My goal was to get the economy on track. We're up to 20% science, so we have recovered a bit already. More recovery is good.
First things first, though. We built the Pyramids. In addition to the great engineer points it gives (which are great), they provide us the option to change our civics. Representationism is my default choice. It helps with happiness in our largest cities and it makes all our specialists much more valuable. It's pretty cheap and quite valuable.
Since I could do the religion civic in 1 turn also, I went ahead and did that. So I also revolted into a religion. I picked Judaism because that's what our cities had and they get more benefit from the 25% bonus for buildings. I started spreading it around a bit. We should get Judaism into all our cities to get this bonus.
I also don't like Bactrian's build here. It has no improved tiles, only one building, and it's spending time on a spy. Investing in a granary and then a forge in a city (early in the game, at least) always pays off tremendously. Granaries are cheap for us and almost always should be our first build. They help cities grow so much faster that they actually can produce later things faster than if they built those things before a granary! I switched to a granary to get Bactrian growing. I also started to divert a few workers in this direction, though they haven't made it yet.
A good thing...
counter-balanced by a bad thing...
At least missing out on Hanging Gardens got us some cash.
While our science is still only at 20%, we're producing a TON more beakers. When I got the game, Code of Laws had 8 turns to go. I spent two turns in anarchy. Still, I researched Code of Laws AND Currency AND acquired Calendar in my 10 turns. Better civics, a bit of attention to where people are working in cities, and our economy turns around. I didn't even finish any courthouses (or build any markets yet, though we should start one in Washington ASAP).
Empire overview:
We're about ready to start expanding south. We really should build a good dotmap. A dotmap plans out where cities will go to maximize their value. Arkenstone can focus on market(s) and courthouses and maybe build a settler, but I'm not sure he'll get one planted yet. We also need a couple more troops to take out the barb city in the south.
I did build a couple workers. We need more. Boston is set to build another one, but even another one or two would be good, because we can start to build plantations on our dyes and sugar and such. We should do so, but we need to keep up with other growing cities and get to work on Bactrian and have workers to send to new cities, so another 3-5 workers would be quite valuable, especially with all our jungle.
Have good birthday fun, arkenstone!


![Party [party] [party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif)
Have fun getting
