Not good, not good at all. I think the problem with this game is our land really sucks, our territory is awful. On top of that we have never seemed to dedicate our resources to anything, we are always halfway doing this or that. We move in one direction, the next player sees problems and tries to move in another direction, th enext player sees problems . . . But the big thing is our land just sucks. Well, without anymore delay:
preturn: Oea, Nora, Theveste, Leptis Minor - changed production from uni to bank, builds faster and our tax rate is more inclined to taxes than science; Hadrumetum temple to granary, plan to let it grow and work coast tiles for commerce; Hippo - knight to merc, we need MPs, happiness is a real issue and is limiting our growth, we cant afford to raise the luxury rate and mps are needed to help our happiness; sell our source of iron to the Mongols for 49 gpt (gasp!!)
(i) - Iroquois come calling to extend peace, I say no way, they sank a galley, mounted warriors appear everywhere, galleys approach Old Spain, and their workers seek refuge elsewhere; Cirta - merc - harbor; Cadiz - Aqueduct - bank (elect to go long route with bank here and work the sea squares for commerce which is desperately needed. My thoughts are use some fishing villages as fishing villages now & slow build improvements, while others build th einprovements, then use those cities as fishing villages and MM the slow building fishing villages to build faster, hope this makes sense
1 - 1000AD - added 3 workers to Hippo & 1 to Utica to get to 7 citizens; Phoenician sinks Iroquois galley & promotes; kill 1 spear, 1 archer, and 6 mounted warriors, no promotions, leaders or losses; builk of forces move towards Tonawanda
- lose sword to Mounted warrior; roman galley shows up off coast of Old Spain, start playing zone defense; Hadratum - granary - warrior (mp), Rusaddir - library - warrior (mp), Sulcis - habor - wealth, Hippo - merc - warrior
2 - 1010AD - pillage Iroquois saltpeter with army, army attacks musket in Tonowanda, wins, but loses 8 HP (whew!), kill 4 MW & continue advance upon whatever that city is , added worker to Hadrum, Rusaddir, & 4 to Sulcis, renog peace with England, get 21 G + 4 gpt
- lose merc & med inf; mongols declare on Babylon; some other ship comes along & knocks off roman galley; utica merc - warrior (mp), Oea - bank - warrior (mp)
3 - 1020AD - kill 1 spear & 1 mounted warrior; almost everyone has all techs except magnetism, we still need 11 turns, thogh research can soon be turned up, but it's still not going to happen; sell Music Theory to Zulu for 2 G & WM, we now have full view of Iroquois island
- Hippo & Utica build warriors, bth start on warrior again
4 - 1030AD - kill 3 muskets w/ no losses, capture Tonawanda (spices & saltpeter) elect not to raze it, but also elect not to defend it: any open territory is an invitation for another civ to plop down a settler while we are at war, it will flip most likely, why not let the iroquois capture it back, then recapture to whittle down the population & reduce flip risk?; rush barracks in Centralia for 60 G; adjust science rate, magnetism in 6 turns w/ +5 GPT now that old gpt deals have expired, but will this be enough, I doubt it.
Iroquois recapture Tonowanda, steal 1 G from its vaults; Hippo, Utica, & Oea build warriors - warrior, Centralia - barracks - harbor
-seems to be dogpile on Babylon, we have alliance with them against Rome, the Mongols & Zulu have both delcared on them
5 - 1040AD - kill spear & longbow to retake Tonawanda (note: am waiting for army to heal before real action), kill a couple more spear & a longbow, no losses, sink iroquois galley (as I play zone defense in Old Spain, my cats bombard their galleys along the coast); Zulu have only one city, in hopeless terrain, ally w/ Babs against them for dyes & 84 G; Babylon, India, & Mongols have Magnetism
- we lose a sword to an archer, Iroquois & Babs sign MA against Rome; Babs ask us for MA vs Mongols, we must say no due to current deal with them which rakes in 49 gpt; Utica & Hippo - warrior - warrior, Rusicade - wariror - harbor, Saldae - med inf - warrior, Cirta - harbor - aqueduct
6 - 1050AD - army needs only 1 more turn to heal, send forces towards St Regis, fortify 1 knight in TYonawanda to possibly quell resistance so I can starve since Iroquois not advancing on the city now; kill 1 spear, 1 archer, 1 MW; move warriors around to needed MP sites
- Iroquois got iron from somewhere, they have knights, kills a med inf; Utica - wariror - warrior, Hippo - warrior - university, Sabratha - lirbary - uni, Oea - wariror - uni (slow build);
7 - 1060AD - Army kills 1 spear @ St. Regis; start rehooking up saltpeter; realize Rusicade has never built harbor, add it to build queue to be built after bank?; even with those knights, I think we can wipe out Iroquois with what we have on their island, I hope depending upon if they have any more muskets and if they get too many pikes
- Iroquois kill sword, but 2 of their knights lose to 1 of ours & he goes Elite, has to retreat to heal down to 2 HP; Utica - warrior - bank, Saldae - warrior - warrior
8 - 1070AD - Army kills spear & capture St. Regis, kill Knight, not usre what to do about 2 captured Iroquois cities, hope they don't flip??
-Iroquois plop 2 MW's on our mainland, Rome does the same w/ a Knight by St. Regis; Egypt & Bab sign MA vs Rome, Magnetism discovered; Leptis Minor - bank - uni; Tonawanda flips
9 - 1080AD - not a good time for Tonawanda to flip, we had one knight inside hoping to quell so we could starve, another knight outside waiting to retake if it should flip, the iroquois killed our knight waiting to retake right before the city flipped; we pillage the saltpeter we had just hooked up, move all units out of St. Regis, either the Romans or Iroquois who both have a knight in the area will take it back. We trade Magnetism to England (or was it Egypt?) for Theory of Gravity. Move some units around to deal with the 2 MWs on our mainland.
Prolly should not have done the trade because I am going to stop here. THe MWs should not be able to take any cities, but may kill a few units, but we should have units in place to kill them next turn, 2 swords & a med inf.
Perhaps we should head for Salamance to pillage their capitol and ruin their trade, my war efforts seem to have been a great failure, perhaps it is even time to sue for peace, but we still have that army, maybe we should just raze everything? but doing that means other civs will claim that territory. My plan was to get the saltpeter hooked up and then upgrade our knights to cavs by trading for Mil Trad, but the flip killed that.
We need more units for this war, bottom line, because we dont have enough units to fight the war and take cities, fight off the counter attacks, and park outside cities to retake the flips. I don't think there were anymore units up there then when I had the last turns. Prolly I should have halted infrastructure, this is what I mean about trying to do different things at the same time, if we are going to take over Iroquois we need to just do it and put infra on hold period, once they got iron & built those knights . . .
Anyway, there is a trade with India ivory for iron that can be cancelled at any time to build units unless we decide to abandon this plan. I think the war was either premature or we waited too long. It would have been good to try to invade with cats / swords, now things could get messy once Nationalism is discovered and MPPs are signed . . .
Research, IMO, we should start a prebuild sometime for ToE, research mediciine, which I started but no research done yet so it can be changed with no penalty, and work towards Sci Meth, then take those 2 techs which give us what we need for Hoover's (another prebuild started about the same time as the one for ToE, but this prebuild needs to have a river in its radius because that's a requirement for Hoover.
On a positive note, thanx to all the warrior MPs happiness is not so much of a concern, very few specialists are being used, with the exception of the ICS in Old SPain of course. Lux is still at 20%, but will likely remain there. At some point we also need to switch to Democracy to continue our bid for space race, but the war is in the way of that now.
I only hope when we get Steam Power (which Germany, Babylon, Mongols, and somebody else have) we end up with about 5 coal resources.
Unfortunately, my temporary playing solution is about to expire and I will have to take another abscence from this game, hope I get back before it is over, good luck.