Its good to see some other thinking.... Brian, Matrix & I were starting to think we were the team
@ bulbing Edu with the GS, we were thinking of maybe keeping him in reserve for Eldine, but bulbing Edu is a fairly standard move, so I am OK with that.
@ Toku, no point gifting anything to Toku if he is already at +4 fair trading. If he begs for something, then you can give him it (depending on what he begs for).
@ Monasteries, we want all monasteries in our 3 Leg cities of course (Delhi,Bombay & Varanasi), but not so much everywhere else. As long as we have a few non-legendary cities capable of producing each missionary, then that is enough. Except Confused of course, with Sistines, hopefully Sankore & Minaret, we get big bonuses for every Confused building.
@ Lib - As the instigator of the 'lets get Astro and steal Treasure Island plan', I naturally still think it is a good plan. We could have a problem executing it in time, but as long as we are 'ready to go' the turn we learn Lib, we should be OK.
If we bulb Edu, we will get to Lib long before any other Civ. As long as we have traded/learnt Compass & Optics, we can choose Astro from Lib. Have 2 galleys, 2-3 cats and 3-4 maces ready in our eastern most city. Upgrade the galleys to Galleons the turn we get Astro, load up and set sail.
Treasure Island could be a huge Red Herring of course, and the furs are somewhere else in the vast expanse of ocean, but I think we have to take that chance.
IF Justin takes Treasure Island before this, get Nationalism instead.
We need to get some workers to Calcutta to help it
a) get more production to work on Sankore and
b) get a bigger population so we can whip Sankore as soon as its available. Several other AI's have Paper, so they will probably be building it already.