Thanks for putting us in a great position, Cactus Pete! Also, thanks Jersey Joe, for your solid cartography work!
One major outstanding task for the next turnset is to figure out the Worker micro.
Another major outstanding task is to decide upon our build priorities.
We have our first 2 Granaries already being taken care of:
1. XO Cognac completes its Granary this turn while working the Cow + Horse, then next turn finishes off its Warrior (before the Hammers in it decay) while working the Cow + Fish, to make the most out of our Granary: We will earn 7 free Food from our Granary when growing to Size 3 due to making 7 surplus Food on the turn after the Granary has been completed.
2. The Hammers from Paris' Worker plus the Hammers from the Chop will overflow into a Granary. By working 2 G For squares this turn, we get 6 Hammers (as opposed to working 2 G For squares next turn when we'd only make 2 Hammers). Next turn, we will have 58 Hammers overflowing and we'll make 3 Hammers from the Deer, the Fur, and the City Centre squares, giving us 61 / 60 Hammers for our Granary and meaning that next turn (Turn 58, 1680 BC) we can rehire our 2 Scientist Specialists. On Turn 59, 1640 BC, we'll be at 24 / 30 Food and will earn another 5 Food, putting 5 Food into our Granary, and leaving us just below 30 Food at 29 / 30 Food. On Turn 60, 1600 BC, however much Food we make up to and including 10 Food will be doubled. So, if we just make 5 Food with the 2 Scientists still hired, we'll end up with 5 + 5 = 10 Food in our Granary and 34 - 30 = 4 overflow Food for 10 + 4 = 14 / 32 Food. If we fire 1 Scientist and work a 2-Food square (the G Copper that just got Mined or a G For square), that's 4 extra Food: 2 more from the Granary for 5 + 7 = 12 Food in the Granary and 36 - 30 = 6 overflow Food for 12 + 6 = 18 / 32 Food. If we fire a second Scientist and work another 2-Food square, that's another extra 4 Food: 2 more from the Granary for 5 + 9 = 14 Food in the Granary (the maximum could have been 15) and 38 - 30 = 8 overflow Food for 14 + 8 = 22 / 32 Food.
So, we'll want to figure out how best to turn 2 Chops at the south-east City into a partial Work Boat and a 1-pop-whippable Granary, while also finding time to Camp and Road the Fur. Meanwhile, we'll also want to Chop the G Riv For that is 1 E of the north-east City into a 1-pop-whippable Granary.
The third Worker is going to be Mining the Copper and then we'll need to decide what to do with him.
Do we want to Road our Copper? We already have 3 Warrior Military Police Units. It might not be a bad idea to hook up our Copper. A decent Pillaging Party for Berlin's Copper would probably consist of an Axeman, a Horse Archer, and possibly a third Unit to avoid our stack getting clobbered if one of our Units defends and gets wounded.
The Horse Archer deters German Axemen while the Axeman deters German Spearmen.
I think that it would also be wise to build some "dropships" aka Galleys. A stack of 3 (but preferably 4) Galleys filled with Military Units could opportunistically amphibiously assault London, launching from the Coast square that is 2 SE of London at a time when London sends out a Settler Party, leaving itself lightly defended. If we don't see such an opportunity, the same Galley stack could efficiently strike at Hamburg within the span of 3 turns of giving up (at least temporarily) on a London assault.
The key with BtS AIs is that they think that they are smart by piling a ton of Military Units into threatened Cities while leaving other Cities relatively undefended. We just need to be at the right place at the right time, and Galleys are a great way to put us into position, as an AI doesn't consider Units on boats to be a threat.
Meanwhile, XO Cognac should be focusing on pumping out The Great Lighthouse; Granary -> Warrior -> Lighthouse -> The Great Lighthouse -> whipping a Galley for overflow Hammers into The Great Lighthouse when we have enough population points to do so.
Paris is soon going to run into its Happiness cap, particularly once we have our Great Scientist and no longer need to hire 2 Scientist Specialists, so it would still be nice to have a City placed 3 S of Paris to share Paris' Wheat for when Paris really doesn't need the Food. If we can get 1 Culture into that City (say, from a Religion or a Monument), then when we gift the City, all of Paris' Culture will "count" for Espionage Missions, giving us a "stated" discount of somewhere between a of 40 to 50 "percent" (multiple percents are involved with Espionage Mission discounts, so it's not a true "percent" discount, but it is still a very significant discount). Such a City would be slated for a later gift to Egypt, so that we can steal Code of Laws and possibly other techs from Hatty. Ideally, we'd also get Christianity in that City for another possible 25 "percent" Espionage Mission discount (assuming that we also later made Christianity our State Religion)... but, we'd probably need to self-tech Mysticism + Polytheism (or wait to get them in trade) before we could get Monotheism (which is an easy trade, since it's a non-monopoly tech) for Organized Religion in order to build ourselves a Christian Missionary. Even without the State Religion discount, just getting 1 Culture in the City (say, from a whipped Monument or better, from capturing Stonehenge) would already give us more than 40 "percent" discount on tech thefts. Hence, it would be worth putting an emphasis on owning Stonehenge (that Wonder will also act as +1 Happiness in all Cities thanks to being Charismatic, giving us extra Happiness when we need it most), earning back part of our investment by stealing Code of Laws at a much cheaper cost.
There is the possibility of spending our Commerce on Espionage for City Revolt Missions. But, such a Mission is expensive early on in the game. We will need roughly another 400 EPs on Churchill to be able to perform a City Revolt in London. We can earn about 100 EPs in 3 turns, so that's 12 turns' worth of Commerce, plus roughly 1 turn of earning Gold, so about 13 turns' worth of Commerce.
Those Espionage Points might be better earned against Hatty (later, once we are ready to spend on her at a 100% Espionage rate, not now at a rate of 4 EPs per turn, which she could easily start undesirably matching if we started spending on her now) for stealing techs from her, meaning that we might be better off planning on having 4 Galleys for London or else hoping that Churchill leaves London occupied by 1 City Defender (when a Settler Party leaves London) at a future time.
There's also the idea of Liberating a City to Churchill. If we were to ship a Settler over to him, settle a City (perhaps in a spot where we wouldn't want to keep a City), then later declare war on him for London, but also capture the gifted City, we could Re-Liberate the gifted City (we'd Liberate the City a second time after the war was over, obviously). Two City Liberations = +3 Diplo Attitude, balancing out the -3 Declared War on Us Diplo penalty. Unlike other AIs, Churchill is relatively isolated, so we won't anger a lot of AIs for declaring war on him. I.e. We can get both London and Churchill as a Friendly tech-trading partner this way.
If we want a long-term Friendly Joao but want Lisbon, we could also plan to later settle 2 Cities for him in Africa, Liberating 2 Cities for +3 Diplo Attitude, then capturing all of his Cities minus 1, then Liberating one of the 2 Previously-Liberated Cities for another +1 Diplo Attitude, and leaving him with 2 Cities so that he'd still be somewhat useful as a tech-trading partner (optionally later gifting him other captured Cities in another part of the map, possibly even making him our Vassal just after gifting said Cities in another part of the map).
With London and Hamburg under our control, we could sail our fleet around toward Hatty, capturing Lisbon on the way.
As for Alex, gifting him techs would anger Hatty, and although we'll probably end up stealing techs from her, there will be the chance to trade some techs from her. If Alex is kind enough to go for Math or Aesthetics, then we can give him a roughly fair trade so that Hatty won't be too angered, but right now Alex has nothing to offer us, so we'd take 3 times the negative Diplo from Hatty for gifting techs to Alex. Or, once we know Currency, we can slowly sell techs to Alex. Thus, I'd avoid gifting techs to Alex and just be patient, since we unlocked both of the Mathematics and Aesthetics lines for him.
I'd suggest that we watch for Churchill learning his next tech and then gift him Alphabet at that point in time, to give him a chance to go after a peaceful tech (Currency at a Flavour value of 20 instead of Alphabet at a Flavour value of 0) to reduce the chance of him from going for Iron Working (a Flavour value of 35) or him going for Horseback Riding (a Flavour value of 42).
For Joao, we can either gift him Masonry or hold onto it and hope that he goes for Mysticism and then make a trade. He might also just go for Masonry, though, thereby wasting his Flasks, so it's a bit of a judgement call. With Joao not being anyone's Worst Enemy and with him being relatively isolated, I don't see a problem with gifting him Masonry now, if that's what we choose to do, particularly since he just learned a tech (Iron Working) and thus is about to make a new tech selection, making it the right timing for a tech gift. Joao having Masonry might lead him to go for Mathematics -> Construction, as an example.
In 4 turns' time (on Turn 61, 1560 BC), we'll want to Cancel Open Borders with Stalin, so that we don't needlessly anger Churchill. The F4 ACTIVE screen allows us to cancel the deal by clicking on the deal just as equally as would talking with the AI, and neither one can be done one turn sooner--perhaps I was remembering a difference in Vanilla, but it seems as though there is no difference in BtS.
As for Hatty, if we want, we could make the Iron Working trade now, or we could reserve Alphabet for a while longer. With her being a tech leader with the solid Wonders that she owns, she's unlikely to trade much with other AIs (what would they have to give her in trade?). It's hard to say--she might self-tech Alphabet herself, which would slow down her tech pace, but if she goes for Philosophy, Aesthetics, Drama, and Music, we wouldn't want her tech pace slowed down. If she goes for Monarchy and Feudalism, it's possible that we wouldn't have been able to stop her no matter how stingy we were, as she might not have teched Alphabet before beelining Feudalism. So, I'm leaning toward suggesting that we take Iron Working from her for Alphabet. We can also just wait until Frederick or Alex gets Iron Working and get that tech later.
For Frederick, I'd suggest that we remain at war for as long as possible without sacrificing any Military Units to do so. He wants to settle (at least in the test game) a City in a location that's 1 N of where we'd want to place it (i.e. he misses out on some nice GH squares with his chosen settling location and also settles 1 away from the Coast) and we're earning Diplo credit with Alex (and hopefully later also with Churchill) while we remain at war with Frederick. Remaining at war also leaves open the option of capturing Hamburg and then Cease Firing or making Peace immediately thereafter, so that we wouldn't have to face retaliation from capturing the City. Frederick's army might then leave to go after Alex and then we could hope to strike at Berlin during the time that our boats are sailing southward and our Military Units have nothing better to do (better to put them to use instead of having them sailing for turns on end, at least for the fast-moving Horse Archers, who could move 3 or 4 squares per turn along our Roads--depending upon where there are Rivers--to be able to catch up with a fleet of boats).
