Time for the revival of this game, now under new (1.61) management! We shall soon see how different this has made things, I'm sure. It's been a long time since there was a turn in this game, but there's not long left. Let's finish it out!
Now, unfortunately, the game seems to have seen better days: The war declaration on China may have been a little premature. I was expecting that to happen once we had a few Tanks over there, rather than still in Atlas' turn, and the loss of Beijing is an unfortunate effect of this. Still, we do not have much time, so getting right along with things may yet easily have been the correct decision despite the mess. We shall see...
Either way, sheer travel time is going to mean that the war against China will not be finished before at least close to the end of my turns. I am forced to veto the Eiffel Tower, though. The only cities that need more culture aren't going to have enough for the percentage boost to culture to be worth more than the 3 or 4 tanks from Washington that building it would lose us.
Right now things look OK. But it's going to get frantic again, as soon as more Apollo Programs start being build. Our only recourse is to have plenty of Tanks available for when they do. On the plus side, we have *loads* of cash. We'll have Artillery in 4 turns, and when we do I shall upgrade the great majority of our Cannons immediately. *Hopefully*, with them and some Tanks we'll be able to take some stuff off Louis before the Apollo Programs come a-clamourin' again. We're going to need the score boost.
Turn 1 (1966):
Our 10-turn auto-peace treaty with Mansa runs out. I don't think we're in any great danger from him right now, though.
I send the healed cannons from Nanjing back towards Beijing again. There's also a small stack of Infantry closing off the isthmus, which will join up with them and provide the firepower to actually take the city, when they arrive in a couple of turns.
IT: Our stack is hit by a Cannon for precisely 10% damage to every cannon in it, and two knights appear.
Turn 2 (1967):
The two knights are easily killed. Mao turns out to have a surprisingly large presence left in Beijing, though, given how small his Empire has been for so long. Ah well, he'll still be going down, it just might take slightly longer.
Turn 3 (1968):
More nothing, basically. However, from our current prespective, this is a good thing! Nay, a great thing! The longer we have before the space race gets going in earnest, the better.
Freddie offers Sheep for our Aluminium. Speeding him along the space race? I think NOT.
Washington builds our first Tank! Yay!
IT: WHERE is Mao getting all these units from? Yet more appear from the back side of nowhere, knocking out the cover off our stack of cannons and leaving it seriously exposed.
Turn 4 (1969):
I reduce the defences of Beijing to 6% with three Accurate Cannons, and knock out two of his FIVE Riflemen with a couple of Infantry. That's all I can do, though. I fear the worst for the stack of 5 cannons that remains.
IT: Mao does *not* counterattack! Yay!
Turn 5 (1970):
Some rather nice combat results, including a Cannon defeating a Rifleman at 10.5% (6xp!) and two retreats, lead to the effective neutralising of the Beijing garrison without the loss of a single unit! It's still not ours, though, and our stack is even more badly hurt now. Still, there are four Artillery on a transport outside the city, so one way or another it will fall next turn.
Turn 6 (1971):
At last!
More troops are being shipped over for when Louis' time comes. Doubt that'll be on my turns, we need a half-dozen or so Tanks minimum, as well as the dozen+ Artillery that are already on hand. More Infantry would be of great value, too.
Everything is quiet on all other fronts, so there's currently no pressure. Mansa's still built nothing but the Casings and Thrusters, though we have no real idea where he is technologically.
Now that Artillery's in, though, we can see that Freddy, Alex and Hatty all do have Rocketry, so it's only a matter of production before they get their own Apollo Programs built. If there were some way of getting them to declare war on each other..; but I dream, without tech trading.
Turn 7: Nothing interesting.
Turn 8: Still nothing interesting.
Turn 9 (1974):
A Great Engineer is born in Seattle! I take a look at the military advisor, and find that we have no other Great People. I take a look at the F1 screen and note that no cities are due another Great Person in the immediate future, and that that one will be an Engineer too, and decide that once that is used for Rock and Roll, the Eiffel Tower will be of more use, since it'll also be +2 happy in every city from the modern happiness resources that we have. Rock and Roll due in 2.
Turn 10 (1975):
Rocketry -> Satellites. Now if someone else builds the Manhatten Project, we can build ICBMs! I also look around, and discover that only Mansa even has Satellites, which is good. Nobody else can possibly be in danger of launching any time soon.
For want of a single additional military unit, or Shanghai not being on a hill so the Tanks could blitz, I fail to capture it. By this much!
Blah. To Jabah falls finally wiping out the pink blight on the face of the world. Shanghai would be completely surrounded by France's culture. The only possible reason for keeping it would be if you want to declare war on France soon, and want a staging post from which our units will not get kicked out to do so from.
Afterthoughts:
I've left some of the destroyers around Louis's coast keeping an eye on things. Paris, particularly, has a lot of units in ships waiting to sail. I've been shipping tanks and other units across from the mainland as quickly as they appear, dropping them directly into Guangzhou or Xian has been efficient up until now, but you may want to take some cities directly from transports, in which case more stuff, such as building some Navy Seals (and wouldn't it be a shame to finish this game without using any) will need setting up first.
Most places are of course building Tanks, some of which are still the same ones they were building when I got the game. The obvious exceptions are the two wonders in production. Rock and Roll will finish next turn, since the Great Engineer wasn't quite enough, and Eiffel Tower a little later. Houston, slow and without a Barracks, is just building Chariots to be sent to wherever War Weariness is hitting hardest. That's about to go away again for a few more turns, of course, and we'll be getting +3 Happy per city too. The next war should be a lot easier than the last couple.
Don't declare war on Louis without enough forces to finish the job unless there's a Very Good Reason. On the other hand, we've got the capacity for at least a round dozen more tanks over the next turnset, which together with the forces already in positon has got to be more than enough. All the Cannons have already been upgraded, I think.
We're only 50 points behind the leaders at the moment, though, and only 75 turns left to hold things off for. Mansa has been wasting his time with Mass Media, too.
Garath
on the head. We redeclare war. Nanjing is on a F__king hill, okay, hmmm. We land and face a bit of an attack four cannons kill our machine gunner and one of our cannons. Our counter attack falls one unit short of taking the city, next turn it will be then.
tech order, the down side is that I am one pop. point shy in those north Chinese cities from being able to draft a Infantryman. We can now build Navy Seals, Tanks, Infantry all of the good stuff, Artillery in 5 turns. We lost the Pentagon, but Eiffel Tower will only take 11 turns that 50% culture boost in every town could help by bringing more land under our control and upping our score. 
