Delhi--we don't have to go too overboard there
Everyone else (including those working the corn) becomes a priest, engineer or citizen specialist. We wont starve Delhi, but were preparing to just in case it turns out that we want to gift it to Zara. We dont want to hand him the keys to a 17-pop city if we can help it.
Just so that you know, if we are losing more Food than the amount of Food that exists in our Foodbox, we WILL shrink a population Size.
So, if we aren't going to shrink Delhi until after the Secretary General election, then there is no need to "start" shrinking the City now--it can equally be shrunk in 1 turn at a later date.
Also, with the 2 Forest chops + Bureaucracy, we'll have more than enough Hammers for the UN, so there is no need to run Citizen Specialists or to stop working the Corn Resources.
We should only be losing Food in Delhi's Foodbox if we have a need for doing so, otherwise, if we keep Delhi, we may want to turn around and do our best to grow 1 population point there.
Just working the Hammer-based squares plus an Engineer should be more than enough... switch from Wealth to a buiding (The UN), click on the City Governor, and then click on the Emphasize Hammers icon. You can then remove the City Governor, but that should give you an idea of what configuration to start with...
simply switch two of the GIrr squares to GRiv Cot squares and we're good to go.
Burn 1 GE on the UN (1290 hammers)
That's another great reason to use Delhi, as we'll get more base Hammers out of the bargain.
Buddhism
GP Farm will start on a Buddhist missionary on T277.
Is there any reason not to start on a Buddhist Missionary on T276?
Worst case, Delhi is so fast in producing them that Grt Person Farm can just switch to building something else if it can't complete the Buddhist Missionary in time, but we might as well "go for it" from the start at T276, right?
Confucianism Backup-plan
The Apostolic Palace has been obsoleted by Mass Media. It appears that we did not vote for Zara to be Apostolic Palace Resident, so we didn't get +2 for free with Zara.
So, our Confucian Missionaries SHOULD NOT be spread to the AIs.
That means that we have a Confucian Missionary in Barcelona that can head to Isabella's west coast, to be picked up by one of the Galleons there. Perhaps it can even be part of the units trip of taking the Buddhist Missionary up north, even if it means taking 1 more turn to shuffle the boats into place, just to save us from having to move the boats forwards and then backwards and then forwards and backwards again, overall saving us a turn.
We should ONLY attempt to spread Confucianism in Chinook if our Buddhist Missionary has already tried to be spread, failure or not.
Meanwhile, on T276, you can take the 2 Confucian Missionaries on the western continent (you'll have to wake them up) and send them to Trebizond. We should have a reasonably good chance of being able to spread them to our two Barb Cities there, since both Cities only have 1 Religion, are both large-sized, and are closest to the Confucian Holy City out of all Religions' Holy Cities.
If we fail to spread Buddhism everywhere, we can use Irgy's trick of switching Religions after we've won the Diplo Victory vote.
My suggestion, if you play until that last turn, is not to upload until we've had a chance to comment and ask you questions... it could be that something simple like switching Religion or moving a unit on the turn after a Diplo Victory could mean the difference between us being counted as having won or not under the game's conditions.
Mehmed's Cities
As a backup plan, our troops in Izmir and the ones to the south will begin to march toward Mehmeds city north of Cordoba. We will try to capture this city so that we can gift it to Isabella. Once she has this city, she should be willing to accept Izmir in trade as well.
Sounds fine to me.
Barb Area's Military Units to help out Isabella
If you can, try to get a Galleon over to the Barb Area to be able to bring in 2 more Military Units for support purposes, either to help with this City to the north of Cordoba (they probably can't get there in time) or more likely, to unload in Barcelona to help out Isabella in the war against Mehmed.
Tech Trading
Justinian will get Liberalism (per Dhoom's suggestion).
Saladin will get Liberalism (per Dhoom's suggestion).
I've rethought my suggestion.
Toku currently has the techs for Privateers, but Justinian and Saladin will first have to manually learn Gunpowder and Chemistry, as Toku won't trade those techs to them.
This way, Toku can have some competition for overseas settling and/or capturing of Barb Cities.
If Toku gets more votes, it'll be just that much harder to face him in a Diplo Vote. If the other two get more votes and if they prefer to vote for us (after the Fair and Forthright trading, that should be the case), then it's better to let them have Galleons, since Toku will already have his own.
This way, hopefully, Justinian and Saladin won't get to Privateers on time, but they will have beefier boats that will cause trouble for Toku's Privateers.
It's a "fine line" as there is a chance, albeit a small chance, that Justinian or Saladin will beeline Chemistry, but if either one of them does, it's 2 techs that they will have to learn but then they'll need some time to start building Privateers from scratch.
Toku will get Printing Press.
We want Toku to remain at war with Mehmed. It also wouldn't hurt to have Justinian get a bit angry at Toku. Why don't we use one of Education and Printing Press to bribe Toku into Peace with Mehmed and the other tech to bribe Toku back into war with Mehmed?
We could even wait until the turn that The UN is built, so that if Saladin likes Mehmed for Shared Religion, he should hate Toku by -1 for having declared on his friend. Once The UN gets built, it will force Mehmed and Saladin to meet each other.
I don't care too much either way as to the timing of this bribery out of war and back into it, so there are two options for you: immediately or on the turn that The UN has been completed.
City Builds
All other cities will build wealth.
If and when a Confucian Missionary gets spread, we should consider switching one of the Wealth-building Cities to a Confucian Missionary, in case we need a backup.
Yes, Confucianism is our backup plan, but it doesn't hurt to have a backup to our backup plan, does it?
Research
Set research to Communism. We probably wont finish any more techs if everything goes according to plan, but the free great person could come in handy if something goes bad in our plan.
That sounds fine, as we missed the race to Economics. Actually, it happened so quickly that we might not have won that race had we tried for it (Saladin must have had Economics in his targeting sights).
Building the UN will be our limiting factor. Once it's built, the Sec Gen vote vs. Toku will occur on the next turn. The first chance that we have to propose the Diplo vote is 8 turns later. This will give us enough time to get our final great person from Crabs to the Fur, but I will have to use a Galleon chain to get him there in 1 turn. This should be no issue as UT already has the galleons heading in the right direction!!
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