Preturn (1150AD) Take a quick look around. Our core is rapidly becoming a wooded paradise. One blue galley is lurking around our capital. We could try taking him with a caravel, but I'd just as soon not risk a vital ship. I doubt that Blue Boy could land much that would worry me. We've been cash-rushed down to 40g this turn, but plenty more gold is on the way. Our mainland is pretty much a cav/caravel factory, with a spot of infra here and there. Our beach-head at SB is secure enough, with only 2 javs and a longbow there to offer resistence (unless the Maya have some horse units they'd like to sacrifice). And as far as I can tell, the Maya don't have any salt on their island. But Hammie sure does. Just a thought.
Oh, and Maya Dude would be glad to sign a peace treaty and even pay us 20g in the process. Very kind of you, sire. But no thanks.
Basically, it's the usual tight ship that scout is wont to hand over.
Time to hit Enter.
IBT Hammie yells at us and threatens to give our ships the boot. I go ahead and take the ROP, which makes him polite. We'll deal with him in a bit.
Galley sails away. Blue Boy moves his troops into range.
Turn 1 (1160AD) Spend a little gold to shave build-time off of SB's harbor. Our trebs knock 1hp off of a jag, and I finish them off with 2 cavs and an elite MW, no promotion. (3-0) Move troops on our homeland west for loading, move ships back east to pick them up, and send some troops out to whack some Maya.
IBT Nuthin at all, really.
Turn 2 (1170AD) Apparently all of the other guys have been researching Music Theory, since they all have it this turn. Expect a bunch of JSB builds beginning soon. Lagarto in our sights.
IBT As predicted, Hammie starts building JSB. Where are all of Blue Boy's knights, I wonder?
Turn 3 (1180AD) Two cavs and our MedInf army take out Lagarto's two pikes and one longbow, and we leave a rockpile. (6-0) Our combat settler builds a hillside fort town to put Bonampak in closer striking distance. Name it Hawthorne.
Move troops to take out Bonampak and Tikal. Looks like Maya Dude doesn't have the troops to counterattack.
IBT Abu gets cranky about our ships. Looks like we don't have an embassy with him yet, so no ROP and we get the boot. Some more cavs complete and we get a palace expansion.
Also, looks like Hammie and Abu have learned Banking. That might well be worth a steal.
Turn 4 (1190AD) First off, I build the embassy in Mecca. Here's how Abu is doing.
So it was Abu who learned Banking first. Worth a trade, I think. We give Metallurgy, and we get Banking, Chivalry, 74g and 40gpt, as well as ROP. This nets us all the gold in the world right now, and pretty much assures us that Hammie will be our next target. Probably.
Now on to Bonampak. Cav takes out the only pike there (!!??!?), MI removes a spear, and another MI retires the spearthrower dude. Rockpile city. (9-0) Shift a mountie army and the cav to a hilltop outside of Blue Dude's two remaining southern cites, and discover that he has only longbows defending. This is not good news for him.
Rush the barracks in Hawthorn and a couple of other things here and there.
IBT Nuthin.
Turn 5 (1200AD) Mountie army removes the one longbow that was defending Quirigua. (10-0) Decide to keep this one. Likewise with Calakmul -- vet cav removes the one longbow there from circulation. (11-0)
Also, I don't know if anyone's noticed this, but there has to be another landmass of size somewhere. Maya Dude has only three more cities left on this island, and there are five more unaccounted for on his city list.
Most of our fleet is back in home waters, ready to pick up our landing force. Suspect that they'll not be needed for the Maya, but will be for our next target.
Science turned back on to pick up Physics in 4. We can pull that in and get ToG soon after, with cash to spare for upgrades.
Douglas Fir switched to build Pentagon, possibly as a prebuild for Newton's.
IBT Abu would like to trade us Music Theory for Mil Trade. Um, no thanks.
Turn 6 (1210AD) Cavs and elite mounties take out three pikes in Tikal, with one brave attacker lost, our first casualty. (14-1) Cavs and Bugsy's Mounties eliminate 2 pikes and a jav in Chichen Itza, revealing another jav underneath. (17-1) And, incredibly enough, that single jav then turns back our MI army, killing it.

(17-2) A wounded Bugsy's Mounties then avenges our army, killing the last redlined jav and making the Great Lighthouse ours. That'll be good for a few more turns.
We now have 18 cavs loaded in caravels that now have an extra movement, ready to be shipped ... where? Hittiteland? That could give us a beach-head on the main western continent, in time to move on Hammie. I very much doubt that Maya Dude has anything left to throw at us on his mainland -- just Palenque left. Must find his hidden territory. He won't give up any of those hidden cities in peace negotiations yet, and anyway, we'd like to take posession of the Pyramids in Palenque before we're done with him.
Ah, here's a clue at last.
So that's where Maya Dude is hiding. We're looking at some blue borders across the water from Hittiteland. Interesting.
IBT Hammie gets temporary posession of Leo's. He might end up being a little more difficult to deal with than Blue Dude has been.
Turn 7 (1220AD) War weariness setting in at last. Must turn on the happy juice a bit more rather than give up productivity in our core towns.
Move troops to take out Palenque next turn or two.
Turn 8 (1230AD) Not much. Our serious invasion fleet is sailing north to invade either Hittiteland (my choice) or the Mayan secret hideaway (if the next best player would like to put up with more ww). We lose a caravel when I unwisely try to take that damn blue galley out of circulation. (17-3)
IBT Physics comes in. Navigation next in 6. Our science can't go over 40% due to ww unless we want to run deficit spending just to shave off 1 turn of research. I would rather have gone for ToG, but we won't get our prebuild in DF ready for a while yet, and I'd like to get those spices online.
Turn 9 (1240AD) Cannons take some skin off of pikes in Palenque, then cavs, elite mounties, and our mountie army does the rest. (21-3) We now own the Pyramids, which should make turning this island into a specialist farm a bit easier.
Send a couple of mounties down south to clear out a barb camp that sprung up next to the ruins of Bonampak. We need some settlers over here to take over the empty spaces, so I rush one in Tikal. He'll be Mayan, but his children will not.
And I believe that I'm going to leave this one here with 1 1/2 turns to go. That can be a bonus for the next better player. We're going to have to decide whether or not to take peace now from the Maya, since we have their mainland, or to push on to extinguish them.
Oh, and the gold from Palenque allows us to crank research up to 50%, now getting us Navigation in 4 with +9gpt profit.
I'm sure there's lots of micromanaging still to do as well, but I hope I've done okay with this set. Sorry about losing our MI army.
Here's a pic of the former Mayan core.
And here's the
>>SAVE<<