210 bc
There are plenty of middle-eastern troops approaching Najran. I can safely pick off an Egyptian archer with a horse, so I do that.
Stop mining the iron as I am going to unhook it at some point.
Set Zimbabwe to build a 1-turn impi. I am going to run it as a 4-turn horse/settler combo between sizes 3.5 and 5.5.
Interturn
Lose a mace in Hangchow, but get 1 elite win.
Arabia and India agree peace, which causes India to dow us. As they have a couple of archers next to Umtata, they attack, and we get another elite win.
190 bc
Some German horses approach Bapedi; kill one and push the other back, losing an archer in the process.
Pillage the iron and begin rehooking. Start chopping Zimbabwe's forest - might as well see what is under it. Hills or mountains make better growth tiles anyway.
Elite sword in Najran produces a great leader.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
Army or FP? I figure we might as well try and get the FP up to maximise the benefit of our golden age, plus we are a bit short of decent units to put in an army - it isn't until knights that an army really becomes an unstoppable killing machine. But the towns on the eastern front aren't good enough for an FP. The place is just a desert. The leader needs to go back to Zululand, and the best way to do that is to clear away those Chinese towns.
The middle-eastern bloc is about to overrun Najran, so give Cath peace, swapping the widely-known Feudalism for Republic.
Embassies with Korea and China reveal that Seoul has 4 spears and an archer in defense, and Beijing has just 2 spears. Investigate China's isthmus towns for small change. Both have only a single defender, but China does have The Wall. Well anyway, it's war time again...
Use gpt to get Monotheism and treasury from Korea, and treasury from China.
Kill an Indian archer in the open, but it doesn't cause a bloc dow. Natch. Do I have to kill their units in their territory? I send some troops down to squat outside Bangalore.
Now that we have Monotheism, it seems like we should research hard for Chivalry; max science gives it in 10 turns.
Interturn
When the AIs turn comes around, we get dows from China and Korea, supporting their bloc. I don't know why the dow came through now. Is it because I now have troops in Oriental territory?
170bc
Move a scout onto the iron. His sole purpose in life is to unhook it every so often.
On the isthmus, we autoraze Tatung, but Tsientsin proves a tougher nut to crack, eating the horse I sent against it.
Interturn
China drops another settler combo onto the isthmus. Do these people not learn?!
150 bc
Kill the remaining German horse from a couple of turns ago.
Enslave the Chinese settler. Thank you Mao.
Autoraze Tsientsin - the isthmus is clear again, but the road is broken. The leader can finally head off west.
Interturn
The chop at Zimbabwe is complete, and reveals a non-bonus grassland. How disappointing.
130 bc
Capture Bangalore, which was defended by 3 spears. Capture 8 slaves at the same time; move 6 out to build a road, and they reveal a Japanese ancient cavalryman ready to grab the slaves. Taking quite a risk, I send an elite impi to go and stand in the way.
Interturn
Toku suggests we give him Monotheism for peace. I suggest he gives us all his towns. No compromise is reached.
As expected, the ancient cavalry attacks the impi, but in a surprising turn of events, fails to kill it! Go impi go!
That's good, but then a stack of 2 swords, a horse and 2 archers all arrive next to Bangalore.
110 bc
Found Isepezi bridging the southern lake and coast. The leader arrives riht on cue, and rushes FP there; the site has fresh water, a couple of beegees, some mountains - generally a good location for a solid town.
2 elite wins, 1 elite loss. Our units in Bangalore distinguish themselves, and the Japanese stack is destroyed.
Interturn
Japan drops a settler combo onto the isthmus. The generosity of these people knows no bounds.
Mao offers us peace. he would pay his whole treasury, but I want to fight on until he offers towns.
90 bc
2 elite wins.
Sink a French galley over on the coast of Beta. We also have two galleys on our south coast hunting down a Japanese galley in the area.
70 bc
Sink the Japanese galley snooping around our coast.
2 elite wins, 1 elite loss.
Interturn
America drops off two axes west of Bapedi. How comical.
50 bc
Lose a galley trying to sink the American galley that dropped off the axes. That will teach me to try to attack an empty galley: the whole point of galley v galley manouvres is to try to kill the full ones to get a better expected shields lost ratio.
2 elite wins.
Interturn
Lose 1 elite to an ancient cavalry. I am killing those things, but losing units in the process. This is not an advantageous way to wage war.
30 bc
Sink an English galley off our west coast.
3 elite wins. Kill the American axe landing party with laughable ease.
Bring the lux slider up to 10%, and start pushing horses out of mil pol positions in Zululand, and up to the northeast.
Najran is in severe danger of falling, and the war of attrition we have been fighting just to protect our four eastern front towns is eating units faster than we build them, even in golden age. I have to give the Orientals peace - Mao will still pay his whole treasury for it.
Now I can give Toku Republic (only two civs don't have it) for ivory, gpt and his treasury. In fact we had war happiness from at least one of the Orientals, so the ivory is important in keeping our people happy. So this deal will have a bearing next time we attack the Orientals; we shouldn't use Japan to trigger the MPP, and we should remember to check our empire for unhappiness once it is done.
Interturn
Discover Chivalry, and start a min run on Invention.
Upgrade 5 horses to knghts from the big picture.
The FP's borders pop. Should be good for our territory graph.
10 bc
Upgrade 2 more horses. Mounted units keep pushing east out of the core and towards the eastern front.
10 ad
Upgrade 2 more horses. There is only 1 non-elite horse left.
Pillage the iron and start rehooking it; it will become available again from the interturn of 50/70ad.
Most other units are still free to move.
A round-up of the empire puts us at +60 food and 88 spt, net of corruption.
We make 132 commerce, plus 3 from a scientist and 6 from Japan. 35 of this goes in luxuries and building maintenance.
), but I'll warn you all now that if I get the chance on my turnsets, domestic resources are likely to get disconnected, ROPs will get raped, and the AI will pay full market value for our techs.
) one. We have an FP 
and almost full control of the isthmus. We are about to research Chivalry and have enough cash to upgrade 7 or 8 knights. I wonder how much use these will be. I am having some trouble with military operations in this game; being at war with so many AI means that even though they are individually weak, they send a lot of units through from all different directions, so most of our military is tied up just picking them off as they approach. I can't get enough units together to form a proper stack to go and steal an AI capital (and Beijing is practically undefended by the way) 
. I think we need to start thinking about ROP rapes, but I suspect that the more often we give people peace and then dow on them within 20 turns, the harder it becomes to get peace in the first place...
. We are still last in score though. And as for culture, I would assume that klarius has Artemis. We haven't really discussed these wonders, but in our game Artemis and Pyramids both went to the Caucasians. This is a pretty devastating blow to our strategy. I wonder if the top teams deliberately gave their local AIs an easy ride to try and make sure they were built on Alpha. I wonder if we should switch our attention to invading the Beta continent and taking these wonders. Discuss...
