp. in your high production cities. Shame about no Gems, Gold, or Silver, but who knows whether there's something to the west? (Really this area should have been scouted out years ago).

You need more Workers - far too many cities are working undeveloped tiles.

The settled Great Engineer in Konya surprised me a little - I'd have looked at rushing The Parthenon in one of your non- focussed cities (so you're not popping too many Great Artists because of The Parthenon). It's a 'can of worms' debate whether Philosophical leaders should or shouldn't leverage The Parthenon, but I'm a vote for 'yes'.​

As before, you're at a point where the game can go successfully one way or the other, but if you are going to take Montezuma's northern cities, then you really should be really focussed on churning out a stack of at least a dozen Knights during this Golden Age. I suspect that you have enough terrain to pull off a space win provided you can keep Montezuma under control, and there isn't a bunch of Financial leaders on the other continent(s) all peacefully sharing tech' between them.

Best of luck!