Hey guys, sorry about the long wait but I'm really not feeling well right now. Fortunately the turns weren't too exciting either, but Cathy's diary will remain a mystery for this turnset at least.
(Since we aren't attacking anyone right now, and there's no clear concensus what to do with our social policies, I left them alone for this turnset)
T85:
Following the earlier suggestion, most available Workers start building trading posts on available tiles. I also traded horses around: 5 for 20 turns for 200 gold to Bismarck, and 15 for 20 turns to Wu Zetian for 436 gold.
This put us over 1000 gold, and I decided to simply buy our way into Helsinki's good graces at that point. Attacking Lhasa is still a while away, and the diplo boost can be used to renew the ally status at that point. Better to have the food bonus now so cities can focus on production and gold.
T87:
Istanbul wants dyes. Moscow made the same request earlier, so I scanned the map and only found resources near Hiawatha. Naturally, he hasn't gotten around to hooking them up yet.
Other than that, an unmet player advances to the classical age, and the Oracle was BIDL
T89
St. Petersburg grows and finishes its Circus. As the city generates no culture on its own, I have it build a Monument. Moscow finishes the Library, and starts building a Circus. In hindsight that may have been unneeded, but there wasn't too much else to build anyhow.
T91
Trading posts start finishing. I emphasized a gold focus in most cities since we're running out of things to build.
Washington requests a Pact of Secrecy vs Monty, which I politely declined. If anything, Washington may be our next target. Hiawatha also enters the medieval era.
T92:
Iron Working finishes. We have a source of iron just west of Istanbul. I decided to buy the tile right away, and send over a Worker to build a mine. There's additional nearby sources northeast of Moscow in the tundra, and east of Helsinki.
Further sources of Iron seem pretty limited, which is good for us!
There's one resource within Venice's cultural border, and another between Bismarck and Hiawatha. If we can claim the other two sources, we are in a good power-broking position.
As our cashflow is starting to hurt, I make Currency the next tech to research. Aside from Markets, it will also make us advance to the medieval era, increasing our food bonus from Helsinki.
T93
Bismarck declares war on Venice. He must have sniffed out that iron or something. In the same turn, he requests our help against Hiawatha (?) which I declined. We want to be friendly to Hiawatha at least until we can trade for his Dye resources.
Istanbul finishes building its Courthouse and Edirne its Circus, and happiness shoots up again. Our gold income is only a trickle right now, but at this pace a Golden Age isn't too far off. Both cities start building a Krepost.
I notice at this point that Monty has founded a third city south of his capital, the first AI Civ we met to have more than two cities.
T95
Hiawatha finally hooked up the first of his Dyes. Unsurprisingly he refuses to trade it, but hopefully this means the second resource isn't far behind.
St petersburg finishes building a Monument, and starts a Library. I'm not certain about this, we might want to build a Settler to claim more Iron resources instead.
Venice requests units in their struggle against Germany as well. As we have an army encamped near Lhasa right now that's doing nothing, perhaps this might be something to consider?
I attached a screenshot with the Iron resources circled in red, and the save is attached at the bottom of the post.