SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[WarDance]

I'm not quite sure what to do with the roster now. zyxy will be back in two (three?) days, and could use some time to get back in the game. I won't be able to play for some time yet either. Of WD and CB, CB played last, so WD what do you say, want to play a set?

Sure, I'm game

 

[Niklas]

Great, then the roster now looks like this:

• CommandoBob
• ControlFreak - Just Played
• WarDance - UP!
• zyxy - On Deck! (away until Jan 4th)
• Niklas
• Methos - ghosting

Rather than trying to get back to the old order I say we stick to this. Once the holidays are over it shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Btw, you guys might want to have a look at the progress graphs. In particular have a look at the score graph - no need to restrict it to the PtW/Vanilla teams this time.

Let's just hope we can keep/catch up in tech as well. The culture graph is interesting, during our last turnset it actually looks like we had the highest cpt of all, possibly tied with Jeffelammar. Total culture is rather uninteresting, but cpt says something about the number of libraries and wonders of each team. If we're ahead in that, it means at least that the others don't have lots of unis by 350 AD.

 

[CommandoBob]

Great, then the roster now looks like this:

• CommandoBob
• ControlFreak - Just Played
• WarDance - UP!
• zyxy - On Deck! (away until Jan 4th)
• Niklas
• Methos - ghosting

Rather than trying to get back to the old order I say we stick to this. Once the holidays are over it shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Roster is fine with me.

Btw, you guys might want to have a look at the progress graphs. In particular have a look at the score graph - no need to restrict it to the PtW/Vanilla teams this time.

Process graph: - "SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSMOKIN!" (Jim Carrey 'The Mask')

Let's just hope we can keep/catch up in tech as well. The culture graph is interesting, during our last turnset it actually looks like we had the highest cpt of all, possibly tied with Jeffelammar. Total culture is rather uninteresting, but cpt says something about the number of libraries and wonders of each team. If we're ahead in that, it means at least that the others don't have lots of unis by 350 AD.

Since over 90% of our culture is from libraries, (I do not recall building any temples), keeping pace with tech should not be a problem. Once our current expansion is handled we will begin building universities almost everywhere. Culture and tech should go hand-in-hand. Plus, our Golden Age is yet to come.

Spam Count: XTeam has more posts than us (677 vs. 635) but is also 50 turns ahead of us. I think we will catch up with no problem.

 

[ControlFreak]

Some more down-to-earth comments:

Leo's in Missi? I thought we were more keen on Sistine? Sure Leo's is good to have, but I doubt we'll have much use for it. After all there'll be next to no fighting once we've subdued America and Spain, some 50 turns from now?

As I was playing, I really started emphasizing horses over Medi for their speed. I think we're going to roll over america, especially with Spain in the commanding position they are. But now that Spain has Feudalism and iron, we're going to face a lot of pikemen. I was thinking that letting them research the option techs like Music Theory while we research optional Military Tradition, we could upgrade all those horses to cavalry and kick some butt.

Another option is switch as you said to sistines, let spain (or even SF?) build leos and then capture it first with a small horde, following with massive upgrades.

I played late last night, not sure I was thinking right.

Also, I was doing poor mans MicroManagement, just checking when builds hit 2 turns to go. Markets can be gotten in 9 turns if you go 12spt at least once and 11 the rest. I did that in the town N of Missismurki, can't remember name right now. I did not do that in Arizsmurkz yet but it's set to 12spt.

It's going to need alot of combing over.

 

[CommandoBob]

Cancel alliance with America. Attack Richbourgh. Horse redlines but wins. Second horse wins and we take the city!

Uh, I do not think you needed to cancel the alliance. We and America (and Spain) had agreed to beat up on the Celts. We (You) had every right to take Richbourgh before America or Spain did. Any Celt city was fair game for the A-S-S (America-Spain-Smurkz) alliance.

Edit:
In fact, you did not cancel the alliance. To break the alliance, you would have needed to made peace with the Celts, which you did not do.

In fact, doesn't that alliance end after WarDance's preflight? I signed them up on my preflight, and then you played, so one more IBT and we can make peace with the Celts and not blemish our reputation.

 

[CommandoBob]

I did some quick counting of the land tiles of Spain (Ostrich) and America (Tadpole). I gave the landmasses these names because of their shape when I was trimming the images.

On both landmasses I counted the land tiles on the NE-SW axis. Obvious coastal tiles were not included in this count, only improvable land tiles, since this seems to be what the Domination limit is based on.

Tadpole


Ostrich


Tadpole has 262 improvable land tiles; Ostrich has 115. We already own 460 improvable land tiles, and the domination limit, according to MapStat, is 500 more than what we have or 960 tiles.

If I understand this correctly, we could conquer and occupy all of Tadpole and Ostrich and still be less than the domination limit (460 + 262 + 115 = 837; 837 < 960).

I know the math is correct, but this answer feels incorrect. If this were a solo game I would really expect to reach the Domination Tile Limit by conquering and filling these two landmasses.

 

[Methos]

On both landmasses I counted the land tiles on the NE-SW axis. Obvious coastal tiles were not included in this count, only improvable land tiles, since this seems to be what the Domination limit is based on.

I'm not very knowledgable on the domination limit, but thought the coastal tiles were considered as part of the domination limit count.

 

[WarDance]

I'm not very knowledgable on the domination limit, but thought the coastal tiles were considered as part of the domination limit count.

I believe you're right about that. We were counting coastal tiles in SGOTM7, which was a domination game.

 

[Niklas]

Yes, coastal tiles are part of the count, but not sea tiles. We will probably be able to settle Tadpole just fine, but we need to off some of our land to India before we do Ostrich.

 

[CommandoBob]

Yes, coastal tiles are part of the count, but not sea tiles. We will probably be able to settle Tadpole just fine, but we need to off some of our land to India before we do Ostrich.

Just to be sure: Coastal tiles as defined by the game (water tiles that are not ocean or sea tiles) or tiles with both water and land? I think I have seen coastal water tiles without any land; want to find out before I recount.

And related to counting: what cities or geography were we going to allow India to have?

 

[Niklas]

Just to be sure: Coastal tiles as defined by the game (water tiles that are not ocean or sea tiles) or tiles with both water and land?

The former.

And related to counting: what cities or geography were we going to allow India to have?

I envision that we'll keep Smuez Canal, a town on the iron north of Sabratha, and give India everything south of that.

 

[ControlFreak]

Uh, I do not think you needed to cancel the alliance. We and America (and Spain) had agreed to beat up on the Celts. We (You) had every right to take Richbourgh before America or Spain did. Any Celt city was fair game for the A-S-S (America-Spain-Smurkz) alliance.

Edit:
In fact, you did not cancel the alliance. To break the alliance, you would have needed to made peace with the Celts, which you did not do.

In fact, doesn't that alliance end after WarDance's preflight? I signed them up on my preflight, and then you played, so one more IBT and we can make peace with the Celts and not blemish our reputation.

Sorry if my poor wording confused you. I did not need to break the alliance. When the 20 turns finished, we did not automatically terminate it because I have my preferences set to not renegotiate. Since the Alliance was still favorable to America (who wouldn't want our army on their side ) they didn't cancel it either. I cancelled it, not be cause I had to, but because I didn't want the next player to forget to cancel it before settling for peace with the Celts. In all honesty, I expected to settle for peace myself, but when the horse got to Gergovia and there was no sign of Spanish or American units, I decided to wait. The longer we go before giving Sing Sing to the Celts, the more cultural advantage that Victoria will have.

Despite my wording, terminating the Alliance had nothing to do with attacking Richbourgh.

I envision that we'll keep Smuez Canal, a town on the iron north of Sabratha, and give India everything south of that.

I agree with keeping Canal. Now that I look at the western choke, I actually think the jungle tile South of the Iron will be better. It's still a canal/chokepoint town but it would get the whales on growth. Now I'm sorry that I stopped the settler to abandon Sabratha. We should probably restart that.

More Handoff Instructions:

• The sword and horse on the settlers on the Atoll should be woken and moved to the West. This threesome will walk ahead of the settlers and clear any barbs/camps.
• The Mongol Settler should probably found the city closer to our territory (move to hill next turn) and the natural settler found the next hill (closer to India and Carthage) to reduce flip chances.
• Indianapolsmurkz could switch to galley to help with logistics of the Atoll towns.
• There's a stack of nine workers on the Mountains by deer that can road in 1 turn and mine in 2 turns. I would have them road, then mine the tile they're on so the group of 2 workers will finish their road. Then you could move the two workers back to deer and start chopping forest to help with a library or something cultural to gain the mountain mine. Other things that the two workers could do is plant forest on some of the regular grass land. There is a decent amount of surplus food between Deer and Heim that could be turned into shields with a forest.
• The worker near Sabratha should road and be joined by the other three workers. That would make 1+4+4 WT for a perfect road. After that, at least three of them should continue N roading. (4 will waste a lot of WT and not speed up a jungle road. The other one can go back to chop some forest to speed Kastle builds. You can save one jungle road by rushing a settler in Sabratha to abandon the town. The settler goes NW 1 tile and resettles. If you do this on your inherited turn, the new town will be founded in time for you to walk the workers through it to start roading the iron hill.
• I really blew the Micromanagement of Arismurkz mostly due to lack of workers in that area. It needs a mine on it's grassland to the west to make an even 10spt. Until that's made, it will be short of horses in 3 or way over horses in 4. Use the workers there to mine the grassland ASAP. Until then, use the lake to drop the production to 8spt if you're building horses.
• SanAnsmurkio could use a little more food to make it grow faster. If you keep it at 12spt the first turn, you can drop it to 11spt the next and still have the market build in 9 total. That would let you work the lakes or another plains when irrigated.
• We are paying 39gpt for entertainment of 4 towns. We could use specialists in Food, Grad, Missismurki (Entertainers) and Zentral (Tax) to fix their happiness problems. The most important build, the Great Library, will still finish in 3. The others affect their builds by at most 1 turn and could be put on starvation for a few turns to maintain or increase build speed. While not needed for research at this minute, it might be better to do it while we can then wait until we need it and find out that it delays us then.

Going back to the Leo/Sistines discussion. We do want Sistines but it doesn't help us right now as we don't even have temples in most towns. (BTW the Oracle has expired ) Also Sistines helps for all cities regardless of which continent it's built on. We could build Leos to help us conquer Spain, let Spain build Sistines and take it from them. By then we'll at least have started some cathedrals. Or even better, kill the cascade at the Great Wall and then build Leos AND Sistines back to back. Spain doesn't know Mono yet.

Another thought, since we've settled on the Great Library tactic, do we want to keep Carthage, Mongols and Ottomans at war with India to prevent them buying their way up? Or do you think that could backfire by having India gain techs in peace deals? At any rate, I would make all MA's gpt so that we don't get back stabbed by selling techs for MA and then settling for peace after two turns. Just a thought.

 

[Niklas]

I must say your reasoning about Sistine makes sense. However, Leo's might be helpful, but I would very much prefer not to have to go via MT and cavs. The other teams are bound to be ahead in tech, and I would cry over every lost turn. I would prefer Spain done and over with before MT is even an option - if we could roll over Carthaginian Numids with swords and horses, we shouldn't have a problem with Spanish pikemen using maces and horses. As long as we keep the reinforcements coming that is. And as long as they don't get Gunpowder...

EDIT: One thing though, if we don't get a leader from the American war we must get one from Spain. And leader-fishing is better done with fast, superior units so in that case perhaps Cavalry is a must-have after all.

I would prefer not to sign any more MAs, they're just in the way. We don't really need an MA with Spain vs America, and India is too far behind to be able to have a chance to get to Education before we're at least halfway through the IA. I'm still thinking we should let India lose as soon as we can, meaning as soon as we've improved all the land up to RR. I might reassess when we get closer though, you never know.

Regarding the lost gpt from lux, that's true enough. But for the first upcoming turn, we're losing a lot more gpt by running at 50% research instead of 40%. We can MM for commerce in order to manage Edu in 1 at 40% (outlined below), but not while reducing lux at the same time. My suggestion is thus that WD should concentrate on lowering research for the first turn, and only on the second turn lower lux to 0 through specialists.

We're currently at 292 bpt at 50% and 220 bpt at 40%. We lack 236 beakers for Edu, so a rather modest increase of 16 bpt is thus required.

This list is ordered by name on the F1 screen. Those I've left out means nothing to do there:

• HotB: Over the edge for Uni already. Switch desert and plains for two coasts, going from 13 to 15 bpt. (+2)
• Grad: Switch one mined and one irrigated plains for coast and lake, 8->9 bpt, GLib still in 3. (+3)
• Zentral: Over the edge for Uni already. Switch the three hills for one mined plains on river, one irrigated plains and the mined incence, 22->24 bpt. (+5)
• Arismurkz: Switch desert for lake, 7->9 bpt, doesn't need the spt this turn. (+7)
• Ismurkz: Switch one BG for spices, will grow in 1 and get the BG again, 7->9 bpt (+9)
• Amzee: Switch forest to lake, 7->9 bpt but 6->4 spt, needs 6 spt next turn to finish worker. (+11)
• Richborough: 2 scientists. (+13)
• Sabratha: 1 scientist (+14)
• Smurkz Point: Switch forest for deer, 0->1 bpt, 1->1 spt, 1->4 fpt(!). (+15)
• Smurkzland: Switch hills for coast. +1 gpt, no loss of spt.
• SteinSmurkz: Switch BG and roaded G for coasts, 2->3 bpt, no loss of spt and already at max size so the lost fpt won't matter. (+16)

Regarding the Uni builds, don't forget to switch those prebuilds in Zentral and HotB on the IBT when Edu comes in. Go to F1 after pressing "What's the big picture", switch by right-clicking in the "Producing" column.

 

[ControlFreak]

I must say your reasoning about Sistine makes sense. However, Leo's might be helpful, but I would very much prefer not to have to go via MT and cavs. The other teams are bound to be ahead in tech, and I would cry over every lost turn. I would prefer Spain done and over with before MT is even an option - if we could roll over Carthaginian Numids with swords and horses, we shouldn't have a problem with Spanish pikemen using maces and horses. As long as we keep the reinforcements coming that is. And as long as they don't get Gunpowder...

EDIT: One thing though, if we don't get a leader from the American war we must get one from Spain. And leader-fishing is better done with fast, superior units so in that case perhaps Cavalry is a must-have after all.

The difference between Spain and Carthage is that:

• They are on a different continent.
• They have a decent number of well improved cities.
• They have spent their golden age well (good government, good cities, good improvement)
• They have iron and horses connected.
• They have money for rushes and upgrades.

Spanish pikes will be much more formidable than Carthage.

With that said, I think we can quickly capture or disconnect their resources (iron is on a coastal mountain). I'm not saying wait for MT to hit them with cavs, rather having Leos would make it easier to upgrade if someone researches Chivalry for us and if we're having trouble with Spain MT is a good fallback plan. Don't forget that it's about ten turns round trip by galley. We will be able to bring 3 troops instead of 2 on the next round but it's still going to be a while getting a dominate number of troops over there. If we wait to hit spain until America is gone, that could very well be 20 turns from now. MT is not far away.

I would prefer not to sign any more MAs, they're just in the way. We don't really need an MA with Spain vs America, and India is too far behind to be able to have a chance to get to Education before we're at least halfway through the IA. I'm still thinking we should let India lose as soon as we can, meaning as soon as we've improved all the land up to RR. I might reassess when we get closer though, you never know.

I agree with no more MA. I'm not sure about letting India lose, but I would agree to let India loose once everything is railed for them. We will have a much bigger workforce than they can expect to muster anytime soon. Once the place is railed, we can pull all our defense back to the chokes and india will be able to take over all the cities in basically one turn. As far a gifting a city, I think we could gift the Eastern most Atoll city at 750AD. That would make them build galleys and start moving their units out of dehli but wouldn't really give them much research power. If they don't start moving their units out, they will have nothing to take our cities with. I don't like Indianapolsmurkz unless we're ready to pull back. There's too much front to cover from there. But if we're ready to pull back when we gift them Indianapolsmurkz, then I agree that would be a good one to chose.

Regarding the lost gpt from lux, that's true enough. But for the first upcoming turn, we're losing a lot more gpt by running at 50% research instead of 40%. We can MM for commerce in order to manage Edu in 1 at 40% (outlined below), but not while reducing lux at the same time. My suggestion is thus that WD should concentrate on lowering research for the first turn, and only on the second turn lower lux to 0 through specialists.

I was able to lower both Science to 40% AND Luxuries to 0%. It slowed a bunch of builds down by 1 turn or so and some of the towns were on a temporary negative FPT, but it's doable. I won't detail it for War Dance but rather give the philosophy that got me there.

Start by reducing the sliders to the goal. Then twice on the beaker icon at the column headers of F1, sorting by bpt in accending order. Then start at the top of the list (1bpt) and open up the town.

Make sure that you're working the optimal number of commerce tiles (some towns should be on lakes or coast instead of land tiles). Then chose the least productive worker and make him a scientist. Make sure that doing this doesn't reduce the amount of science already made (number of beakers is to the right of the beaker icons to make it easier). (There were several >5bpt where the commerce was going to tax or corruption based on the rounding of the percentages so don't think that you can't productively hire a scientist in noncorrupt towns just because you're taking a citizen off of a 2 or 3 gpt tile.) Evaluate weather the sheild/food/commerce lost is worth the trade off. If it is, hire another scientist or go back to F1 and pick the next town on the list. A warning, since you're sorting by bpt and you're hiring scientists, the sort order is constantly changing. Make sure you know what "the next town" is before you leave the F1 screen to do you're MM.

Each time you get back to the F1 screen, check to see if you successfully

When you're done, click twice on the happy/sad face to sort by happiness. Make sure that the four biggest towns are happy. If they are not hire an entertainer or scientist as appropriate. I ended up at 158gpt, Education in 1 at 0% lux. You can probably do better as I stopped as soon as I got to Education in 1.

Regarding the Uni builds, don't forget to switch those prebuilds in Zentral and HotB on the IBT when Edu comes in. Go to F1 after pressing "What's the big picture", switch by right-clicking in the "Producing" column.

That's a good technique to teach but not absolutely necessary in our case. None of the prebuilds are due to finish on the IBT so you can switch them after the IBT is over and your Turn 1 starts. Just don't forget. (Finishing the Great Wall in Zentral wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen, but moving the Palace back to HotB would kill us.)

 

[WarDance]

EEEK! I remember this MM scene from the last game. It took me a while to do it, but I made it work. Thanks for the tips.

 

[Niklas]

I'm not sure about letting India lose, but I would agree to let India loose once everything is railed for them.

Heh, I don't think I ever realized there was a difference in spelling, but now it seems obvious. Thanks!
Now let me repay the kindness by pointing out that choose is also with to o's . Oh, and evaluating wheather ?

I was able to lower both Science to 40% AND Luxuries to 0%. It slowed a bunch of builds down by 1 turn or so and some of the towns were on a temporary negative FPT, but it's doable. I won't detail it for War Dance but rather give the philosophy that got me there.

Not sure I think it's worth it. I wasn't sure about my changes either until I could prove to myself that it was doable with no crucially lost spt or fpt. The extra 30 or so gpt we'd get by lowering the lux slider to 0% would more than well be weighed up by the lost spt and fpt.

That's a good technique to teach but not absolutely necessary in our case. None of the prebuilds are due to finish on the IBT so you can switch them after the IBT is over and your Turn 1 starts. Just don't forget. (Finishing the Great Wall in Zentral wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen, but moving the Palace back to HotB would kill us.)

I agree that it's not crucial, but building them on the IBT means we can start the next project one turn sooner. What is the next project btw, Cathedral in Zentral? HotB won't need one, we won't need any until we start getting WW from India taking our southern core, including HotB.

 

[ControlFreak]

Now let me repay the kindness by pointing out that choose is also with to o's . Oh, and evaluating wheather ?

I know better than to edit the english master. (Reminder to casual lurkers...English is not Niklas' first language. )

I was just making sure you hadn't given up on the game and were going after India with berserkz.

How does switching on the IBT let us start the next project faster? Shields go in the bin no matter what it's building. Unless the bin gets full, you don't finish any earlier.

I leave it up to WarDances capable hands to decide how much slider reductions to make. Just don't make Education longer than 1 turn.

The other teams are bound to be ahead in tech, and I would cry over every lost turn.

I've been thinking about this. We might not be so bad off. Since our territory spikes much earlier and our CPT is higher, I think that we have accomplished with many small cities what other teams are trying with fewer big ones. We're at 4 turn research already and have a lot more cities, more libraries and great gpt. We may not be as far behind as you think. But by all means, don't let up on the gas pedal.

 

[WarDance]

There are a couple different ideas about wonder builds out there. Can we get a consensus on that? Originally we were going for Sistine Chapel in Missi, but there is also the suggestion of doing Leo's first and then Sistine.

Research for the next turns is: Education in 1 turn, then Astronomy right? After that what should we do? We have to do banking at some point. We also have to go up the bottom of the tree to get to physics and onward. So I guess after astronomy should I do banking or gunpowder?

I'll have more questions later most likely, but those are my big ones for now.

 

[Niklas]

How does switching on the IBT let us start the next project faster? Shields go in the bin no matter what it's building. Unless the bin gets full, you don't finish any earlier.

EDIT: This paragraph is not quite correct, don't mind it.
If we switch on the IBT between turn 0 and 1, the uni is built on the same IBT, and we can start a new project on turn 1. If we don't switch on the IBT, we have to switch on turn 1, the uni gets built on the IBT between 1 and 2, and we can't start the next project until turn 2. This is because the bin is already full, so indeed we finish earlier. But certainly, if the bin hadn't been full, it wouldn't have mattered.

EDIT: Gah, never mind my ramblings. I seem to have been playing too much with Scientific civs . Uni is 200 shields, not 100, so of course it won't matter.
This also has implications on the MMing to be done in these two towns, suddenly the lost spt is not irrelevant. Perhaps by using CF's technique with scientists in the towns on the bottom rungs will let you get the +4 bpt these two towns would have given, so that you don't need to relent on the building pace. (Or perhaps the lost spt for one turn won't affect the time it will take to the uni, or we don't care if we delay them one turn).

Agree with CF's other sentiment though, this is all just cream on the top, it's up to WD to decide what to do and how. As long as Edu comes in 1 , some lost gp won't matter much.


My suggestion for research path would be Edu, Astro, GP, Chem. Astro should come first since we want to upgrade to caravels, and I prefer GP over Banking. We have no real use of Banks yet, and from GP we get to know where the salpeter is (for some slight increase in commerce).

In the longer run, the only tech that can really help us is Magnetism, both for the better and faster ships, and for the overseas trade. I would argue we should go Chem, Phy, Mag right away during the next turnset since we have the necessary bpt to get all of those techs in 4.


Regarding the wonder builds, it's nothing that will finish in the next 10 turns anyway, so we don't need to decide at this point. I don't really know what I think, so playing a bit longer to see what happens sounds like a good idea to me.


Btw, CF forgot (or didn't have time), but I still want to see those strategy plans by each player.

 

[ControlFreak]

EDIT: Gah, never mind my ramblings. I seem to have been playing too much with Scientific civs . Uni is 200 shields, not 100, so of course it won't matter.

This also has implications on the MMing to be done in these two towns, suddenly the lost spt is not irrelevant. Perhaps by using CF's technique with scientists in the towns on the bottom rungs will let you get the +4 bpt these two towns would have given, so that you don't need to relent on the building pace. (Or perhaps the lost spt for one turn won't affect the time it will take to the uni, or we don't care if we delay them one turn).

Agree with CF's other sentiment though, this is all just cream on the top, it's up to WD to decide what to do and how. As long as Edu comes in 1 , some lost gp won't matter much.

OK, now you're on the same page as me. No more scientific civs for you! Next thing you're going to tell me is that Cathedrals are only 60s.

As I said before, it's up to you WarDance. You *can* lower both the sliders and still get Education in 1 using specialists and higher commerce tiles. It's up to you to decide if the penalties in shields are worth it. (In my experiment, I was comfortable with the lost shields as they were either corrupt or wasted at most 1 turn on the current build. The wonder builds look like more turns were lost but I felt that after we get Education, a lot of the scientists would go back to work and reclaim the original build rate without loss. Also, there were some towns I was comfortable with eating food out of the granary since they were at size 6 or on the verge of unhappiness. Good luck and I promise not to criticize your choice. I left a corrupt town on a forest instead of a deer for heavens sake.

Btw, CF forgot (or didn't have time), but I still want to see those strategy plans by each player.

I thought what I posted in Post #626 satisfied the requirement.

What I have as my to do list is:

Research: Invention, (Trade for Mono), Theology and start Education.
Done

Military: Land and take Entremont. I'm planning on taking an extra turn to land on the Mountain and attack from the hills. Then I will be working my way to Augustodurum, with an advanced scout heading to cutoff America's iron.
Completely changed due to advancing spanish and american troops. Entremont was taken but Horses were sent to Gergovia and Richborough to hold back the destruction of the Celts. They then seized an opportunity of a failed American assault and took Richborough.

Infrastructure: Libraries and Markets in most towns. Uni prebuilds in the top 5 cities. Barracks/Units everywhere else until we have enough of a force to wipe out America quickly. I need to get some new galleys staged for a Western assault as well as resetting the Eastern assault.
Sort of Done. Some Library builds were abandoned in the south and West to make more units. Core markets were near completion or started after library completed. 8 boats loaded (5 E, 3 W) and are on their way to America.

Micromanagement: I'm still shooting for growth where possible. If warweariness starts, I'll start reducing the pop with workers. I will be trying to advance the shield potential in Missismurki and Sages as first priority.Except for my deer fiasco in Point Smurk (easily rectified on WarDance's Preflight) I did favor growth in cities that could grow. Missismurki is at it's max shield potential. Sages could be a couple of shields higher if workers are joined to it for the oyster and another forest. Right now, the workers are more important for improving the second radius towns around Zentral.

Settlements: I need some advice here. We are going to be getting a lot of abandonment settlers. Where do the new towns need to go? Should I head them toward the prison areas in preparation for gifting?
Followed Niklas' advice, founding the last two second ring cities, a inner-city prison for the Celts, and sending 2 settlers to the Atoll Hills.