Gentlemen, I played my turns. This will be a "general" report as I didn't keep a turn log. I had intended to play 20, but at turn 13 (I think) I had to quit. Sorry for the odd numbers.
Essentially, I inherited an army that is strung too thinly, so I spread them thinner and pillaged. A lot. We started out losing 8 gold/turn and ended up losing 24 per turn and I still made about 100 gold. I razed one barb city (and got 4 gold for it), but the rest was pillaging.
My first two turns saw insane numbers of barbarians, so I made a decision. No more fog. Period. We had a lot of internal cities with two archers or two archers and a warrior. Those guys are heading out to bust all the fog there is.
In the meantime, I took troops heading toward the front and temporarily placed them on strategic hills. As the scrubs arive, we should put the premier troops back to the front.
In some cases, I even have superfluous workers busting fog, but I think there are maybe two fog tiles on the whole map now. This leaves many cities weakly defended, but from what? There's absolutely no way a German, Japanese, or Aztec troop can get through unseen and barbs can no longer materialize.
Meanwhile, I have lots of grenadiers heading to the front. On my last turn, I used the whip everywhere I could think to. THis means that about six or seven more grenadiers will pop on turn one for whoever is up.
Our enemies are starting to get well armed again. Biz set up a city about three tiles north of Berlin. I only found it by sending out a fog buster on turn 2. When I found it, he had two longbows in it and my fog busting grenade took one of them. IBT, biz moved about six or seven troops into the city and was a couple more on the way.
My grenadier was trapped, I figured, so I used him to pillage biz's iron and a town down to a hamlet.
Toku's also been getting bold, sending muskets at us. One luck bastard killed a grenadier, a catapult, and a spear before I could catch him (drawback to pillaging parties is small groups get hurt). When I did, he was combat IV, though I think I killed him with no additional loss.
On the tech front, we're at 50% still, but we're losing 24/turn. We've got 300+ in the tiller, so we can keep that pace for a bit. However, there should be more pillaging if you want to keep it up longer.
Replacable parts came in in 1821 and rifling is due in 12 (I think). I say, as soon as rifling comes in, we 0% the slider and upgrade every grenadier we've got. Then whip all of our other cities down to one population and throw absolutely everything at them in one fell swoop. In the meantime, don't attack. Let's stage a grand battle the queen can be pround of.
This one's for all the marbles boys and girls.
I attached a screenie of globe view with military shown. Those two circles are the only bits of fog (not in enemy hands) on the whole map.
Edit: I realized by looking closer at the screenie that we're at -39/turn. Not -24. Inflation must have gone up again on that last turn. Maybe vassalage will help on the unit upkeep side?
, we would have to guess whether it will help or hurt our economic situation.
