First things -- I don't think we want a city on that forest by Lahore. It'll make our first palace ring RCP-2, and that is going to nail nearly all of our high-production towns with extra corruption. It won't gain us any critical tiles, either -- Lahore will keep all the ones immediately adjacent to it. India has no horses; they won't be able to hit very hard very quickly. As long as you have reinforcements to ship on the second turn, with plenty of cats, I think you'll be fine to move on Lahore via the second forest. Focus on swords for offense initially, with just a couple of horses to pick off the last unit of a stack. We can send more horses later.
As for keeping Lahore, well you'll have to see what size it is when you capture it, and whether or not it still has its harbor after bombardment. (Plan for at least ten units, by the way (mostly spears), as they had at least five or six already when I played and will most likely be able to reinforce a bit before you get there.) With India still in despotism, it probably has whip unhappiness already, and will get more once you land, so it won't be a useful town for us for quite a while. Raze and replace sounds rather tempting to me, actually.
Re: AI Bait -- keep the units out of the city itself, and off the coast wherever possible. (You'll probably want to keep a unit on the olives to keep it usable by us.) You need to leave room for them to land, or they'll go elsewhere. Don't take too many troops away from Izmit, because the Indians have apparently been landing there a bit. You can use the cats in Sogut to nail galleys as they go past when the opportunity is there -- might get a few to turn around. Eventually, we'll need roads over the mountains between Izmit and AI Bait to allow better movement, and we definitely need a road on that last desert coast tile by AI Bait so we don't lose movement by attacking a lone enemy unit.
I don't think we want anything else in trade, unless we can sell our maps or a truly obsolete tech for decent cash.
Renata
As for keeping Lahore, well you'll have to see what size it is when you capture it, and whether or not it still has its harbor after bombardment. (Plan for at least ten units, by the way (mostly spears), as they had at least five or six already when I played and will most likely be able to reinforce a bit before you get there.) With India still in despotism, it probably has whip unhappiness already, and will get more once you land, so it won't be a useful town for us for quite a while. Raze and replace sounds rather tempting to me, actually.
Re: AI Bait -- keep the units out of the city itself, and off the coast wherever possible. (You'll probably want to keep a unit on the olives to keep it usable by us.) You need to leave room for them to land, or they'll go elsewhere. Don't take too many troops away from Izmit, because the Indians have apparently been landing there a bit. You can use the cats in Sogut to nail galleys as they go past when the opportunity is there -- might get a few to turn around. Eventually, we'll need roads over the mountains between Izmit and AI Bait to allow better movement, and we definitely need a road on that last desert coast tile by AI Bait so we don't lose movement by attacking a lone enemy unit.
I don't think we want anything else in trade, unless we can sell our maps or a truly obsolete tech for decent cash.
Renata
Is it considered bad technique to invade while in anarchy?
I didn't know that. So you can't have a look at the town to see if the harbour survived without risking unhappiness? 
These subtleties must be what separates the experts from the rest of us. 
I'll check once more for more excellent advice.
I'm happy to be corrected.
I'd hate to bungle this operation.
)
I'm about to get revolting. 
I can't see putting too much into research when we have the GL so I'll look at a single scientist in AI Bait, good idea. I guess the logical place to build the HG is in GL, so I'll see how the revolution and invasion go and then see what Monarchy does for us.
After mm, no citizens will be lost. Hire scientist in Izmit to research Eng in 40, +1gpt.
4 gold, 1 resistor, 1 eqworker, harbour intact =>barracks. Worker to road forest. Thats 9 wins, lose one reg sword, 2 horses.
) 6 turns on anarchy stinks, but it's probably no worse than average for our number of cities. And 28-5 is an awesome kill ratio given that we had an invasion in there. Still need more cats, though, and some galleys to stash down south and pick off damaged ones would be quite nice.
