Turn 70 - It's been 50 turns since I've seen this game, so I did a little survey of the situation. I decided to write it up in case there were others like me that hadn't been checking the saves between turns.
I checked demographics to confirm some impressions I was getting. We're 3rd in manufactured goods and 3rd in literacy, which is quite good. The bad news is we're dead last in military.
The tech tree shows we're about 60 turns from Chivalry.
We have two citizens coming soon and we'll probably be at around 4 citizens in our newest cities in the next 15-20 turns. We'll also have libraries in those two cities around that time. I suspect this means we'll be about 40-50 turns from Chivalry, which puts as at about 100-110 if we rely on our tech alone. This will put us behind a bit and we may see some defensive buildings and crossbows/longbows earlier than we'd like.
I tech towards Currency after Horseback Riding and we can decide at that point how to proceed. The Tradition start slows down the Liberty GP significantly, but we helped ourselves out with the cultural CS. I also finish the monument in the capital and build two libraries immediately. We have very good production in our capital and should be able to build the NC pretty fast. We may be able to get it done without a GP bulb. We'll see.
It seems we have access to some land to the southwest that we haven't scouted? I was under the impression that our scouting stopped because we were locked out by water and AI borders? I found our scout way over by Warsaw, so I started him that way. It took all of my ten turns to get him in a position to do more scouting. Maybe there's a border there that I couldn't see.
Capital has five citizens already, and as I said earlier, production is nice. I only moved one citizen to the stone we were improving. We should improve the stone on the river because of the gold. We need another worker. I'll see what I can do.
Funny, our advisors suggest we build the same thing I was advocating... archers and settlers.
It's too late for that noise now. We have three warriors and one archer. Our supply limit is 16 units and by the end of my turns we'll have 10. The others should be mounted units. We'll have to live with the composition of our military or delete a unit if we want archers now. Most of the choice city sites are gone or about to disappear, as you will see. There's still that one site on the coast that gives us a river, deer and silk. I still like that site, but it might slow us down to try and settle now. Plus, we didn't discuss continued settling and I got the impression we were going to press on with three cities. That seems like a reasonable approach to me, so I start a library in Si Satchanalai.
It's still 11 turns before our borders expand to the cows in Muang Saluang, so I'll continue the dance with Egypt's settlers. Out of curiosity, I ring him up and see that he only has one other city. I played a few games about a year ago with a mod that lets you take the AI seat, just so I could get some insight into what the AI does. Ramesses always built the NC first, so I'm betting Egypt had those settlers sitting around for that purpose. Oh well. You snooze, you loose.
I also rang up every AI we knew to see if they could be bribed into a war. None of them were interested, at any price.
Turn 61 - New citizen goes to riverside sheep in Muang Saluang. Good spot that gives us 2 free production at the start of the turn. I lock him in, but never get around to improving the tile (went ivory, ivory, horses).
Our warriors are standing around collecting government gold for nothing, so I send one to Hanoi to see if he can snatch us some workers.
Here comes Gandhi to get himself some sugar and marble. Saw it coming. Good play, Gandhi.
Turn 62 - Horseback Riding done. Mathematics and Currency queued.
I pick Republic as our next social policy. It takes a turn off of the monument and stone works we were building in Muang Saluang and the capital and four turns off the library I started in Si Satchanalai. Very handy and under-appreciated little policy.
The new citizen in Si Satchanalai goes right to CdP because it's on gold focus. It grinds growth in that city to a halt (33 turns). I don't move him because I understood that's what everyone wanted. There also isn't any more improved tiles in that city (we've gotta steal a worker) and it brings our GPT to 20, which is pretty impressive this early in the game.
There's a parade of workers and warriors headed to the city Liz planted in our sovereign lands. The number of freebies the AI gets at this level (even more so on deity) always amuses me, yet disgusts me at the same time. I was sooo tempted to take one of those.
Ivory is done and our "friends" are pretty broke. Gandhi does have about 90 gold and some GPT, so he'll do. I tried Liz but, true to her (rhymes with "itchy" and, apparently, forbidden) programming, she demanded we take 13% off and toss in our last horse. I did enjoy listening to Jupiter during the negotiations though. Gandhi gets 2% off the value of our ivory because he has to pay in installments, and in CiV logic, this means you pay less.
Turn 63 - Nothing worth noting.
Turn 64 - Heeeeere we go....
No, thank you dear. You two go knock the snot out of each other. We'll just be over here building libraries, and minding our own business.
Seems jackass Gandhi settled Pataliputra this turn and Liz didn't take kindly to another AI stealing our land. Only she can do that.
Look how far these two jerks went from their empires to planted those cities! There goes Goz's "4 tile" rule. On Immortal and deity they absolutely cover the map with their cities and they'll take your land in a heartbeat if you don't take it first.
Liz builds the great lighthouse. Surprise, surprise.
I'm tempted to build The Oracle in the capital (13 turns) for the GS points and the free policy, but this ain't Prince, so I pass. Monument (1 turn) followed by horseman in the queue.
Ramesses gives up his dreams of settling in our lands. His units and settlers slowly move away.
Turn 65 - Elizabeth declares war on Gandhi. Thank you.
I back us away from the Egyptian road block and take up positions to watch for massing English units.
I have to buy the horse tile because our first horseman will be done in four turns. It's only 60 gold. I really didn't want to do this. We need to save up a bit for the upgrades (100-140 gold each), but this couldn't be avoided. We also have to build horse units if we're going to upgrade horse units. We still made a profit if you consider the horse sales to Gandhi.
Turn 66 - The "let's be friends" trick didn't work real well with us, so Ramesses makes friends with an "unmet player" and will apparently move his settlers onto that unmet player's lands. Good luck with that.
Turn 67 - Hanoi slips up, Siam gets a free worker. Elizabeth will blow a gasket.
Muang Saluang (can we rename these things?) finishes the monument and starts a library.
Turn 68 - Liz wags her pale Virgin Queen finger at us for the whole Hanoi missing worker misunderstanding. I politely apologize. She goes guarded and promises she'll be "monitoring the situation."
Warsaw is reading my mind. They want us to build The Oracle. I don't think so, but I like the way you think Warzy! Can I call you Warzy?
Turn 69 - Horseman done in the capital and I can't work on another. Our second pasture won't be done for three more turns. Settler, stable, water mill, walls, and archer all seemed like good choices. I reasoned away the settler (discussed earlier), stable (6 turns for one production, although the 15% to mounted would be nice), archer (discussed earlier) and walls (I've only built these on a couple of nightmare deity starts or when I needed the Honor happiness - seems like a waste of production otherwise). So, water mill it is. There's only one turn put into it, so we can change it if necessary.
Liz is wearing down Mumbai and a couple of fortified Indian warriors near Warsaw.
Turn 70 - Nothing. It's all yours Brichals.
PS - I didn't put any gold into our city state friends. As I mentioned earlier, I'm concerned about the gold we'll need to upgrade 6-8 horse units. I don't think we can afford 2 city state friends at this point and we'll surely have to fight for the land we need to fund future city state alliances. I suggest we proceed cautiously with our gold until we can establish some control over the jerks around us.