Gunpowder: if we can get it in a peace treaty, we can take it. But I wouldn't spend anything on it.
We should spend all our gold on rushing and shortrushing things now. E.g. Galleys in corrupt towns where needed.
And shortrushing is the answer to this question:
looking at your save some cities seem to be wasting a lot of shields. Is their any way to "save" those shields?
Example: if a city makes 20spt, you would waste 10 shields for every Berzerk you build there. (4 x 20 = 80, while a Berzerk costs only 70s.) So what we do in such a case:
First turn: collect 20s and afterwards rush a Settler for 40g. --> shield box now contains 30s.
Second and third turn: collect 20s for 30 + 2x20 = 70 shields.
Result: Berzerks is finished one turn faster and we don't waste any shields.
Similar short-rushes can be found for most other spt-values. For example, if a city makes 15spt:
First turn: collect 15s and afterwards rush a MedInf for 100g. --> shield box now contains 40s.
Second and third turn: collect 15s for 40 + 2x15 = 70 shields.
Again the Berzerk is finished after 3 turns (instead of 5 turns).
This is the best way we can use our gold now: drum up a huge force of ships and Berzerks quickly, much faster than we could with our production alone. Even cities with 10, 11 or 12 spt could build 2-turn Berzerks that way, if we have enough gold: rush a Granary after the first turn.
On another note- Russia appears to not be long for this world, who do we go after next? The Dutch are close, with several cities right by our FP, and they have that nice Lighthouse we want, which would help us a lot in sending our Berzerks at the others.
I think that the battle plan, I drafted a while ago, can still be followed, perhaps with slight adjustments:
The question, where we should best attack, should be answered by where it is most worth-while.
- The Arabs have nothing of importance atm, so just defend that choke-point at Kufah. We can turn to them later.
- The Russians have nice productive land around our Forbidden Palace, two lux resources and iron. And they are on the way to Byzanz. So this should be the most important target!
- From Russia, we can move on quickly to Byzanz, which has many juicy powerful wonders we would like to have: Pyramids, Zeus and Hanging Gardens (if I remember correctly).
- While our "first wave" is busy conquering these first two targets, the core - fired up by a Golden Age - can quickly assembly a "second wave", which will take the Lighthouse (Netherlands)
- After dealing with the Netherlands, the second wave can move on to Aztecia to get the Oracle.
- During that time, a "third wave" should have been produced by the core, which can then take out Arabia.
So the order of battle that I would propose would be
- Russia
- Byzanz
- Netherlands
- Aztecs
- Arabia
Most probably, 2 & 3 can already go on simultaneously (e.g. the Knights from the Russian campaign can already move on to the Netherlands and support the Berzerk attack there). Similarly it is possible, that the third wave is ready by the time the second wave reaches Aztecia, so phases 4 & 5 can also be conducted in parallel.
I assume that the above 5 campaigns already bring us close to domination limit, which means, if we play it well, the game should be over in the next 40-50 turns. We can later think about how to re-deploy the Byzantinean force after it's done with Byzanz, in order to gain some extra territory (e.g. from Carthage?!) and speed things up.
With the GA we definitely have the resources now to go after 2 (or even3 ?!) targets at the same time. No need to drag this game on...
So the fleet currently helping out with Russia, can move on to Byzanz (probable with some reinforcements, even rushed ones, if we can't get them there fast enough otherwise), while the Knights from the Russian campaign now help out with the Dutch non-coastal towns and a second fleet (which will hopefully be ready soon) attacks the coastal towns.
A third and fourth fleet will also be ready soon (if we utilize GA + shortrushing correctly) and can then go after the Aztecs and Arabia, while the first and second fleets move on to more distant targets, after they are done with Byzanz and the Dutch.
I left yekta as a worker factory... that is why it kept the tile.
But I think, I explained at least two times, how Yeka can keep operating as a worker factory without needing that tile: once in the input before your turnset and once when you asked a question during your turnset (and I saw that you still hadn't given that tile to Birka). See
Some notes for the pre-flight (and the following turnset):
- There are still 6 unmoved workers in our core. Wake them up and let them start mining the last irrigations around Trondheim. (Or even better: let two of them irrigate the BG for Birka, see below.)
- Yekaterinburg is currently building Workers at size 4. Let it grow to size 5 (e.g. rush a Galley on turn 2!?), then it no longer needs the irrigated BG and we can give that to Birka for faster growth! At the moment, Birka would still need 13 turns to reach size 7. If we give it Yeka's iBG now and have another iBG ready in two turns, it can reach size 7 in 7 turns!!
and
Much more important: Birka still hasn't gotten any irrigations?! As I already said earlier: let Yekaterinburg grow to 5 (e.g. by rushing a Galley when it hits 5 (which is now), so it can smoothly go back to worker-spawning). Then Yekaterinburg can replace the irrigated BG and mined plains with two mined grasslands (for the same 5 food and 5 shields), and Birka can have the irrigated BG!
Otherwise the game will be over, before Birka grows to size 7...
(BTW: Birka can now start its Market.)
(e.g. Reyk only needing 3 shields to complete the Galley). Most of it comes from the GA, though (e.g. Trond was only making ~20 spt before the GA started; again, sloppy planning meant I didn't short-rush the Zerk so the GA would start with an empty production box).
"Drill Seargant Lanzelot"... 
