Lizzy's rise to greatness

[mzprox]

I did not have too much time to play yet, but we got Taoism at last! The holy city is Aurora which is strange, usually it's the newest city.
It wouldbe nice if we could get a prophet to build the holy shrine.
Some wonders were finished this turn byother teams,probably RB again..

[mzprox]

In the east a barbarian axemen aproaches, i gather our defense to counter them. I guess we have still no answer from inca..

Soon we will meet RB in the west.

Economical goal is to get civil sevice and monotheism asap, build 4-5 cities, continue building courthouses and to spread our religion.

[Dinner]

Move the axeman SE of the new city to the hill SW of the new city then you can kill the barb next turn.

[mzprox]

We can't move there in this turn, but we will in the next. Also I think we should let the barb attack so we will have at least 25% defensive bonus. An other axeman will be there (coming from NW) so if we lose we can still kill it.

Btw I'm thinking: now that we don't need the stone anymore maybe we should build more productive cities first. This would mean that we would get the stone city 3-4 turns later. It depends what the inca does in the next turn.. if they found their city we can safely delay ours.. if they come west then we are probably late anyway

[mzprox]

A screenshot from current turn.

Looking at stats: gnp is second, production lowest, food average, but much lower than our rivals'.. I don't really know why, I think our land is not as rich as theirs (for example I have counted 11 floodplains in hre's land and only partion of their empire was revealed.. and we have 4 in our entire land (actually 3 more in the newest city, but still..)

This turn we have to wait and see what the Inca does, if they happen to found a city where they are now then we can delay stone city a bit.

[Dinner]

We can't move there in this turn, but we will in the next. Also I think we should let the barb attack so we will have at least 25% defensive bonus. An other axeman will be there (coming from NW) so if we lose we can still kill it.

Btw I'm thinking: now that we don't need the stone anymore maybe we should build more productive cities first. This would mean that we would get the stone city 3-4 turns later. It depends what the inca does in the next turn.. if they found their city we can safely delay ours.. if they come west then we are probably late anyway

That sounds like a plan.

[mzprox]

This is a very expensive project, but we should settle this land before it's too late:

The two western city can be founded within 10 turns

[mzprox]

we eliminated the barbarian threat.

Made contact with RB (and soon we will meet cfc/india so only the zulu is missing). You can see on the picture how rich they are if you compare their resources with ours.
looking at their tech they are about the same tech level, a bit ahead. They have 13 cites but no code of laws/courthouses.. how could they keep up rsearch then.. maybe those gems.. They are going for the great library btw, I think no one can stop them in that. i predict that they will also grab music and get the great artist which they will use for a golden age.
as I've said we will meet cfc soon, I'd count them as a possible ally against RB

unfortunately our religion haven't spread yet onto any of our cities. Once we revolted to org religion we will spread it fast.

[Ben Kenobi]

We need to make CFC an alliance offer to ally vs RB. Mutual defense pact and whatnot.

[Hercules]

Here's some screen shots towards the end of this turn.

I believe we are in good shape apart from military and with a tech fair wind we could be in a position to build more advanced units, but they would also be more expensive.

The first screen shows the current Inca Settler, protected by that chariot and a nearby Axeman. It is close to Bursa and if we had a stronger military we would consider that an aggressive act.

The second shows new city Samsun.

The third shows tech screen. RB are at the top and it shows what techs for each civ we have met that can't be traded, on the right hand column.

[mzprox]

we have met India, they are currently at war with the Zulu. i assume the zulu's goal is to have some fun before they fall completely behind. India/cfc is a much bigger civ, not a militaristic one though.

[Ben Kenobi]

So it looks like we successfully survive the early game. Well done MzProx. That was our worry in the beginning, whether or not we would acheive our opening strategy. Now we have to figure out where we want to go from here.

You should run a poll for our longterm plans.

[mzprox]

I can't really offer long term alternatives, so I will write down what i think of our medium/long term goals and everyone can share theirs and i will try to incorporate as many suggestions as possible.

So:
-we try to keep our military at minimal but watching carefully our neighbours. we want to wait for military production until we can make use of our technological advantage ( so not building too many axemen, but many macemen/janissar etc, we just need to survive that long without war. then we will be almost undefeatable to the smaller civs.)
-after a long pause (before alphabet) our science rate is good again (thanks to the courthouses), but we will fall back again a bit. Our rivals are expanding very fast despite the very hih maintenance cost and we have to do the same or we will run out of land. that why in the next 8 turns we will have 5-6 new cities (actually 4-5 more, we got one in the previous turn) so we will have 13-14 cites (depending on our agreemnet with inca), matching the number's of the biggest civs'. as i've said it will be very expensive, but still cheaper than losing the land and then we would need military conquest to expand. Some of these cities will be just backfill, but the biggest project is to grab the land SW from us (see my picture)

After these we should concentrate on strengthening our borders and growing our cities. It would be good if we finally had some wonder or at least getting some first to get here bonus liberalism, free great merchant etc. for this RB is our biggest and probably only rival)

[Ben Kenobi]

Ok, other than backfill and expanding, are we going to drive for Janisseries? I agree, our short term plans should be to drop as many cities as possible, and to catch up on the city ratios of the largest civs.

However, if we're going to target a wonder, we should decide now which one that we want to pursue.

[mzprox]

you can suggest wonders

I was thinking maybe Notre Dame and University of Sankore would be cool, but now we don't have stone.
Great Library and Apostolic palace is good, but they are not in our reach unfortunately.
I think we can go for Versailles and get the free golden age
probably we will ave better shots on modern wonders, but we will hve to see how hostile the world will be. it might be that we won't have time for wonders anyway.