I had a look at the save (and played it out till about 1200 ad....got a little carried away). You are in pretty decent shape, but....
1) Granaries. These are more important than courts/zigs. I swapped Kish, Lagash and Ur to granaries instead of zigs and whipped them the next turn. Granaries DOUBLE your growth rate. They are a critical building and should be built as early in a city's lifecycle as possible.
2) You can save 2gpt by deleting the 2 useless warriors.
3) Building pyramids was a mistake. You only have 1 early happy resource, so even with Rep you are limited to size 8 in 5 cities and size 5 in any other cities you take/settle. You would have been better to either spend those hammers on settlers/workers or Oracling Monarchy. Monarchy is low upkeep vs Rep at medium upkeep and allows infinite happyness.
Since you've gone and built the White Elephant, you may as well stick with Rep, but you will need to wage an offensive war soon.
4) Scouting: You have OB with all three of your neighbors, but haven't scouted their lands yet.![No no no](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/nono.gif)
There is a boatload of empty land to the south-east, but it is still terra incognita.
5) Military deployment: You have a large army, but it is dispersed around your empire. "He who would defend everywhere, defends nowhere". Scout your enemies (they are all weaker than you are....check F9) and pick a victim. Gather your forces and strike. With currency in, you can easily afford another 3-4 cities without courthouses. Go and take some. I'd comment further on who the best target is....but it would be spoiler info due to the lack of scouting.
You can prevent getting dogpiled by bribing one of the other AIs into war with your target the turn you declare.
6) City builds: You need to be a lot more stingy with how you spend your hammers. Brael already touched on the extra barracks, so I'll refrain from commenting further on that. Ur is building a 90h zig that will save you ~1 gpt. You would have been better off building Research to get to currency sooner or a few swords to help take some cities. Eridu is building a lighthouse, but doesn't have any seafood specials, at 1200 AD I have yet to work a sea tile in this city.
7) City specialization: All of your cities are currently very generic. It's a good idea to know what you want a city to do before you build the city. This lets you plan your tile improvements and infra builds ahead of time. If you try and build everything everywhere, you will lose.
9) Don't worry too much about caste, the whip is much more useful to you at the moment. Plan on running the slider at 0% science and teching off 2 scientists in Ur, and maybe a couple in Lagash. You will be able to kick the slider up for short periods once you have some cash in the bank (with currency in, you'll be making ~24gpt at zero slider). With random events on, it's a good idea to keep at least 100g in the kitty to mitigate some bad events/take advantage of good events.
10) Tile improvements: There are two workers farming over forests outside of Ur, yet there are plain grass tiles without improvements. Hang onto those forests for the moment. They're worth 1/2 a health each just by existing. Save the chops for a wonder (Oxford?). At the moment, Ur is at it's happy cap, so you don't actually need to improve any more tiles until you are ready to grow the city. Spend the worker turns elsewhere until then.
I would have farmed the bananas rather than cottaging them. You only have one source, so you will want to build a plantation on them once Calander is in which will waste all those cottage turns.
You have an improved, flatland gems to the east of Ur that is currently unworkable because it is outside the radius of your existing cities. Build a settler to grab them ASAP, letting a 2f 1h 7c tile lie fallow for this long is a crime.![Stick Out Tongue](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/tongue.gif)
There are two workers cottaging jungle outside of Eridu. I'm not sure what your plans for this city are, but to my eye it is the best location for the Heroic Epic at the moment which means you want to be building farms/workshops on the grasslands not cottages. You don't have the tech at the moment to do either, so I'd leave the city alone for the moment and simply 2 pop whip units as the city grows into unimproved tiles. It's not a great location for the HE, but it's ok and it's the second best location after Ur and I'd want to hang onto Ur's two National Wonder slots for the National Epic and Oxford.
11) Tech trading: Be careful trading for early cheap techs, I'm not sure what you have already traded for, but I ran into WFYABTA* limits after just a couple of trades (and a bit of extortion for 10 turns of peace
), so I'm guessing you did some trading already? You'll need to get one of the AI's up to friendly in order to keep trading once WFYABTA limits are reached. This is doable with some careful diplomacy (bribe someone into war once you declare)
*We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced.
1) Granaries. These are more important than courts/zigs. I swapped Kish, Lagash and Ur to granaries instead of zigs and whipped them the next turn. Granaries DOUBLE your growth rate. They are a critical building and should be built as early in a city's lifecycle as possible.
2) You can save 2gpt by deleting the 2 useless warriors.
3) Building pyramids was a mistake. You only have 1 early happy resource, so even with Rep you are limited to size 8 in 5 cities and size 5 in any other cities you take/settle. You would have been better to either spend those hammers on settlers/workers or Oracling Monarchy. Monarchy is low upkeep vs Rep at medium upkeep and allows infinite happyness.
Since you've gone and built the White Elephant, you may as well stick with Rep, but you will need to wage an offensive war soon.
4) Scouting: You have OB with all three of your neighbors, but haven't scouted their lands yet.
![No no no](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/nono.gif)
There is a boatload of empty land to the south-east, but it is still terra incognita.
5) Military deployment: You have a large army, but it is dispersed around your empire. "He who would defend everywhere, defends nowhere". Scout your enemies (they are all weaker than you are....check F9) and pick a victim. Gather your forces and strike. With currency in, you can easily afford another 3-4 cities without courthouses. Go and take some. I'd comment further on who the best target is....but it would be spoiler info due to the lack of scouting.
![Stick Out Tongue](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/tongue.gif)
6) City builds: You need to be a lot more stingy with how you spend your hammers. Brael already touched on the extra barracks, so I'll refrain from commenting further on that. Ur is building a 90h zig that will save you ~1 gpt. You would have been better off building Research to get to currency sooner or a few swords to help take some cities. Eridu is building a lighthouse, but doesn't have any seafood specials, at 1200 AD I have yet to work a sea tile in this city.
7) City specialization: All of your cities are currently very generic. It's a good idea to know what you want a city to do before you build the city. This lets you plan your tile improvements and infra builds ahead of time. If you try and build everything everywhere, you will lose.
9) Don't worry too much about caste, the whip is much more useful to you at the moment. Plan on running the slider at 0% science and teching off 2 scientists in Ur, and maybe a couple in Lagash. You will be able to kick the slider up for short periods once you have some cash in the bank (with currency in, you'll be making ~24gpt at zero slider). With random events on, it's a good idea to keep at least 100g in the kitty to mitigate some bad events/take advantage of good events.
10) Tile improvements: There are two workers farming over forests outside of Ur, yet there are plain grass tiles without improvements. Hang onto those forests for the moment. They're worth 1/2 a health each just by existing. Save the chops for a wonder (Oxford?). At the moment, Ur is at it's happy cap, so you don't actually need to improve any more tiles until you are ready to grow the city. Spend the worker turns elsewhere until then.
I would have farmed the bananas rather than cottaging them. You only have one source, so you will want to build a plantation on them once Calander is in which will waste all those cottage turns.
You have an improved, flatland gems to the east of Ur that is currently unworkable because it is outside the radius of your existing cities. Build a settler to grab them ASAP, letting a 2f 1h 7c tile lie fallow for this long is a crime.
![Stick Out Tongue](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/tongue.gif)
There are two workers cottaging jungle outside of Eridu. I'm not sure what your plans for this city are, but to my eye it is the best location for the Heroic Epic at the moment which means you want to be building farms/workshops on the grasslands not cottages. You don't have the tech at the moment to do either, so I'd leave the city alone for the moment and simply 2 pop whip units as the city grows into unimproved tiles. It's not a great location for the HE, but it's ok and it's the second best location after Ur and I'd want to hang onto Ur's two National Wonder slots for the National Epic and Oxford.
11) Tech trading: Be careful trading for early cheap techs, I'm not sure what you have already traded for, but I ran into WFYABTA* limits after just a couple of trades (and a bit of extortion for 10 turns of peace
![Cute....](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/cute.gif)
*We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced.
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