Pre-Turn
I decided to do an empire tour starting with the oldest cities and working my way up through the recently acquired cities. I figured this would be the best way to get a handle on what we have now in the way of territory.
I started in Kyoto and switched the scientist to a merchant. Most if not all of us seem to agree that is the best course now. We will probably need to watch things there from time to time when the city grows. I think it probably puts the new citizen as a scientist first and then as a merchant. I didn't see anything else that needed done in Kyoto.
Osaka seemed to be doing well. I happen to think it would be good to get the monastery there and crank out a couple of quick missionaries for the theocracy promotions.
Shouldn't we replace the villages in Tokyo with farms so that we can be using and building workshops instead of building farms on the plains tiles? Converting those two villages to farms gets us +2 food and would allow us to work the currently unworked workshop while still growing. We are only going to lose 10gpt and we should be able to easily get that from newly conquered cities. Djenne or Karakorum could give us a nice boost in the gpt department later. Doing this means we could have one more workshop on the last forest tile instead of a farm. It's really too bad that we don't have any way to get State Property soon. Having the extra food there would help production a lot.
I changed the scientist in Edo to a merchant and added a second merchant. I'm not sure exactly how we're handling Edo. I know we've been whipping some but we have to be careful with the whip in Edo since it doesn't have the Globe. We seem to produce a fair amount of ships there so I'm thinking a drydock and maybe a temple might be in order. A priest could be the same as an engineer if/when we get our hands on Angkor Wat in Cologne. A temple costs 120

which is less than some of the military units that we've been producing. The drydock costs 180

and gives us another 50% boost every time we produce a ship. Those ships come out with 6XP. Whipping a crossbow within the window would generate substantial overflow which could then be put into a galleon or frigate and the drydock would, if I'm not mistaken, give us an additional 50% bonus. We could probably build the drydock from whipping a frigate or galleon within the window. Capture the overflow and then switch to citizens to shutdown growth while building another frigate/galleon. Switch back to water tiles so that the city grows again just before its time to whip.
I whipped the samurai in Kagoshima. It was within the window. I put a second samurai behind it to catch the overflow. I also setup an engineer. I would like to investigate further what can be done to improve the efficiency of production there as well. For now, I'll play it by ear.
Looking over Satsuma, I noticed that we could get production higher there if we chop the two grassland forests along the river and plant farms. We would suffer a short term loss of two hammers but the growth and extra food production would allow us to build and work two plains workshops east of the city. If my math is right, growth would stagnant but we really wouldn't need a higher population there for higher production. The coastal tiles would only let us squeeze out a little more gpt.
I removed the engineer in Cordoba and had him work the mine. It didn't really make much sense to be getting one less hammer and one less food per turn. I'm also thinking that it might make sense to replace the grasslands workshop with a cottage and put the workshop on the free plains tile. Also, is there any reason why we have three half built things in the queue? How about we finish some stuff there before adding to the queue.
Seville looks like it could use some farms instead of cottages. Maybe getting an irrigation link north to the rice in Barcelona would help things there too. With the rice irrigated and a lighthouse built, we could work two more workshops in Barcelona. Plus, the farms running through Seville would allow us to work the plains hill mine and some workshops.
I queued a Hindu temple in Madrid to catch the overflow and to help with happiness. I considered the coliseum since it also gives +1 happy/10% culture but then I felt like the temple would give us the same base +1 happiness and allow another priest specialist for more production.
Khoisan looked to be in good shape. I switched from two water tiles in Kawisaki to the two plains forests. I'm thinking we could stop growth with a workshop on the last plains square. Any more growth just puts us closer to unhappiness and doesn't get us much more in production. It looks like more farms and workshops can go in Fuji as it grows. I did assign the engineer to work a plains forest tile. Still two hammers plus another food for faster growth.
Elephantine looks as though it could use some more production. I'm going to replace an unworked cottage and hamlet with workshops. By the time they would mature we will (hopefully) have this game won. I'd suggest using some of the river tiles for farms or workshops as well. We might want to build farms and then start switching to workshops as the population grows. More farms will grow the population in Elephantine faster.
I put a workboat in front of the cannon in Memphis in order to get the fish up and growing the city faster. Lots of decent production there so the faster we can get the population to work it, the better. I took the cannon out of the queue for Alexandria. There was a Jewish missionary half built and I figured it made sense to let him finish and then build another one so that I can try to get Judaism spread to Edo and Kagoshima.
I switched some citizens around in Thebes to maximize production and get the forge built sooner. This caused growth to stagnant so I placed a workboat in the queue ahead of the forge. Workboat done in 3 turns, forge in 7 turns. Hope to have both complete by the end of my round and then we can benefit from increased production while still growing.
Beijing could use a couple of workshops on the flood plains. Growth would stagnant but production would be maximized. Guangzhou hasn't popped its borders yet so its hard to tell what it's potential is but it looks like the plains cottage and hamlet to the west could be replaced by workshops and worked using the food from the fish to the east.
Shanghai and Nanjing are still in revolt so not much to report there. I think that concludes the tour. Sorry for the long winded analysis but I felt like I needed to take a long look at the infrastructure and economy before proceeding to the war. Having some thoughts ahead of time concerning infrastructure and the economy should help speed up my decision making during each turn.
Concerning the war front, it looks like Mao is just about finished. IIRC, you guys mentioned trying some pointy stick research with Mao in order to get MT and the ability to build cavalry. So, I managed to get MT plus his world map and 1gpt for ten turns. I set research to Replaceable Parts. I wasn't sure what we would want next since research is 0% anyway. I figured if we were going to work towards something, it might as well be something that could potentially help with production. Obviously, we are going to skip past Rifling unless we suddenly decide we need it after all. I'm doubting we ever get to a point where we finish RP anyway.
Turn 1
Nothing too exciting. I spent some time upgrading here and there plus redeploying to the border with Bismarck and KK. I wasn't sure who we wanted to go to war with next. I've heard both Kublai and Bismarck. Bismarck is by far the strongest so Kublai would be a quicker kill. However, the longer we go without destroying Bismarck, the more powerful he will become. The same could be said for Kublai of course but at least he would probably only be as powerful as Bismarck is now. By that time, we should be quite a bit more powerful and so we should still have superior numbers. I've decided to play through a couple of turns and then post what I have before continuing. I would like to finish the full ten turns but I thought some guidance concerning our war planning was in order plus it's getting late.
Turn 2
The Jewish monastery is complete in Osaka. I've decided to work on getting a handful of missionaries out of there so we can start benefiting from theocracy on Hokkaido.
This was the first part of my report while trying to play through last night. At this point, I'm thinking it might be best if I spent the rest of my time getting bobrath in a position to strike quickly at our next victim. I'm also willing to just load up the save and let our leader take my turns plus his if everyone else is cool with that. I'm not sure that I can finish tonight anyway. Too much RL stuff this week.