Need Some Advice

[dankok8]

Hello,

I've been playing prince for a while now without too many problems but then this last game is not going as well. I think I can win but a wrong move here could result in a disaster so I wanna ask for advice.

This game was an isolated start and I played Willem of the Dutch from Lonely Hearts series. Upon meeting all other civs, I was actually at technological parity with most and quite ahead of a few others. In order to prevent Hannibal from taking over his entire continent (he was the AI tech leader when I met him with 3 cities and I had 10ish), I set up a few cities there as I beelined astronomy. He declared war on me but I repelled his invasion easily as my crossbows tore his macemen apart. The maintenance of the overseas empire started to drain my treasury pretty badly and my research went down from 80% to 60% (~200beaker/turn loss) and other AI's started passing me by technologically and Mansa launched a suprise attack but I managed to retake . Since then, I have liberated those cities as a colony led by George Washington - first to reduce my maintenance and second in hope that my colony which had Buddhism in his cities would befriend the Buddhist block and provide me with techs. It worked!! My research is back at 90% and I am roughly on par in tech with the leaders. So, what do I do now?!?

Maybe if I found some corporations, it could help my economy and it also wouldn't hurt to build up some military eh? (I'm dead last in power along with backwards Hatty)

 

[Refar]

To me it looks like a "turtle to space" game
Dont take turtle too literally - you still need some offensive firepower, just if case you need to stop someone shooting for culture or launching before you do... (Mansa has lots of land, might become quite a pain in the spacerace...)

But You just past half time so generally all options are open, however some might be more difficult than others... Many continents are smallish... Domination - not to mention Conquest - would be quite tedious and require lots of naval action

 

[mystyfly]

I would revolt out of Burocracy and into Nationalism. Draft as many Rifleman as possible (in your Globe Theatre City (R-something). After Assembly Line put your research straight into Artillery, and after you build your factories, build almost nothing but Artilleries and some more Infantry. Sail some spies into HRE-lands. Make sure you have enought ships. Load your units onto a ship, sail towards HRE-lands. Station them in a way, that you can attack as many cities as possible in a turn. Your spies will serve as sentries or, if you have enought EPs, Support City Revolts. Try to bribe as many civs into war with Charlie as possible. Best some turns before you DOW him, to destract his military.
As you said, your last in Power. I guess Charlie is first, or probabely Hannibal. But after some years of heavy military production, you should come close to his power. Fortunately, he has no defensive pacts.
If you still don't get too close to his military power, try this: Don't land your force, attack from the ships. If you take the city, raze it. So he won't be able to destroy your whole SOD (except if he gets your ships..).
You can also sue for peace after some time (getting Physics) and reDOW later. After Charlie is out of the way, The World is yours (then attack... Zara? who doesn't build many units and is the first to run away in techs I think).

Overall, tech situation and relations look good. So you can as well go to space...

However, this advice comes from a warmongerer and you're free to ignore it...

 

[dankok8]

Actually, Zara is a score leader and has the largest contiguous empire by far but both he and Charlie (the tech leaders) are pleased with me and them 2 + Justinian are all Buddhist and friendly with each other so war with one likely means war with all 3 (they are all religious fanatics) and I'd need tremendous resources for that. I'd be best off attacking Hannibal (he's right beside my vassal America and I already have some troops stationed there) since he already declared on me or maybe Mansa or Hatty who are very backwards? ideas? I'm in State Property now but I'd like to found a corp and spread it around for some money particularly to Zara to destroy his economy.