@RickFGS: Yes, that also were my thoughts. Plus, if we conquer Carthago soon, the bigger western half of their empire will be cut off of Ivory anyway, while the eastern part will suffer heavy corruption.
Okay, I have played the first turns.
As promised, I post some pictures to document what I have done so far. (As it seems a convention to spoil pictures in these forums, I'll do it.) If interested in the very details, just look into the excel file I linked in the "Strategic Outline" post. I behaved very close to it.
350 BC: Pictures of our Legions, that should learn to do real work, before they may prove their honour in battle:
(Canusium was of course changed to Worker after taking this screenshot.
Note that two Garrisons (the one in Croton is needed for happiness purposes in the city this turn (while we have Spice in the next one) will board the ship to Messana next turn - while our Legions from there will road some tiles. Also note, that I shipped the Neapolis Garrison in the northern direction: it will hopefully capture some Carthagian workers on Corsica and Sardinia. The Neapolitan settler heads south to board a ship bound for Egypt. Accompanied by a Legion, it will try to claim the Gems on the Sinai peninsula.
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Also did a lot of Diplomacy during the first turn:
- Celts: Embassy, RoP. After moving the settler to make their maps cheaper, I get 2 Workers, World Map and 50 Cash for Alphabet and Masonry.
- Persia: Dyes and Worker for World Map, 150 and 5 GPT
- Macedonia: Worker for World Map, 4 and 3 GPT
- Egypt: Worker for World Map, 33 and 1 GPT
I didn't sell the contact around, because I wanted to form an alliance with the Celts in the second turn: I wanted do this in exchange of the remaining techs they lack (Writing and Iron Working). If I had traded the contact in the first turn, someone else surely would have given them the techs.
345 BC:
On this Screenshot you can see what I used the slaves for: 3 of them have been merged to Ancona, which is a great city but would have grown much too slow. With the added Slaves it can work the two mined gold tiles, the silver mine, the olive mine (
) the fish and the wheat. That gives us 13 shields and 20 beakers per turn. The other slaves mine the wheat, so that the city will have 15 shields as soon as our luxuries come in and the "We love the ..." party starts.
We also see Barbs invading our territory - and blocking the way of our Citizen (currently in Pisae) to Germany. Our Reg Archer tries to kill the warrior - and dies. So the legion has to do it. It will also kill the other Warrior (that now is right NW to it) in the next turn and after a pause to recover, it will seize one barb camp, while our vet Archer takes on the other one (that is located near to the southern Barb unit).
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That's a fine location for our first Luxury-Colony: Bonus food and located next to a river. Will build a scout that can explore northern Germany and the Baltic coast.
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The second turn finally saw us forming of a big alliance against Carthage - to a heavy price: Our treasury is drained after the following deals:
- Celts: Get their WM for 40 G.
- Macedonia: RoP for 3 + 2 GPT; get the alliance for WM, contact w. Celts, 100 and 5 GPT.
- Persia: RoP for 2 GPT; then form alliance for contact w. Celts, WM, 90 and 11 GPT.
- Egypt: RoP; form alliance for contact w. Celts, WM, iron, 40 and 1 GPT. (They will need the iron to be able to destroy some Carthagian War Elephants.)
- Celts: Donate contact to Carthage; get Alliance and their 41 G for Iron Working and Writing.
After this deals, we had only around 300 G in our coffers and ran a heavy deficit (around -80 per turn as we resarch at 100%). But this will change soon.
In the next turn some Num Mercs, Swordsmen and Archers have been killed at the (rushed) walls of Messana, where our Garrisons defend effectively with a value of 6. We didn't lose a single unit while destroying 5 or 6 of them.
Rushed Harbors in the fairly corrupt towns of Tarentum and Croton after they had amassed 10 shields each.
Also founded a city next to the silks in Hungary, so that we now have 4 Luxuries - enough to calm size 6 towns.
Some pictures from 315 BC:
You wouldn't believe it, but with exactly this setup, Rome has produced 3 workers in 3 turns until now. The program will assign the seventh' citizen to the mined iron tile, what makes 9 shields, plus we get 1 more because we are a lucky industrious tribe.
Now, Rome builds a library.
By the way: The original plan was to pre-build a library in Ancona after finishing the intial Scout and the Legion. But then I realized that we might not reach Literature soon enough. So I ordered to build a citizen there (it will be replaced by a Celtic slave).
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Our pirates have been successful: after having captured one worker at Corsica, which is already busy to improve our shield output in Italy, they captured 2 others on Sardinia as you see.
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That's the situation on Sicily. I placed our harbor city not at the southern-most tip of the boot, because in the current location it has the advantage that fast units from Neapolis, Canusium and Tarentum can reach it in 1 turn, slow ones in two turns - and still upgrade/or board at the same turn. We still can get to Messana in 1 turn by ship. As I don't plan to let this city grow much (I think I'll pop-rush Rax after having build the warrior), it doesn't matter that it's so close to Croton.
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Our third luxury city will deliver soon - and provoke parties in all size 6 cities with one MP, or 2 in the towns where I rushed the harbors.
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A CivAssist overview of our several diplomatic activities: After having sold contacts, world maps (we were first to meet both: Goth' and Scythians
) and Math to everyone, most AI's are totally drained off cash. Macedonia still has around 33 GPT to offer at this point. But as Currency is worth more, I think it's better to wait a bit to sell it. I'll have a close look on when Macedonia finishes it first tech: by then I'll wait at most 3 turns so that there is no risk that it gets Currency by itself.
Note that I gave away all of our second Iron to the Celts: They will need it to do some damage to the Carthagians in spain. We can build a colony in the Alps as soon as we need some. Later we can hold some workers ready to disconnect-connect iron in italy.
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I'll play some more tonight. This was just to give you an impression of what is going on.
But okay, we will sign no Alliances nor RoP's (except RoP with the celts - they would always give that for free) on the first turn. So there will be absolutely no bug-benefit for us. I'll take the risk that Carthage does something bad. 
)
With that harbour we can later even ship troops to Africa in only 1 turn (board ship in the new town, unload in Messana, move to Marsala (3), board ship, disembark or shiphop/unload in Carthage. If we get Rax in the new town, we can upgrade our fresh horsemen there, then do the shiphop-thing, so that we'd even have 5 movements on roads in Africa left: The more I think about it, the more I like it. That will speed up our progress in Africa enormously.
