ZF1 - Zed's Training Day Game

[ChrTh]

My goals for this evening:

1) Finish the War with Iroquois if possible
2) Get troops ready for the next war, but I'm not going to start it (unless it's forced upon me)
3) Get some infrastructure (roads, etc.) for our new acquisitions

I'm tempted to think we should wait until our FP is online before going against the Japanese...those Samurai may be brutal (if they have Chivalry). We may want to wait until we have Cavalry before we take on Japan, but we'll see.

 

[ChrTh]

Turn 0 -- 650 AD
I change Tsingtao to a Pikeman. It'll take too long to build the Galley then get it over here. Instead, I change Centralia to a Galley, then I'll rush it next turn (after some shields have been put into it). I'll then use the Galley to ferry troops from St. Regis after it's conquered.
I check Happiness...no one is ready to riot.
5 Luxuries online Life is good
We have a Strong Army compared to everyone
Invention and Theology are out there...but no way in heck I'm trading Chivalry yet. I'll watch; the second I see someone else has Chivalry, then I'll trade it around, although I loathe the moment Japan gets it.

I'm going to build a city SE of Oil Springs (in that irrigated square on the coast). Yeah, it's going to share a bunch of spots, but it'll be a good producer...I may aim to get a Harbor in there asap and have it be a mostly trade generator.
BTW, both Settlers are in Tientsin (although I'm taking one now).

Ok, I think I'm ready to do this thing.

Turn 1 -- 660 AD
A bunch of Mounted Warriors come South from the Jungle...none are in range yet.
Beijing completes Pikeman, begins Pikeman.
Shanghai produces Rider, begins Rider.
Xinjian produces Rider, begins Rider.
Diamond Delta builds Courthouse, begins Granary.
Anyang completes Pikeman, begins Aqueduct.
The English are building the Sistine Chapel.

Beijing Pikeman moves to Shanghai. I move a Shanghai Pikeman towards Nanking. I move Pikeman into Tuskany Bay, wake Pikeman already in there and move him towards Niagara Falls.
I move Pikeman into Niagara Falls, wake Pikeman already in there and move him towards Salamanca.
I move Rider from Niagara Falls into Centralia, and move a Rider from Centralia.

I hurry Galley in Centralia. It costs me 116 Gold, whereas it would've cost me 240 Gold if I had purchased last turn. Economics in action!

I switch Tientsin tiles so that FP is done in 8 turns.

Pikeman moves into Salamanca. Three Riders take out three Spearmen to capture Grand River. We install a new governor. No GL, but one Vet promoted to Elite.
There are two resisters. I starve 'em.
Akwesasne Rider goes to Oil Springs.

Rider from Shanghai heads to battle....as does Xinjian Rider.

Workers outside of Allegheny go into town for protection.

Cattaraugus falls. No promotions/GLs. I set it to build a Galley; will hurry it next turn. I will ferry troops to get Iroquois cities across bay (so as to avoid Jungle movement and Japanese borders).

Anyang Pikeman goes to defend Canton.

I get Invention from Japan for 300 Gold...I want Leo's. I set Beijing to Leo's...due in 18 turns (probably more because GA will run out before then) Our research goes to Gunpowder.

Turn 2 -- 670 AD

Mounted Warriors attack a couple cities and get their butts handed to them.
Babylon and Persia sign a peace treaty.
Tsingtao produces Pikeman, orders up Pikeman.
A couple more Pikeman/Pikeman builds

Centralia produces Galley, orders up Pikeman

Chinan is built, orders up Temple.

St. Regis is taken! No promotions. I order up Harbor...I'm going to rush it next turn, so that Silk will come on line for us.
Another Galley rushed for 116 gold. 3 workers inside, I start them building Road.

I start to starve Tientsin a little to get FP done in 6 turns.

The British has Gunpowder, no one else does. No one has Chivalry yet.

Turn 3 -- 680 AD
Dockonda Bay finishes Cathedral, begins Worker.
Hangchow finishes Pikeman, begins Granary.
Cattaraugus finishes Galley, orders up Temple.
Shantung finishes Temple, begins Courthouse.
The Babylonians are building Sistine Chapel.
The Iroquois *snicker* are building Great Lighthouse.
Japanese are building Sistine Chapel.

Mostly troop and worker movement.

Turn 4 -- 690 AD
Dockonda Bay builds Worker, set to Pikeman.
Chengdu completes Cathedral, begins Library (for Cultural Value)
St. Regis completes Harbor, begins Temple.
My Palace gets Shrubbery!

Mostly troop and worker movement...although I fear I may have killed my Galley! *yikes*

The Iroquois build a new city.

Turn 5 -- 700 AD
Canton produces Cathedral, begins Library
Tuskany Bay produces Cathedral, begins Granary
Tatung produces Pikeman, begins Marketplace
A bunch of We Love the Chairman days celebrated.
Macao builds Pikeman, begins Granary

One of my riders die trying to take Caughasomething! Daggit.
No one has Chivalry yet.

Turn 6 -- 710 AD
The Iroquois have requested an audience...I think about it...No.
Dockonda Bay finishes Pikeman, begins Great Lighthouse (Possibly Placeholder for Sistine Chapel)
Persians are building Leo's Workshop.
Caugh falls...one resister.

Turn 7 -- 720 AD
Diamond Delta completes Granary, begins Marketplace
Padmativa builds Pikeman, begins Marketplace
Oka is destroyed
Kahnwacky is taken, Iroquois down to 1 city.
I hurry Temples in the former Iroquois cities
No impending Riots

Turn 8 -- 730 AD
We have completed the Forbidden Palace!
I order up Aqueduct
Elizabeth is annoyed...I buy Theology for 325 from her, but she stays annoyed.

Turn 9 -- 740 AD
Much movement, little else of note

Turn 10 -- 750 AD
The Iroquois are destroyed! Hooray!


Ok, we need to consolidate our troops a little better, but we're looking good. Next turn should have several "We love the Chairman" days. No one else has Chivalry, and hopefully it'll stay that way for a little while (although I have no clue how we're going to take care of Japan with all that Jungle).

Pic and Save in a bit.

 

[ChrTh]

Here's the Save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads/ZF1-china-750ad.zip

Here's the Pic:

 

[Zed-F]

Mysterious:

Well, the distinction between "Honorable" and "Dastardly" as defined by the RBCiv Epics is a bit of a line between "Ok" and "Ok, but not very neighborly." Realistically, in most normal SGs (or Civ games in general) you will have to resort to "Dastardly" moves at one point or another, since that's the only way to gain territory at the expense of someone else short of culture flips. I might have defined it slightly differently; to me it's quite possible to draw a line between "aggressive" and "dastardly", where I would engage in the former and not the latter, but I'm not in charge of any Epics at the moment...

By RBCiv Epic definitions, there is no proper way to start an aggressive war. By normal SG standards, you can
- start a war with a sneak attack (move troops into position to attack some cities of a civ you don't have an RoP with, then declare war when they try to boot you out)
- settle in enemy territory
- demand tribute and declare war when they don't give in
- out and out declare war
- get triggered in an MPP
and no one will bat an eye. The only thing some players will blink at is a full blown RoP rape, where you use an RoP to get an unrealistic attack position before beginning your assault. The other thing to be mindful of when declaring war is that, ideally, you don't want to have any active treaties or trade agreements with the civ you declare war against. If you do, your reputation will suffer, and it will be harder/more costly to get certain types of trade agreements in the future.



ChrTh,

Definately don't hold off on going up against Japan. Consider that we explicitly built a ton of horses and upgraded them, while the AI is not smart enough to do that. Consider that even if the Japs have Chivalry, they could only have gotten it recently since the AIs seem to be on a bit of a slow research track, and so will not have had much time to build Samurai. Consider that even if they have some Samurai, the Samurai is only somewhat better than a regular Knight -- just +1 defense -- and that our Riders, having a move advantage, are an equivalent or arguably better unit. Consider that the Japs only have a couple cities with sufficiently high pop and low corruption to be able to actually build a Samurai in a reasonable amount of time. Consider that the Jap economy can't be very strong due to the same factors, and that a large percentage of what they do make will be tied up in research, so they won't be able to afford much in the way of horse upgrades, especially since they've been at war for a large portion of the game and are most likely short on infrastructure. Consider our contrasting situation, where we have a large number of cities with high production and a very robust economy, to the point where even if we went to war and our entire armed forced were miraculously wiped out by an Act Of God, we would STILL win easily simply by virtue of our vast production advantage over the Japs. Consider that on top of all those advantages, the AI is not particularily intelligent when it comes to war, and will inevitably find a way to screw itself over.
We almost have more advantages than I can count. Our Riders probably outnumber their Samurai 10:1 or more, assuming they even have any, and we can produce reinforcements so much more readily than they that it's almost a joke. Wait for the FP to finish? Why? The FP is an infrastructure-boosting item, it helps not at all in an offensive conquest. The only thing it will allow is for us to eventually make better use of that conquered land, but to get to that point will involve many long turns of first starving out the Iros/Japs and then building up our own population and infrastructure in the region, not to mention clearing out all that jungle. The war will be over long before then, and in any case we don't need to rely on that region at all right now to keep our army well supplied with reinforcements. In fact, building up our FP area is important only to further cement our advantage and eventually speed our victory, but we would almost certainly win now even if we never built an FP.

Wait for Cavalry? With research set to zero? Please. We're in full steamroller mode right now, and from this point on (really from the moment we attacked the Iros) nothing can stop us.

So, buck up, soldier! You've got a war to win!


EDIT: Guess you got your turn in before I saw your last post and replied. So, up to Mysterious to take the hammer to Japan...

 

[ChrTh]

Yeah, I re-saw the opportunity against Japan after I posted my save....get them now before they get Samurai.

I don't think we'll be able to conquer them...unless we roll down their big cities so fast they never have a chance to recover.

We were starting to hurt on the War Weariness front, but with Iroquois gone, we should be all better next turn, and then an attack on Japan in 3 or 4 turns would be fine (need to get the Riders back into position first).

I did create a bunch of Pike, but some were fortified. We will probably want to bring them forward before we attack.

There are stacks in a few of the Northern cities, I don't remember off the top of my head which cities they are. They aren't fortified, though, so they should be obvious from the beginning.

 

[Zed-F]

Here's some comments.

Domestic: Concentration on infrastructure in 2nd-ring and 3rd-ring cities, good. Granaries are important for growth -> production and income, though so a bit of veto in that direction would have been useful; if a city doesn't have a granary by the time it has an aqueduct, that should be the next thing on the list (followed by, in this case, a market.) I saw a couple more cathedrals got built -- waste of time. If I understand rightly, we now have a 6th domestic lux (silk) so all of those cathedrals are now good only for producing culture, until Hospitals anyway (a long ways off.) A temple, 6 lux, and a market are all any city needs to be happy, and any war weariness is easily countered by lux tax if necessary, especially under the Rapid War model. Once we've got our 6th lux connected to our empire, we should be able to turn off the lux tax by default.

In our FP city (Tientsin), we're nearly done the aqueduct, so it's time to catch up on food production. Our ideal would be to grow the turn after we complete the aqueduct and go from there. Rush any infra needed to grow to 12 asap. Same for any cities in the same general area; we have over 2K gold and are getting income at a good rate so go ahead and rush any infra that will do some immediate good anywhere around our FP, especially granaries and temples first off, followed by aqueducts, markets, and courthouses once they've got big enough to take advantage. Beyond that, they ought to be able to build other improvements themselves.

Be on the lookout for Iro cities with high food potential but limited in size or number of good tile radius, and not really close to the FP. Target those cities for worker production (i.e. don't build an aqueduct.) We are soon going to have a LOT of jungle to clear, and while we have a good number of workers already, more is almost always better.

The new city S of Oil Springs looks like a good plan.

Waiting a turn to rush stuff: That is one way to do it, and the least expensive, but it takes 2 turns to rush something that way. Here's a little trick that's slightly more expensive but will allow you to rush anything in one turn. You rushed a temple for 116 gold, rather than 240 for from scratch. Alternatively, you could rush a worker, then swap to temple and rush the rest. This would cost you 40 gold for the worker + 100 for the rest of the temple, so 140 gold (24 more than waiting 2 turns) and you get the temple 1 turn earlier. This works well when you are in a hurry to get out a bunch of improvements or units in rapid succession and can afford to pay a bit more for them -- often the case if you can afford to rush in the first place.

As for wonders, Leos could save us some cash, but it's not like we aren't raking it in hand over fist anyway... still, it might be worthwhile, as it would save us a bunch upgrading pikes to muskets. Sistine is a bust, don't bother. With 6 lux sources we already have all we'll ever need -- if we don't need Cathedrals, how much less enhanced ones? Just because we can build it doesn't mean we ought to. Forget the Great Lighthouse placeholder. Besides Leos, I don't see us wanting any other great wonders from here on out, at least until the Industrial Age, and hopefully the game will be over or almost so by then.



Research/Diplomacy: Good job holding off on buying techs until we can get them on the cheap. Buying Theology from the English though... looks like England is a tech leader, we'd prefer to buy from someone in the middle of the pack. That way we don't further enhance England's tech lead by paying for them to do other stuff. One thing we can do to make the Babs/Persians/English happy with us is (a) trade lux/resources with them, we want their cash to slow down their research rate, and (b) sign RoPs with them -- and since we're the biggest empire they should be paying us for the priviledge to boot. We expect to be busy with the Japs for the next 20 turns anyway, so it won't hurt us any to make some deals if we do it now, so long as we remember to cancel them later when they expire.

Another note is we might NOT want to research or trade for Gunpowder just yet, as we still need to beef up our garrison troop count, and pikes are nice and cheap. Muskets are not much better than pikes anyway, especially given their cost. Better to start on a tech we might actually use - Education leads towards banking, and banks would most definately be handy. Of course the AI will probably beat us to it, but if so we can purchase if necessary with little difficulty.



Military: Well, we wiped out the Iros, which ain't bad since it prevents any flip possibilities, but the cost is some of our troops are ill-positioned for the fight against the Japs. I'm not clear on just how badly off we are in that regard; if we have enough forces in place to begin an offensive against the Japs then I'd say go ahead now (making sure that we don't have any treaties or trade agreements with them 1st) and consolidate our troops as we go. Remember to keep building garrison pikes and sending them forth -- I didn't see much evidence that we have enough to garrison Iro lands effectively yet, but even if we do, we still have garrison troops for Japan to consider. We need to get our Riders back into action on offense, not let them molder in some little town on the edge of nowhere. If we don't have enough troops in place now to even start an offensive, then of course you'll have to delay a bit to gather them. If you find it would be a pain to ship Pikes to some of our more remote Iro colonies, remember you have the option to rush some; it's not like we plan to attack with them, so having a few non-vet pikes around is not going to hurt anything.

My attack plan would be to go up through Matsuyama and Satsuma to Kyoto, and spread out from there along the Jap road network and flat lands. We know any Jap city mired in the jungle can't produce anything and so isn't a threat -- take out their main production centers first and the rest is just mop up. Remember to bring a settler or two if you want to raze enemy cities to prevent flips; a few of our cities are at 12 and are good candidates for building a few more settlers when they're done their current jobs.

Long term plan is to foster a world war. We should start this at the latest after we're done with the Japs, though depending on circumstances an early start might be good. The idea is that by starting a world war we can slow down the global rate of research and capitalize on our production advantage to steamroller successive opponents with minimum distractions. To do this we could sign an MPP with some or most of the remaining civs (should be cheap or they pay us, since we're biggest), and then declare war against one or two civs, but not attack. When they attack us, the MPPs will trigger in our favour, and we can proceed to trounce those one or two civs with the full blessing of the rest of the world. We should only do this when we have enough of a military advantage to make sure we get the lion's share of the spoils in such a scenario, however, hence waiting until after we're done with Japan and have repositioned our troops in preparation is the default plan. This requires some attention to the diplomacy screen to make sure our MPPs expire and are cancelled in time for the next opponent to get lined up, so we don't wreck our rep.

 

[Mystery13]

Wow, lots of good stuff going on. I got it, but will not play until tomorrow as I'd like to fully digest what's going on before I tear into the Jap's.

 

[Zed-F]

Yeah, I re-saw the opportunity against Japan after I posted my save....get them now before they get Samurai.

I don't think we'll be able to conquer them...unless we roll down their big cities so fast they never have a chance to recover.

ChrTh, you're selling us short, and missing the point. This is the real story: Samurai don't matter. Whatever pitiful production the Japs can muster in their core cities doesn't matter. The balance of power is completely in our favour. We have so much production, they could have cavalry and rifles and it wouldn't matter. We could be attacking with swords instead of Riders, and it wouldn't matter. We could attack all the outlying towns first, through the jungle, and it still wouldn't matter. The plain fact of the matter is the Japs don't stand a chance. We have more production and income than any 2 other civs in the game combined, and a human brain directing that production instead of a lousy AI algorithm, and that's all that matters.

The Japs will be broken within 15 turns of our initial attack, and probably within 10 turns, depending on how well we can muster troops and how well our initial attacks go. They will be eliminated from the game within 40, and probably within 30. I consider those to be conservative numbers. The only thing holding us back from doing it faster is all that jungle, and the fact that the Jap civ consists of a whole bunch of little towns spread over a wide area.

 

[ChrTh]

"The only thing holding us back from doing it faster is all that jungle, and the fact that the Jap civ consists of a whole bunch of little towns spread over a wide area."

Well, that's my main issue; ignore the Sams, because the core cities will be trounced before they can get any. But all those little Jungle cities are going to be a pain in the butt. My fear (and that's what it is, a fear) is that while we're trying to clean up the Japanese some other Civ is going to start harassing us into war (all signs point to England), so we're going to be stuck doing mop up on Japan while fighting the only remaining power on the continent.

Most of our Riders are consolidated from conquering the Iroquois lands (with the exception of those forced to garrison). There are a couple stuck on the island, and there are 4 stuck in the extreme West cities (stuck in the "no other troops" sense). When we do attack Japan, we should grab Nara (I think it's Nara) quickly (well, as soon as we can get through that jungle) so that we have a connection to those XWest cities. One thing to note is that despite the destruction of the Iroquois, we lost *1* unit. So there was a serious net gain of troops during my turn.

I know we're thinking in conquer mode, but I was thinking we should also begin the settlement of the XWest area (lot of good land there). I also think we should build the Great Lighthouse, and get over to the other continent. If it's not completely settled, we'll want to settle there too. Remember, any land we grab is land we don't have to conquer later

 

[Zed-F]

Settling the Far West area: well, good from a "land we don't have to conquer" sense, and having a road connection over there won't hurt, but that's really a sideline. It's WAY too far from our core for the quality of the land over there to make any kind of a difference at all, and any workers we eventually get over there are going to be locally built, as our current workers will have more than enough to do clearing jungle closer to our core. I would not spend much effort in that direction; the troops at our 2 west cities can probably take care of Nara by themselves if we rush a couple of pikes to replace them on garrison duty, and build a couple local workers to start on the roads. By the time we can get any settlers over to the Far West it will mostly have been snapped up anyway. If we wanted to grab that region, we ought to have sent some settlers over there quite a while ago; instead, we had other priorities. If we can get a few settlers over there, with pike escort, bonus, but if they can't get there in time it's not a big problem. Remember that the AI will have just as much trouble holding on to those cities as we would have settling them, since they are too far away from their cores to be easily reinforced, much less have any kind of local production at all.

Great Lighthouse to other continent? Probably it's all settled by now, and Astronomy is only 2 techs away, so I'd say not. How would we defend a colony over there at this point anyway, with no local production? Certainly we wouldn't be able to afford to ship troops over there without building an actual navy. We have enough to do at home without worrying about another continent at this point. It will be enough to explore and find it, and map out as much as we can, when Astronomy comes along.

As for an aggressive neigbor -- well if the English do decide to come after us while we're busy with the Japs, no problem. We have options. First, probably the reason we don't have good relations with England right now is either (a) it is possible to trade lux/resources and we haven't, or (b) they want an RoP with us. Fix those and relations should improve, at least until we're done with Japan. Second, assuming relations with England don't improve and they declare war on us while we're trying to mop up Japan, we have the economic and political muscle to buy ourselves a distraction. Sic Persia on them, and the Babs too if you like; I'm sure England would find it more convenient to attack them and defend against their attacks than they would find tromping through the jungle to pester us while we finish up with the Japs. There's no way England could progress against them as fast as we can progress against the Japs, even with all this jungle around, and even if they do it just means their troops are all out of position when we come marching in on their core. Alternatively, if we've got all the areas around our FP secure, we could sue for peace with Japan (getting a few extra cities in tribute,) reconsolidate our forces, and go open up a can of whoopass on the English. Even if England were to sneak attack us, and maybe take a couple of (former Jap) cities, they would soon regret it, as we could easily turn around and repay the favour ten-fold. We'd have to worry about flips back to Japan for a bit, so I'd probably go the diplomatic route, but the brute force approach is feasible too.

 

[ChrTh]

Okie, I understand the scenario. See, the beauty of Training Day Games

I'm going to shadow the next two turns just so I can watch it unfold.

 

[Mystery13]

Oh my, I gave us a couple of turns to settle in and then brought out the hammer

Here is a map to wet your appetites for the report a little later (it's a long one!).

 

[Zed-F]

OMG, what happened to the Japs?

I told you my numbers were conservative...

 

[ChrTh]

I played some turns last night (continuing my game) and yep, the Japanese were pretty easy to conquer! Guess I was wrong...

Did you get any GLs? I got a couple (with which I built Armies--they were like 20 turns away from our core cities)

 

[Mystery13]

Nope, couldn't buy a GL even though I had many opportunities.

 

[ChrTh]

Originally posted by Mystery13
Nope, couldn't buy a GL even though I had many opportunities.

That sucks...did you meet a Japanese Army? I ran into one.

 

[Zed-F]

Well, GLs would be nice, but hardly critical at this point. We don't really need any wonders, the only reason to build them is to deny them to the AI. Armies would be a reasonable choice at this point, so we can build the Heroic Epic and get even more leaders. For regular stuff we can continue to rush-buy them.

However, I did notice we've lost 200(!) gpt income. What's up with that? Did we sign some big gpt deals for tech at 2nd- or 3rd-civ prices? Also it looks like we've been researching banking. At this point we want to SLOW the tech race, not speed it up, since our Riders currently give us a big advantage over the competition, and the AIs are still struggling to develop their infrastructure. If we wait and let the AIs research stuff, and buy from them at last-civ rate, we will pay less for research overall, thereby (a) not giving them a lot of cash to boost their economy and help them pay for more research, and (b) slowing down the overall rate of tech progress by making them research stuff at 1st-civ costs. Being a few or even several techs behind at this point is not going to significantly hurt us, as long as we can keep up with last civ or near last-civ tech purchases, and try to buy tech off the weakest players rather than the strongest (with cash rather than gpt, as it's cheaper that way,) to help them keep up and not give the leaders a further advantage. Banking is certainly a nice tech for us to have, but it's not worth speeding up the AI research to get as fast as possible. Moreover, it's a more effective use of our cash to speed up our victory by rushing stuff, especially infrastructure near our FP, but also temples in conquered cities and military where necessary/convenient. If we use our money for improving our economic and military position, rather than giving huge gobs away for tech at early-civ rates, we can get to the point where we can buy a strike force wherever we need it, rather than waiting for stuff to get shipped out from our core cities. This will ultimately give us an advantage that normally you woudn't see until the Industrial age when rail nets are built. Finally, signing big gpt deals tech means we can't attack those civs for 20 turns without ruining our rep; I hope you made those deals early in your turn before you realized that the Japs would fold quickly.

I notice Banking is down to 1 turn and we're at 10% science. Did the price just drop due to others discovering it, and that's why we're down to 10% research? If so, you might be able to buy it from someone else for 1 gold and save us a turn of research and 10% of a turn's income; that would have worked in 1.17 but not sure about 1.21. Or did we just not quite manage our %science quite right to get it to come out a turn earlier?

 

[ChrTh]

In my shadow turn, after the Golden Age ended, we went down from like 450 to 330 gpt. So there's half of it there. As for the rest I don't know...

 

[Zed-F]

Of course! I didn't account for that. The 10% in science would also account for some of it; I realized that much, but forgot about the Golden Age. More military will also mean more gpt outlay, though I would hope that our new FP area should help pay for that. It might take a while for the pop base to build up and provide a significant amount of income from that region, however.

I was concerned about Mysterious's apparent departure from our tech-laggard strategy; now I'm a bit less so, though I guess we'll have to wait for the full report to find out what tech brokering went on, and how much we paid for it. Obviously some did, since we're working on Banking...

 

[Mystery13]

Full report in an hour, but I wanted to get some answers out there. Yes, I turned on research during the Golden Age because we were already over 3000 gold and had only a few temples to spend it on. I was able to research Education and Banking (1 turn left) in just my turns and still make some money. I assumed we'd turn off research as soon as banking came up. Japan just got Chivalry but too late. I don't believe they've sold it around yet so if we nail them quickly maybe they won't have the chance. Our science is at 10% now because that's all we needed to get Banking in 1 turn. I did not sit us in the middle on the rate. We got the two techs at maximum speed. The AI doesn't appear to be researching at all. I think with our force of Riders we may be able to safely handle England right now as well. Japan is done, including their "Army" of archers. The GA allowed us to finish just about all infrastructure projects in our core. Can't we now consider racing out to Military Tradition to upgrade to Cavalry? I think we could prosecute a war and research in this case. However, I may be wrong which is why I'm in this game in the first place