We are 4 turns from Gunpowder at the current science rate but will not be able to maintain this pace for much longer.
Oh contraire! There is gold in them thar hills! Or at least in them thar treasuries!
. Guilds is only 2242 flasks, and everyone wants it. Caesar has 360 gold, Cyrus 170, Toku 180, Alex 110, Monte 80. I'll have to be sure that we don't trade with the enemy of a friend, but there seems to be plenty of gold out there for us. And once we get down the road on physics research, we could start trading printing press if we had to, but I suspect that nationalism would be another attractive tech to the AI. But maybe we hoard that as it leads to Mil Trad and DP.
She also has a stack that is poised to attack her one time city of Elephantine that consists of 5 Horse Archers, 2 Crossbows, Sword, Cat, Axe, and 2 Chariots. We may not need to ask Capac to join us, he may ask us to join him soon!
But if we do want to ask him, he will join for Music I believe. He is also fourth in score now after the techs we traded to him.
I have never gone the diplo win route, so lots I don't know: is there a difference between whether we ask Capac or he asks us?
I did not pop rush anything during my turns, but we have some things under construction now that we may want to use the whip on. The Bank in Delhi stands out as 1 good candidate for a 50% gold boost.
Bank in Delhi would take 7 pop to rush now
so I don't see a whip any time soon. If I pull the cits off the hills and work the farms, and pull the engineer to the cottage, I can go +10 food, and grow every 3 instead of every 6, and be back on both hills in 6 turns at +8 food for only a small loss of hammers, and extra pop to rush that bank eventually.
Once we can build it, Oxford U is 12 turns in Moscow. Need three more universities, two are under construction. Where to build a third, since Dehli is busy with the bank? Yaros finishes forge this turn, pre forge university is a 20 turn build, figure 15 post forge, 5 pop to rush immediately. So I could have Oxford under construction at the end of my turns if I can rush U in Rostov (2 pop to rush now, but I would wait) and in Yaros about 8 turns in.
Yekat is suffering cultural pressure from Caesar. We have lost two tiles in the fat cross. I think I will pop rush the University, build a theatre and run some artists to push him back, unless that is a diplomatic no-no (is it?).
Any reason why we are building a market in Moscow? With gold avail in trade, science slider will be high forever, and now Moscow only produces 4 gold at the moment, so +25% is just one more? We have no hammers in invested, so I would change to making troops, or maybe a temple to let us run a priest (adds a hammer and some gold). Also, I think I will pull the engineer to one of the farms (pop in 3 instead of 6), put new pop on the other 3 food farm, and then we can grow back to about 3 or 4 specialists.
Thought a mace in Moscow, promoted as an anti-melee unit, might make a good escort for the Egypt stack to fend off melee counterattacks, esp pikes going for our Cossacks (not that the pikes would win, but why let the Cossack take the damage? but who would the battle AI put up to fight?)
On troops: We have 3 swords in India ... any point to moving them towards Egypt? I'm happy leaving the axes where they are, as we have maces and coming soon, to a battlefield near you ... Cossacks!!
Upgrades. With all the cash I can get for guilds, do we want to upgrade any units? Galley to Galleon is 155 gold, but might be worth upgrading the two that are with our two Galleons, to speed up the sealift. Also, we have three swords with experience 7, 9, and 10, also a 155 gold upgrade. They are all in India, so unless we plan to bring them to Egypt, maybe no point.
However, I can rush a Barracks in Bombay, a forge in Madras, build a few longbows and that will free the swords for Egypt, so unless someone can talk me out of it, they are moving east. Maybe upgrade the two galleys (see why below), and then later, if we are flush with cash, some of the swords.
Da Vinci may also want to review our current trades and see if we get anything extra from what we are currently getting. I failed to look into this during my turns.
Do you mean renegotiate existing trades? How does that work? If I have to cancel and then redo, is that a diplomatic problem? I would not want to upset the pretty rosy diplomatic cart that we currently have.
Boy am I itching to play this turn. Unless Hatty and Capac get into it and we are invited, I think I would wait to get a couple of Cossacks out before attacking. With Cossacks, you just use the cats to take down defenses, and no collateral damage sacrifices are required: the Cossacks just kill whatever is in there. The cats don't even have to heal to do that job! Think how fast conquest goes under that circumstance!
The warring fun might just be left to C63, however.
I would like to get Thebes (on a plain) as soon as possible, to run representation. Gao is on a hill, a tougher take, so do we agree, straight for thebes with a force of 12 (four galleons, so we do the two galley promotions), land on the the hill and bombs away.
What do folks think about splitting stacks, to reduce the effect of catapult counterattacks? I think that a stack of 6 on the hill and a stack of 6 in the forest is the way to siege Thebes. It is pretty important to do after railroads, maybe not so critical with just roads?
Respond quickly ... can't ... wait ... much ... longer ...
(I'll wait for some feedback, don't worry).
dV
Please post all last minute strategy ideas and I'll pick them up before I play. As it stands right now, it looks like I'm just going to build troops and infrastructure and keep the civics as they are. I assume we're working towards an invasion of Egypt before we go for any DP's. Research will be Gunpowder after MT and I've got the GS issue in Moscow and Rostov. I'll also try to get Eng and Guilds for as little as possible and hopefully pick up some gold so we can keep the research rate up. Am I forgetting anything??
Unless we declassify in small chunks. No sense in revealing a strategy or tactic that an opponent might still be able to employ. 
Or our choice of diplo or space victory. Unless, of course, we can use disinformation ... (Oh Great Lurker, is that outside the spirit of the midgame spoiler? 
reporting for AT 
Also, backdoor diplo seems more and more likely. Too bad, frontdoor could lead us to a faster finish.
I know I still don't have a great handle on all aspects of city specialization. One funny thing is the amount of gold the other civs have, I had been checking every turn and don't remember anyone having more than 100G, but I must have forgotten to check the very last turn. My computer froze and I had to reload in the middle of turn 270 (I let Alan know). Can you even believe we got a warrior from that hut, even a little gold would have been better. 
