[BTS] What can I exactly do right now in this situation in the game?

[WarriorSettler]

Bit of a recap of what I did:

I started with a Huge 'Big and Small' map with islands mixed in, Noble difficulty, Epic speed. Spawned as Huayna Capac and saw Boudica over to my left (Bibracte) who I quickly Quecha-rushed and destroyed, taking the city. I also got Buddhism. I didn't really explore much (I think this was a big mistake I made, since most other civilisations now have either Confucianism or Judaism as their state religion) and I set upon taking over the continent I had (not very resource dense, especially on the east side, so I started by climbing up the west coast.) Around maybe 800 to 1000 AD I found that there were a bunch of galley-reachable islands up north with Pericles and Mehmed nearby.

Around 1300 or 1400 AD I conquered Athens and Sparta (Pericles's only two cities - Athens had tons of wonders too) and began preparing for war with Mehmed, which I started around 1530 AD or so (while Mehmed was still at war with Wang Kon). I took a good few cities but ran out of units for the stack around 1700 AD (and I wasn't getting reinforcements fast enough to outpace Mehmed's defences unless I waited a few good decades) so I decided to end the war, and then focused more on research.

However, at this point, Suryavarman seems to have all but overcome me for good in terms of score and tech (I have a few on him but he seems to be faster than me and also has a lot more cities than I do.) I've got a lot of Macemen and even a few Axemen left who I can't really upgrade without lagging behind in research. I thought about getting to Assembly Line and pumping out a ton of Infantry so that I can finish Mehmed off once and for all, but I've still got tons of old units left over that are probably costing me a lot. I also decided to make a bunch of Privateers because I thought they'd be useful, but they don't really do much. Any advice on what exactly I should do? I haven't really planned out what victory I really want, either. I've uploaded my save file.

 

[Gumbolt]

You really don't like trading gold for resources? Sury will give you 56 GPT (Gold per turn) for 2 resources. Or you can grab 2x happiness resources. I prefer gold at this stage.
Another AI has 20 GPT. Another 14 GPT. I figure you are giving up 110+GPT here by not trading resources for gold.

Looking at game you currently have no resources traded to any AI. This is a major part of the game and is worth +2 diplomacy point with AI over time. One of the reason many on here gift multiple resources to keep Ai at pleased or friendly.

State property is great for workshops. I would be building a lot more of these. Makes no sense to run specialists over land tiles here. You need to make 4-5+ of these cities production centres with 60-70+ hammers per turn. Athens should have workshops on most tiles. Such a waste for a great city. This means cities will need forges, factories and coal plants. You only have 5 forges. With gold/silver that means your losing 2 happiness per city without a forge. Big mistake if your playing this late 1800AD.

15 workers for 22 cities is a bit low. You need those workshops now! I might actually build 4-5 more workers.

Pigs/fish should of been settled by you. It had 2 decent food resources.
Whale city too for happiness. Settle this as soon as possible.
2 good triple/quad seafood sites you did not settle. One on an island with barb city.

Has someone pillaged all your workboats? So many unimproved sea resources here.
Privateers are no good once Ai has frigates. I don't really use them.

As for the old units use them to keep cities happy. On that note your capital is unhappy and you have shed loads of units in Bibricate. Move more units into Cuzco. Why does Bibricate have an army sitting there? Send the catapults back as city guards unless you plan to upgrade to cannons.

You want Mehmeds Silk/incense/gold/ivory. All could be traded to Sury once you capture these cities. At least one you don't have.

Overall ditch most of your non essential builds. Banks etc not needed. Science builds too. Only build production builds/workers/units. You can build wealth and science in cities if you spam workshops. Get forges up in most cities. Whip? Then get factories up too. Then spam units.

You do have 10-20 units that could form a decent stack now. Swap outdated units for new ones on front line. Then decide if you go factories then crush the world. Science wise your pretty strong here.

 

[WarriorSettler]

Alright, thanks for the quick reply.
Regarding the resources, won't I lose happiness and health in my own cities if I trade them away? Lots of cities are basically at the limit - should I just shift more military units to those cities to account for this?
I can speed along a few workers and workshops through Athens and Cuzco, I guess, so I'll do that I suppose. Watermills are also good, right?
I also remember reading that cities should be focused on what their purpose is, so I shouldn't build forges in a commerce city, for example. Wouldn't a bank be more useful then?
A few sea resources I haven't really worked yet because I've been a bit too focused on pumping out privateers, so I guess I'll do that now. Settling new cities is a little bit of an issue because they take lots of turns to actually get up to speed production/commerce-wise, and maintenance increases by quite a bit for every new city.
I'll get on making the stack, then, but Mehmed has tons of units on a border city or two, so I'm pretty sure I'll need a really big stack to deal with that. Not sure how effective the Machine Guns will be.

 

[Gumbolt]

So you have a lot of spare health resources.
14 GPT to Mongols for rice.
6GPT to Romans for wheat.
14 GPT to Ottoman for Sheep.
56gpt for crab/stone
Silk for fur with Korea for happiness.
20GPT for coal with Viking
8 gpt for marble with Carthage.
118GPT gained. Plus 1 extra happiness resource.
Your health is exactly the same as you had duplicates of all of these.

 

[Gumbolt]

Think you will have to judge it city by city. Vitcos will be great for workshops. Other cities like your capital you might want to keep cottages. Watermills will be good on rivers too. If you want to quickly produce an army you need cities that can pump out 50-100+ hammers a turn. Which is why you want infantry. If you were in nationhood you could be drafting infantry too. Take the simple wins. Just manage the unhappiness. You don't need size 22-23 cities now. You want to spam a big army and crush the Ai with infantry and cannons.

Ottoman does have a 12-13 stack on border. His rifles will be a pain. No match for infantry.

The sea resources had no workboat on them. Should of been sorted much earlier.