OK, I caved. I suppose we can put Hammi on a hit list, but he's a long ways off and I doubt it will be necessary to take his core land if we're looking for a space win. Anyway, I played only 9 turns to get us back on multiples of 10. Also, a newly built settler is waiting to move - we should figure out where he's going. Here's the blow-by-blow:
Pre-Turn - Did the trade deals but underestimated dropoff in value after trading. We're still missing MM and Cleo ended up keeping 84 gold. We did get both Myst and Poly though, and still kept Republic of course. Could be better probably, but we ended up effectively getting CB, Myst, Poly, HBR, and Math for Philo+60g.
72 - Bedeville Archer->Archer. Archer sent down toward hills SE of Salamanca as vanguard for settler. Changed Mayhem City to Warrior per Bede's suggestion.
73 - Salamanca Settler->Archer. Settler follows vanguard.
74 - Turned off lux (should have done this last turn, sorry) and moved one MP from Salamanca to Bedeville to compensate. Mayhem City Warrior->Worker. Sent Archer down towards barb camp in SE.
75- Salamanca grows, bumped lux back to 10%. Archer from Mayhem reveals a barb horsie in striking range. Curragh reveals a cow near the incense south of the sea - we'll want to get over here.
76 - Horsebarb retreats to camp. Bedeville Archer->Archer. Salamanca Archer->Settler. We have several archers in the Salamanca/Bedeville area, so I figure now is as good a time as any to pop the GH lurking outside Salamanca. Bedeville archer crosses river to be ready for response. Salamanca archer heads toward GH. AI's did some tech trading - they are now all even and have MM (we don't) but not Republic.
77 - Harriet Bay Barracks->Archer. One barb horse shows up N of Mayhem City and another comes out of the camp in the SE and heads toward Mayhem. Switch from worker to warrior there since we can complete it before an attack. Archer hits GH and pops a few barb warriors. Settler founds Clever Springs on the hills near the desert oases. Would be nice to start a worker, but there's not enough food, so it goes for an Archer instead.
78 - Mayhem City Warrior->Worker. Archer destroys barb camp for 25g. Archers start to clear out hutbarbs without incident.
79 - More barb clearing. Worker begins road toward Clever Springs.
IT - Babylon demands Republic and I cave.
80 - Salamanca Settler->MW. Bedeville Archer->MW. Lux back to 0%. Literature comes in next turn, but there's no wiggle room on the slider. One of the barb-fighting archers goes back to Bedeville to heal up and then continue north. The other follows the last barb SW. The new archer from Bedeville heads E to Mayhem City. Blue Feather steps next to Heliopolis by mistake - apologize to Cleo for me next turn. Switched Clever Springs from Archer to Warrior - we have plenty of vet archers roaming around at this point, and just building the warrior will get our worker done sooner. The new settler is still to move.
Apart from Hammi's demand at the end, everything was pretty routine. There has been no new development in the world economy since the trade deal and no real excitment in terms of exploration apart from the cow near the incense. Orders of business for the future:
1) Embassies: Establishing these might help keep aggression down until we're ready to notch it up. Greece is starting to get close to us and an embassy there would only cost 44g. I would probably do that one at least. Egypt is 55g and Babylon is 64g.
2) Settlement: I think the priority should be working around the lake toward the incense - Greece is getting close and is out of space in the far south near Egypt and Babylon. We have one settler ready to go and could soon get another out of Bedeville if we want to. We could settle S of the sugar and NE of the cow and have a reasonably solid extension of the core. Then work NW toward the wine afterwards.
3) Workers: We need `em. Having to switch Mayhem to a second warrior to protect against barbs was irritating. And if we're going to work toward the incense and the wines we're going to have lots of roads to build.
4) Military: Up to this point, I stuck with Archers because the barbs were plentiful enough that I was feeling time pressure. At this point, we seem to have slightly better control so MW's might not be a bad idea. I set both Salamanca and Bedeville to MW's, but Salamanca may want to switch back to an archer since it keeps the settler production occuring right at the 5-to-6 growth point. All of the current unit builds apart from the workers are pretty switchable.
5) Trade: Hammi kept Republic to himself, so we could trade it to Egypt to get MM and her cash. Seems like a bit of a waste but it's already out there now and we have Literature coming in next turn anyway. I doubt that both Egypt and Greece would trade for Republic on the same turn and both have MM, so I'd probably wait a little while at least.
The save is
here. Screenies follow.
J/K!!!
. Forgot the lurker tags.
