Emancipation would be good to grab not just for the cottages (and we DO have a fair amount of them maturing in our inner cities), but also because it's "No" upkeep cost and would save us a ton of money. With our cheap temples, even our fishing colonies should be able to run some Priest specialists if we work at it. Maybe we wouldn't want to swap right away, but I still think Emancipation would be better. And have you seen our civ? We're like the DEFINITION of a civ that should be running Free Religion! Once we do a little scouting first, of course.
Anyway, as far as my report here goes, I tried playing in Windowed mode today, which was great - except that the screenshots in windowed mode for no apparent reason were back to doing that idiotic "no interface" thing that we experienced during testing. Argh!
I thought this was dead and buried when we shipped, and now here's it's back again. As a result, any screenshot involving anything on the interface is ruined, and some of the screenshots simply refuse to take AT ALL for no apparent reason. If I run the game in Windowed mode again, guess I have to manually cut and paste every screenshot by hand...
(0) 1575AD OK, the news is that we're at war with Rome, and we're going to make Caesar pay by taking away his cities on Northwest Island. Here's a view of the battlefield at the start of my turn:
We've got a nice stack of units on hand there, and Sirian has even left some of the units unpromoted so that I can use them as I see fit! Also - note that El Rojo is one turn away from a castle. Ain't nobody going to be breaking in there now! At least not until they start bringing gunpowder weapons, that is. I think that the best time to attack will be in 2 turns, when our next set of reinforcements arrives outside Ravenna but before Caesar (hopefully) has time to build more units. One can hope, anyway! (Also note the silliness of our variant rules situation. Our boats CANNOT leave our cultural borders, so our units have to walk the long way up to Ravenna instead of being ferried there by ships. Gotta love those variants!)
OK, there *WOULD* have been a picture of our finances here, but it totally failed to take. Stupid game! (I swear, every game promises improved automation, and you always have to end up doing everything by hand or having to settle for subpar results. Why we could never get the screenshots right is just beyond me.)
(1) 1580AD Constitution finishes, start work on Paper. Depending on how far the AI civs are on the tree, I'll go for Printing Press or Education next. Santa Rosa finishes its temple, starts work on Forbidden Palace (that will help out a lot!) due in 10 turns. San Roberto finishes a missionary, Versailles ordered next! It's listed as 26 turns now, but that will drop if we can get some workers over there to finish improving it (god, I wish we had some marble right now!) Big civics swap to Representation, Bureaucracy, and Organized Religion, and here are our finances now:
Wow, that's not our fiancial screen there, is it?
Thanks a lot, silly game. Here's what I typed when I assumed that I'd actually be taking a picture of what was on the screen!
Not a huge difference in the costs, but MUCH increased research output, not to mention the fact that Organized Religion cut several turns off our wonder builds in Havana (14 turns), Santa Rosa (8 turns), and San Roberto (21 turns)! Troops are moving into position for the big assault next turn outside Ravenna.
(2) 1585AD Get this - between turns, BOTH Roman knights attacked our forces, and BOTH of them lost!!!
(Too bad we lost the picture of this happening...)
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. But you can give luck a hand by sticking a Woodsman II Maceman in the forest too!
By the way, our Woodsman Maceman is at 7.1 out of 8 health! Yeah, so promotions don't do anything, right? (as I've heard in the General Forum a couple of times)
We have 3 maces, 3 cats, and a longbow, crossbow, archer, and spear outside Ravenna. Inside the city are 2 longbows (one with City Garrison I, the other with nothing) and an unpromoted Maceman. I turn our unpromoted cat into a suicide bomber (Barrage I and II) and send him in first. Banzai! He dies of course, but that softens them up a bit for our newly promoted City Raider II maceman to attack... and also die. Hmpf. Well, Combat II Maceman is there to mop up, and with all the defenders now seriously injured, it's gravy from there. We take the city of Ravenna!
Those three defenders cost us two maces and a cat. If we hadn't had enough forces on hand, the defenders would have promoted and it would have been an utter disaster. Be VERY careful when attacking cities in Civ4! A failed attempt is worse than no attempt at all! I turn down the science rate so that we can upgrade some of our units (like the spears) now that we have a city on the Roman island.
(3) 1590AD Paper discovered, checking what other civs have... Vicky has Education, so it's almost a sure bet that she'll be the first one to Liberalism. We probably could have gotten there first, but we went after Nationalism and Constutition instead. Not that that was a bad decision - it wasn't - but just pointing out that there are multiple possible paths to take. With that in mind, I send us after Printing Press en route to Democracy. We will be the first ones to start the Statue of Liberty, and with copper on hand (popped another one!), NO ONE will beat us to it. And that wonder is a very big deal indeed.
Arretium only has two defenders. I expect that I'll be able to take it before more turn is up. Not going to rush anything though!
(4) 1595AD A surprisingly uneventful turn for a civ at war...
(5) 1600AD More buildings complete. Bombarding of Arretium begins. We should be ready to attack there in another turn or two. Havana is pulling in well over 100 gold/turn even at only 30% wealth, which is nothing short of ridiculous. Once we get Wall Street in there too...
I might as well provide a peek in to my current SP game.
We're flying through this game, going to be the first SG to finish in the new forum (barring disaster from one of the other teams, perhaps!) And while it may be YOUR job to play Civ4 all the time, I'm not working as a Firaxis contractor and have to focus on my real work. 
Anyway, I'll go ahead and play now, since the football game I was watching just ended. 
Not this time though. 
Memories of that game in testing where you had Qin come after you despite sharing the same religion? OK, it's true that our coastal cities, and especially in the east, are still running light on defense. But the AI civs can't even REACH us with ships until they get to Astronomy, and they won't be there yet for another 20-30 turns at the very least. I say we boost our economy first, then build troops later when the AI civs can actually build ships that will reach us. The notion that an AI civ would 1) declare war 2) invade with a substantial force (using galleons!) and 3) manage to take a city from us is a bit far-fetched at the moment, methinks. We'll need to worry about that eventually, but not - quite - yet. 
Since we are up to +47 gold/turn at 60% science, I can up the science rate at least temporarily to 80% science, at which we are losing 14/turn. That can be improved further with the development of the monk economy. 
It just didn't occur to me that a Barracks might not be there! 
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