Civ 6 Adventure 1: Approach cold in a dry place (Arabia)

[Ranamar]

T184: A bunch of builders complete.  Mass Production also completes, which opens up Industrialization.  Industrialization gets us our next industrial zone upgrade, this time with area effect.  It also gets us the Ruhr Valley wonder, which will be absolutely insane in Damascus.  Finally, it boosts all our mines' output.
Mecca goes back to its commercial hub.  Aleppo gets started on its campus.  Damascus had just laid down a campus.  Lacking a better plan, that's the build there.

Our debater goes and blows away a missionary I'd damaged a little while ago.  As usual, it is incredibly profitable, religious-points-wise, to kill enemy missionaries in theological combat, since it gives you more than a spread, takes the same amount away from them, and does this in an area effect, all for zero spread charges.  Fun fact about that, btw: you can do water-apostle vs. water-apostle and land-apostle vs. land-apostle battles, but you cannot fight along the transitions.  (Okay, so, I haven't tried water->land, but land->water doesn't work while water->water does.)

Oh, also, because it hit the end of the line, here's how water exploration to the west went:


T185:  Cairo completes an encampment.  It turns out that the barracks is 20 prod cheaper than a stable, and mustketmen are probably soon going to overwhelm any value received by cavalry for a bit, so this one is building a barracks.

I also get my pilgrim back in town, and evangelize with him.  As it turns out, there are 4 sets of beliefs, and you get one belief from each set.  The sets are, loosely, follower belief, worship building (already gotten), economic benefits, and combat benefit.

These are the economic beliefs:

Church Property seems really good.  2 gold per city can't be beat easily.
By contrast, Stewardship seems really bad.  It breaks even against Church property with a campus and a commercial hub in every city.  I might be tempted to do that, but I'll just take the 2 gpt and use it to pay for the stuff in the cities that actually matter.
Lay Ministry is almost the same as Stewardship, only it's different outputs.  Consequently, I'd say it's also bad.  It might be worthwhile if you tend to spam out theater districts... but then you probably don't need the +1 culture per nearly as badly.
Pilgrimage feels like a strictly worse Church Property, which I suppose is the point from it being faith instead of gold.  I've got as much faith income as gold income right now, so I definitely don't need that one.
Tithe is a lot like Church Property: it breaks even if you average 8 converts per city following the religion.  That's potentially doable but rough.
World Church is similar to Church Property, but shows how they relatively value culture against gold.  It's probably more reasonable than Lay Ministry.
Finally, Papal Primacy seems like fun.  The problem is that it requires evangelizing all those city states and, uh, I'd kill someone at that point, I think.  Also, to eat Church Property, you basically need to be gaining more than you would from just converting the cities and having your own cities.  That said... a 6-envoy economic city state gives you +4 gold per economic hub from Papal Primacy.  (plus one in the capital)  If you can convert a second city state of any sort, then you're probably winning here.  A production one will give you +1 (at 3) or (at 6) +2 production in all your industrial districts for buildings.  Everyone else is working super hard to convert these things, though, so it'd be kinda rough.  The funny one is Jerusalem, which auto-converts itself when you have suzereinty, so I don't have to worry (much) about being totally outnumbered.

I'll go for the one that seems like fun and see what it takes to make it pay off.  Converting and Hong Kong (and getting it to 3 envoys) while getting Jakarta to 6 envoys is probably a good target.  Getting Jerusalem back to being mine would be good too.

These are the combat beliefs:

I want to bash heads with martyrs more than I actually want to convert people, so I'm going to take that, and make sure to build Mt. Ste. Michel soon.  The civics tree suggests that people may soon be getting to there other than myself.

Baghdad finished its lighthouse; pursuant to my new policy of buffing commercial districts, I build the commercial district I was already planning to build there.

T186: Market in Homs completes; it boosts Guilds; Guilds Completes; that boosts Banking.  Banking has 1 turn to completion, so we queue it up.  Our moneymaking is about to explode, since we'll have a new building for all our commerce hubs.  I set Diplomatic Service up as my next civic.  It's 19 turns to complete, and I'm not doing enough foreign trade to get an alliance, so we're going to need to research it the hard way if we don't get a surprise.

We're going to switch civics this turn, too, but first, I buy a couple more tiles near Hattin.  It's 104 gold each for 2 hills and a crab which are all second-ring, although one of them is, more importantly, third-ring for Aleppo.  To reach that tile, though, we have to buy an extra tile near Aleppo for another 104 gold.  Culture should take care of most of the rest of what I'd wanted to buy, or I'd bought it already a little earlier, but those are important because I expect to want to build specific things on at least a few of them that have picky placement rules.  Damascus could buy more desert tiles, but, quite honestly, that city already has enough workable tiles that it's not necessary, and it has a few more that can be borrowed if needed.  Mecca is another tempting target to buy tiles, but they'd be better claimed by putting them in a second ring of a new city.  Assuming new cities pay off at this point, of course...

... and after tile swapping:


Homs finished building a marketplace this turn, and I'm pondering what to build next.  We're kind of housing crunched, which suggests I should actually go build the aqueduct I've pondered a few times, even though it removes the only riverside/city-adjacent tile I have left in that city.  I've been staving off running out of room in various ways, but there's only so much you can do.  It's that, or build farms for the housing they give.  The horrible irony is that nothing I have left to work in this city (and it's kind of jammed up on the coast) will give production, so I can't really improve the output of the city that way.  On the other hand, I get 2 more housing if I go up one more population and build a third specialty district.  So, I think that's the way to go: build a farm or two to add the requisite housing to make growing one size not be constrained, and then build a district to get more housing from the civic that grants it.  When urbanization comes in, replace the farm with a neighborhood (because one of these tiles is of breathtaking appeal.  Probably, the next district will be industrial, because 2 adjacent mines, and because you can then funnel citizens into extra production.  In the meantime, I'll build a shipyard, which will pay off at approximately the end of the game (+2 production for 265 production, because it gives +1 per adjacency bonus of the harbor) ... if you ignore the 2g maintenance cost.

Aleppo has a trade route to assign.  I need production there, so I assign it to go to Baghdad.  I don't think I did that before, but it's hard to tell.  I also have a free trade route, so I buy a trader in Baghdad.  Everything about housing with 3 districts applies there, too, and it's got the district already in build.

Oh right, I was going to do civics!  Well, we did our tile-buying spree, so we don't need that now.  We also are 4 turns from getting two envoys.  I have two city-states with 0 envoys from me so far: Valletta and Zanzibar.  Of these, Valletta seems nice, and being able to save an envoy for suzereinty seems eminently doable.  They want me to recruit a great admiral, and I'm far and away in first place to get the next one, unlike some of the other great people I'm trying to get.  Zanzibar I'm kind of lukewarm about: it's highly contested.  I suspect getting the suzereinty bonus conversion from Jerusalem would be worth a lot more to me.  I think it's still worth it to put the double-envoy civic in for a couple turns.  A third alternative would be to get influence over Seoul, which gives a random boost every time I enter a new era.  I'm probably entering one right after the next envoy pop, but I'm also already teching faster than I know what to do with.  So, the culture-for-districts civic goes back in, along with the double-envoy one.  Once we get the envoys lined up for the next turn, I'll pop divine right in so that I can swap to something more generally productive afterward.
State of the government, T186:


T187: Banking comes in.  Next tech is back to Industrialization, completing in 3 turns.

Homs gives great production bonuses, so the Baghdad trade route is going to Homs.  I had a choice of +1F4P with Homs or +3P5G to Hong Kong for high-output options if I discount the food, so I went for the Homs option.

I chop a forest next to Aleppo to speed up the campus.  It is now 3 turns from completion, and then it's off to build buildings in it.  Over by Homs, I farm a grassland and shuffle some tiles to get over the housing rounding.  Next turn, I'll farm another one and swap one of the things I shuffled around back to Baghdad.  The tile output is more efficient that way, even if it's one less production, from a tundra hill.

T188: As it happens, the farms at Homs don't actually *do* anything.  They just provide housing; I don't actually want the food.  However, I've gotten that shift in.

T189: Cairo finishes the barracks; starts Armory.  Mecca finishes Commercial District; starts lighthouse (for housing, mostly).
I'm going to get envoys next turn, so I switch my civic to Divine Right.

For things that I actually did, here are two missionaries I beat up:


T190: We have two envoys!  We studied Divine Right!  We discovered Industrialization!  We entered the Industrial age!  Our roads upgraded to now actually be faster than flat land!  That last thing is by the smallest of margins... 0.75 move per tile means we get one extra move every 4 tiles, which means that less than 3 movers don't get any benefit.

Jerusalem has a new quest for us: recruit a great general.  Which, uh, heh.  I get something like 2 GG points per turn, and it's 240 to the general.
Jakarta wants an entertainment complex.  I might actually try to push Cairo up to 13 population and build one there, on some tile or another.  Alternately, I can have Mecca do it.  Given that a lot of the later bonuses from an entertainment complex are "all cities within 6 tiles, careful placement may be more important than sometimes.

Aleppo completes its campus and starts a library.  (4T)

I ended up doubling one of the two envoys and using the other one to gain suzereinty over Jerusalem.  It appears that, while the city converts, this is not the calucluation for dominant religion.  I then swapped the doubling card out for +100% Industrial Zone adjacency bonuses, which should be good for 1-3 extra production per turn in several of my cities.

Interturn, I haggle with the AI a bit for this:

Originally, he was offering lump sum gold; I turned it into a happy resource and a small amount of gold on my side.  Open borders must be worth a lot!  I also decided to tack on reciprocated open borders at the end, which he seemed to be happy about.  Not a terribly equitable deal in the end, but I don't really care.

T192: Damascus completes its campus.  It's 7 turns to finish a Madrassa here or 8 to build a factory.  It's 12 to finish the Madrassa in Aleppo.  There's a forest I can chop in Aleppo to turbocharge it, at which point the fact that it has half the production of Damascus is less of a problem for finishing up the boost that needs two universities built.

In looking around and reconsidering decisions, Hattin is size 4.  I decide to drop an industrial zone because I'd been planning for that, and suddenly wonder why the heck I was doing the harbor first.  Building the industrial zone will get us closer to finishing the harbor faster.  It's 20 turns to the industrial zone and 9 to the harbor, at this point.  The harbor gets us 2 gpt and a trade route, while the industrial zone gives us +2 production plus a workable 2-prod tile.  On the other hand, a trade route can be converted into 3+ hammers, although it'll cost us some gold to do so.  Since we were under our trade route limit, I just bought another trader in Hattin, which will be usable next turn.  This will hopefully speed things somewhat.

T193: Mecca completes its commercial district, and I decide to start a shipyard.  As discussed before, it's of questionable value aside from unlocking the next stage, but now is probably the latest it will get anywhere near paying off, aside from something with an astonishingly stronger bonus.  (Hattin will have a +3 harbor eventually...)

Hattin seems to have a new trade route to assign... or more likely an old one that expired.  The best production is from Cairo, so we're going to do that, for now.

Homs has a route to restart, too.  If we figure that 1 production is 4 gold (rushbuy multiplier if we aren't in merchant republic, which devalues the production a little), Hong Kong's 3P5G ~= 17G to Jakarta's 15G, so I'm starting that up.  Amusingly, this only works because there are 2 trading posts along the way.  I feel like I should probably do some overwater trade to Japan, but I'm still worried about that barbarian camp.  Solution: when we get gunpowder hope that it gives us a source of niter and build a musketman to clear the peninsula.

I've also been playing around with theological combat.  I knew that damaging missionaries tended to reduce conversion strength.  It looks like, even with Monastic Isolation, damaged apostles convert less, too.  That, or it's from damage before we took that perk.  So, the new plan is to use all but one spread on apostles and then use them as roving missionary-killers.  It also looks like you don't get any +faith if you have no converted citizens in the city, but you always get the -faith when you kill a relevant misionary.

T194: Armory finishes in Cairo; time to research Gunpoweder.  (1 turn because of the boost)  Next build is a factory.  Libraries finish in Damascus and Aleppo.  Aleppo is going to chop out a Madrassa, while Damascus starts on a factory.
Soon, it's going to be time to find out how factories actually work.  Cairo finishes one in 10 turns.  Damascus finishes one in 8.  I need to remember to look at exactly what happens  in between them.  "Within 6 tiles" has funny implications.

T195: Gunpowder comes in; time to play "find the niter", since we don't just have some already.


Not here...


There's some, but that's in the middle of Egypt...


Here's some more, all the way over by Seoul!

Okay, maybe we're never building musketeers.  Metal Casting requires 2 crossbowmen, though, so I'm going to upgrade 2 ranged units and send one out to do stuff.  I've seen nary a peep out of Egypt, and everyone is still using basic archers to fight.  Or, actually, I could finally go fight Egypt, which I expect to roll over quickly if I actually set my mind to some military.  I get my choice of causus belli in 3 turns with Diplomatic Service.  Ironically, my denunciation of Egypt ends in 1 turn.  I'll just have to reapply it and see what excuses I can use.  Everyone else will hate me, but, uh, oh well.  They're far away.  It's a shame Colonial War won't come any time soon, because that's what this really is!

Interturn, Cleopatra informs me she is not impressed with my army.  We'll have to see about that.  She's literally two eras behind me.

Also, interturn, my Heathen Conversion apostle got killed by the heathens he was trying to get in range of.  I really thought that swordsman was going to be killed by archers in Jerusalem.  Oh well.

T196: I use my proseletizer apostle to wipe out all religious belief in Jerusalem.  I then use another one to spread a bit more.  Jerusalem now has 4 Muslims and everyone else is a none.  At 11 size, that must have wiped out a lot of work!

I also get to claim a Great Admiral.  On top of that, in a turn or two, I'm going to snipe Isaac Newton, because he's got a really good power that I'm a lot more interested in than the various "just get some science" ones I know are around it.  I buy that one for 970 faith this turn to make sure I get it.  This probably means I should found another city with a +3 campus, to use him at.  This gets us an envoy with Hong Kong; our second.


The Great Admiral gave us a boost to The Enlightenment, because that was GP #3, after our GPro and our GEng that I stil haven't used (worth ~500 hammers on a wonder; historically built Hagia Sophia, which is a tempting choice).  It also completed the Valletta city state quest, giving us suzereinty there.  That bonus is that I can now build City Center and Encampment buildings with faith, at 2 faith per prod.  Walls are cheaper, at 1-to-1, but I can only buy them with faith now, not gold.  This Great Admiral can retire into an ironclad, which is exactly what I'm going to do, seeing as my other naval ships are an era behind my research while this will be an era ahead of my research.

I go to move my GA into a harbor district where there isn't a unit to retire it and Cleopatra again informs me that she is not impressed with my military.  This literally happened in the middle of my turn:

Anyway, we now have an ironclad and it is going to destroy everyone on the sea, being faster and more powerful.

I've already delivered my observations about Shipyards being debatably valuable, but I'm going to build one in Baghdad also because, again, it's close to being likely to pay off, even if it probably won't, and production for later things can apparently be hard to come by.  I need to make a canal so my shipyards in the west can reach the sea in the east someitme, too.  The best candidate is in the icy lands to the south... if it ends up not mattering, I'll wait until we find oil, and see if that is also in the frigid arctic.

I've finally decide that barbarian encampment down there to the south is silly, so I upgrade the archer in Baghdad to a crossbowman and get ready to clear it out in a couple turns.  It won't be completely one-sided, but it will be pretty one-sided.

A bunch of trade routes also finish being trade routes this turn.  Baghdad to Hong Kong continues, and the one in Aleppo moves to Hattin.

Interturn, Egypt finally arrives at the Renaissance.

T197: An unmet city state is defeated; I lose suzereinty over Jerusalem.  I spread religion there again, because I've got the apostle and want to convert the city anyway.

I upgrade a second archer to crossbowman to boost Metal Casting.  It will complete in 2 turns.

Also, apparently, my relationship with Egypt is now "Denounced: -1 turns":

I can neither denounce her nor go to war except by surprise.  Fantastic.

Losing suzereinty over Jerusalem actually kind of hurt: apparently, I was relying on its diamonds to continue my general luxury spree.  Some of my cities are now merely content.  When I get a spare moment, I need to settle over by the elephant to get some ivory.  There exist whales to my west, as well.

T198: I now have a Diplomatic Service.  The Civilopedia is full of lies:

Delegations definitely cost 25 gold, not 10, at least for me this game, while Embassies cost 50.  I go around and give everyone an embassy, anyway.  Also, it looks like I can finally denounce Egypt again if I want.  Everyone likes embassies except, confusingly, Roosevelt: people who like me less did not refuse it, and I already know where his capital is anyway!  Maybe he's paranoid?

I can also build spies... which cost 300 production and 4 maintenance.  They do, uh, something.  They're also apparently not purchasable with gold, which I find hilarious.  Ideological spies only, here!

The next civic is going to be The Enlightenment, since I want it to boost a tech.  Also, one of these days I'm getting a GMerchant, and that boosts Mercantilism.

Oh yeah, and I switched policy cards:

I want to get a couple more envoys to get suzereinty bonuses again.  Jerusalem is turning into kind of an envoy sink.  Getting Hong Kong to 3 and Jakarta back to suzereinty (or even to 6) would be good, though.  Jakarta wants me to construct an entertainment complex, which I should do too.

[Ranamar]

I took a break for a bit because I felt like I was spending all my time on it and wanted to do something else.  I guess when you only play around 5-15 turns a night, it would feel that way.  Anyway, here we go.

T199: Homs completes its shipyard.  Hattin completes it harbor.  Aleppo completes its Madrassa.  Printing got boosted and will complete next turn.

Next for Homs: bank, because we'll want 2 of those soon.  Next for Hattin: Lighthouse for housing, and because it's relatively quick at 4 turns.  Next for Aleppo... Fascinatingly, Hattin actually has more production than Aleppo, now, because of all the trade routes I stacked there.  (That, and it has two production-oriented mines.)  So, Aleppo is a bigger question.

Here's Aleppo:

Yes, it needs some work in the tile improvement department.  I've got some workers, so we're going to do that soon.
We recently reached size 7, so we get another district, and we should probably lay that down now.  I've got some trees I can chop it out with, to speed things up, too.  A new trade route is worth 3-5 production and a food or two, anywhere, for ~420 production once we factor in the cost of the trader.  It also gets us a small amount of gold.  (Actually, we're short a couple trade routes right now, so it'll probably be more like 450 for the district and marginal trader.)  An industrial zone is 494 production, with guaranteed no scaling issues, and will net us +5 production, or +4 if I want to adjacency-boost my campus.  (A commerce hub is +2 next to the river or +1 adjacency-boosting the campus.  If one more district goes next to it, then it goes up to +2.)  Aleppo is also in range of at least one likely factory, and I'm assuming that the area bonus doesn't stack.  So I'm going to build a commerce district next to the university, for +1 gold, faith, and science, and another +1 if I build a district next to it when I manage to grow this to size 10. (hopefully, or it could be a neighborhood to facilitate that...)  I also buy a trader in Aleppo to get some more production in.

T200: Printing comes in.  I decide to just research straight through to steam power.  There's no way I'm ever building a musketman, and the city state that wants it can just deal.  My new trader starts on the Aleppo-Cairo route, which is great for production.

Mecca completed a lighthouse.  Mecca already has a commercial hub, so the above calculations don't apply.  It also has a fantastic spot to put an industrial district on: right next to the one for Cairo.  This spot is going to provide a whopping 6 hammers per turn for our 500 hammer investment, once the entertainment hub marked there goes up, and it's 5 hammers per turn before that.

That entertainment spot should be able to hit almost every city in my current empire with the area happiness bonuses that come in down the chain.  The forest will be chopped the instant it can be laid down, 4 turns from now, as it is currently being worked.

My crossbowmen earned a promotion after its recent combat, so I take it.  This slows down the conquest of the barbarian camp, but I can't tell if exp rolls over.  (A quick check says it does, though; the exp bar still has a bit of space in it.)  They'll finish the job on the barbarian camp next turn.

Looking around because I want to plan to build a settler soon to use my GSci that I bought, I notice that Damascus is the opposite of housing crunched but is relatively weak on food tiles (as compared to its enormous amount of production tiles.  I buy a trader to fill out my routes, which, amazingly, will be going to wherever offers the best food!  I also forced a worker to work the rice in range that had been ignored for Petra desert.

A T200 report would be kind of underwhelming: I spent the last 50 turns building buildings, and it looks like I may spend the nest 50 doing the same.  Despite my anaemic expansion, I have twice the score of the next contender, Egypt, and nearly three times the size of Egypt, as well as the tied contenders for second place in size (first among AIs): Rome and an unmet civ.  Given that Egypt has 3 cities that I know of and appears to have never built settlers, that means Rome has either 3 or 4, with 4 being underdeveloped (62 tiles) while 4 would be pretty solidly developed.  My cities have grown a bunch, though... I'm starting to run a little low on amenities compared to before.

T201: A one other trade route ended its term this turn, and the menu of trade routes is suddenly actually pretty interesting.  I've got two Egyptian cities available now, and Egypt has gone in hard on culture while neglecting tech.  (Cleopatra actually matches me in age on the culture tree, but she's 2 ages behind on the tech tree.)  None of the foreign routes can match Mecca's +4 for pure food per turn, but +2 food +2 culture +gold is comparable to what I get out of city states when trading with gold gain in mind.  It feels like it could be pretty useful for border cities which might want to pick up a little extra culture gain.  Also, cynically, if I decide to invade Egypt some day, having roads to their cities would be good.  Nan Madol (+2F +11G +2C) it is, rather than Mecca (+4F +4P +2G).  This prices culture pretty high, but, if we're going to be honest, culture is hard to come by unless you put the districts into it, which I haven't been.  (If we figure 4G = 1P, that's around a food and a production per culture, because the last 2 gold come from a civic and would happen anyway.)  I could go to Ra-kedet instead, but that trades 3 gold for 2 faith, which doesn't seem enormously worth it.  It's true that Egypt wants this: they get +2 gold per inbound trade route, but it's still alright, and I'm not hugely concerned with the AIs' treasuries.

Homs is being propped up by internal trade routes, though, so the internal trade route to Baghdad (1F6P2G) is renewed, for a 30% increase in production.  Homs also has (and has had for a little while, if I'm honest) the poulation for another district, but I'm really not sure what to build.  Encampments are price-reduced, because I haven't built many, as are entertainment complexes and Theater squares.  I could build an aqueduct for 3-4 times the housing that I'd get from an aqueduct, and all I'd have to show for it was a couple GG points and a production a turn.  A Theater Square would start with a whopping base 0 in culture... and we've already established why new industrial districts will actually be pretty underwhelming: right now it'd be ~500 production for 4 production per turn for the rest of after that finishes, which, well... that might pay off.  I suppose it would pay off by the end of the game.  However, finishing a third district will get us out of our housing crunch for a bit, and other civics key off 3 districts later, too, so that's a pretty good reason to build *something*.  Industrial with Encampment if we ever reach 10 is probably the better choice, all things considered.  It's +2 production for the district, +2 more if we build the building, a production work spot in any case, and it activates all the 3-district civics.  Besides, it'll give us another pretty good (even if not top-line powerful) trade target.

Beyond that, I finally had my workers build a couple of improvements.  I'm not sure why I put it off so much.  It's probably because I got used to it from before.

Interturn, Rome asks for friendship.

T202: Damascus finishes its factory.  I start on a Madrassa, to increase teching and faith generation before taking a look towards the Ruhr Valley.  (With 6 mines in the first 2 rings, another one in the third ring currently being used by Cairo, and a few other production-heavy tiles, output will be crazy, as if it isn't already.
Damascus is a little out of the way, but let's see what we've got here...
Cairo is 5 tiles from the industrial zone, and thus gets a +3.  Same with Aleppo.  Hattin is 7 tiles away.  That stings a bit.  For maximum irony, its unfinished industrial zone is where 6 tiles would be.  Sadly, that spot was verboten because a city state is too close.

Interturn, someone finally builds the Hanging Gardens, which I never found a convenient juncture to build.  Hah!

T203: As the only one with industrial districts, I'm the only one claiming Great Engineers.  The latest one gives +1 housing and +1 amenity in one city.  This can be handy just about anywhere, so I'll need to consult my list of cities that have housing problems.  Baghdad has growth potential and is stuck next to the sea, so Baghdad it is.  I've also got almost enough faith to snipe a great merchant out from under whoever else it is that's working for it.  I want this one, because it's a free build of a market and a bank... and I have a zillion commerce districts, most of which are missing building upgrades.

Also, I just realized Aleppo is already size 7, and I'm kicking myself for not spotting other ways I could have planned out my districts.  I doubt it significantly matters, but I could have gotten a 1-gold harbor (build lighthouse; forget rest), 5-gold commerce hub (I'm getting 2 gold from it, as it is), and a 3-production industrial zone (but there are other ways to get 3-production industrial zones here, as there are a lot of hills).  In any event, there's a spot where I plan to build an encampment for Allahambra, and I might as well lay that down to work on immediately after my commerce hub.  I might even build a theater sometime, too, as I have wonders planned for 2 adjacent tiles and could easily put a third one in.  (The third one may be a 3-mine-2-district industrial zone instead, however.  That, or a 3-wonder theater square by its lonesome.)

Hattin completes a lighthouse and moves on to the industrial zone.  Expected completion time is 13 turns.

Also, I chopped out the last turn on the factory in Cairo.  The overflow is going into a bank and then we'll lay down an entertainment complex.  I look at my city stats.  Holy shit, Cairo gets +6 from factories now, instead of +3.  Damascus doesn't show a change yet, but maybe it needs the interturn to calculate.  (As it turned out, it did.)  This gives a whole new meaning to "industrial heartland".

T204: The Enlightenment comes in.  I set Scientific Theory for research, because it now has only one turn.  The next civic is Mercantilism, because we're paying 710 faith points to get him.  As it turns out, it's 2 turns to complete, but I wanted to maximize the safety of getting it; one of the AIs was slightly ahead..  Also, we get an envoy with Kabul, which doesn't do much at this point.

The happiness distributor is doing something extremely weird here:

It's only 4 tiles from Cairo to Baghdad or back, so I moved my happiness engineer back.  I could use him this turn, but I'll give it a turn.  if Mecca is still *happy* while Cairo is *unhappy* next turn, I'm going to use the surprise second charge there.

It also turns out that the site of the entertainment district would have been great for a Theater Square, what with 2 wonders and 2 districts next to it, but it's literally the perfect spot for central entertainment.

In other news, Mecca completes the marketplace that had been building and starts on an industrial zone.  We're going to have an insane stacking of factories by the end of this.  I could plunk down the most marginal of cities and immediately get 10+ production.  I'm highly inclined to do so, as well, since it would have a pretty decent site for a campus.

Oh, and we changed civics:

Having gotten a gmerch, we don't need points for that anymore, and I decided that 20 gpt was worth not getting the next pair of envoys for an extra 3 turns.  I still feel like we need the extra culture output, though, so I kept the +culture for districts.
Also, it looks like the civic change fixed the happiness problem for this turn, but I'm still going to be disappointed if the auto-apportioner doesn't get Cairo to happy from contented next turn.

Interturn, Egypt becomes a monarchy.

T205: The happiness distributor seems to have recovered a bit.    I use the GP in Baghdad after all.

Also, Scientific Theory comes in.  I go back to researching Square Rigging, because, with Steam Power, that 7 turns to find out where the map has hidden coal.  Maybe I'll get lucky with resource distribution for a change!

T206: Mercantilism completes, obsoleting our 2 gold per trade route civic in favor of twice that and a faith to top it off.  I make the quick switch, and that's that.  The next civic being researched is Civil Engineering.  I wish I could get colonialist on Egypt, but they're slightly too advanced.  The rest of the world?  I suspect I could probably just roll over them if I set my mind to conquering.

Aleppo finishes its commercial district and promptly builds through a bank with the GP we'd gotten.  This reminds me that I've got Isaac Newton sitting around somewhere, and I ponder rush-buying a settler.  I decide to opt for a trader to fill out my routes next turn, instead.  Baghdad starts a factory.

T207: I get a low-housing warning on Aleppo.  This should resolve itself once I finish the encampment.  I set the trader from last turn to go to Ra-kedet.  I would rather like the culture from it.

Damascus finishes its Madrassa.  Despite the inflated prices, districts are only 7 or seven turns to build, there.  The Ruhr Valley is   I drop a commercial hub next to the river to lock in the price, but I actually start on the Ruhr Valley.  Percentile production aside, that's going to be +6 or +7 production from mines.  +10 if every last tile in range gets claimed.

T208: Square Rigging completes; next tech is Steam Power.  I recall at this point that I've been wanting to get a settler, but it's not convenient to build one: in 2 more turns, I can buy one, though, which I plan to do.  This will partly be bait: If it converts to Sikhism, I should have a holy war causus belli.  (... and I can clean that mess up later with my 100 faith per turn.)

T210: Cairo completes an Entertainment Complex.  This boosts Civil Engineering and nets us an envoy in Jakarta, getting us suzereinty once again.  The next build is to finish the bank in the commercial district.

I chop the future site of Allahambra to finish an encampment.  Since, this time, the 15 production difference between barracks and stable seems largely immaterial, I go for the stable.  We can build tanks here or something.  It completes in 3 turns.

I also buy a settler at Aleppo.  The site I have in mind to build a city is, for a university, well, Bananas:


You'll also notice a location on this side marked 3 as well.  That's another good site, but it's inside the industrial heartland, so I'm thinking of normal-building it later, once all the factories are online.

Interturn, Egypt becomes a theocracy instead of a monarchy.

T211: I renew a Baghdad-to-Cairo trade route for 5 food, 5 production, and civic bonus.  Mecca also has a trade route that expired and I renew the same there.  Nothing eventful, but one turn to steam power.  My settler may veer off somewhere completely different over that.

T212: Steam power comes in.  (Next tech is Economics.)  Let's play find-the-coal!
Remember that banana site I showed you two turns ago?  Look what I just found!

Also, here's that city I keep thinking about founding over by an elephant, and two more between HOng Kong and Jakarta:


Egypt, of course, also has it, since they actually got a full distribution of strategic resources, but this feels somewhat more equitable.

Mecca and Homs complete industrial zones.  Next builds: workshops

An interesting footnote to steam power is that all my water units now have +3 to move over water.  This means that your average available-since-ancient-times land unit is actually 150% faster sailing than taking roads... which, actually, if you think about it, is historically accurate: water shipping in the early industrial era was significantly, spectacularly cheaper than land carriage.  Anyway, I have a 1-build-left builder exploring a bit to the east, but I am soon going to replace it with a privateer, because a city state wants me to build one anyway.  Sadly, the sailing pirate ship is now slower (being sail-speed) than the builder.  Truly, I am a model of isolationist industry.

[Ranamar]

T213: Civil Engineering comes in.  Next up is Nationalism, which is not boosted because we're not going to declare a war using a causus belli in the next 14 turns.  Not even the next 20-25 if I go off and research other things.  In international news, some unnamed player built Chichen Itza.

Cairo finished a bank, making it our second, and boosting Economics.  The next build is an arena, so we're ready when the area happiness building comes around.  After that, I'm thinking I'll build Allahambra, if nothing else more tempting gets in the way, like Big Ben, which will be available in 3 turns.  Cairo is likely to be building Allahambra because Aleppo has something else to build first: The Forbidden City.  Allahambra is probably more likely to get picked by someone else, but the Forbidden City definitely gives a better card.  One awkward thing about completing civil engineering, though, is all my earlier wonder cards go away.  This means I can get a wonder bonus on Big Ben and the Ruhr Valley, being industrial or newer, but I can't get one for Allahambra or the Forbidden City.  I guess I'll do those two and then switch in the card, likely in my new wildcard slot!

I got a reminder that Mecca is mildly (50%) housing crunched, and I decide to check it out.  If I'm counting this right, I can un-crunch it by flipping a crabs tile, so I do.  Looking at tiles, it looks like a hill near Homs entered Jakarta's borders at some point.  That's sort of unfortunate; I guess I should have shelled out for the tile after all.  Homs is basically out of tiles to work, in any event, at size 7, so I'm not going to worry too much about how much more it might grow.  I'll probably move its trade routes elsewhere soon, too, depending.  And, finally, from the department of "tiles I don't want to miss and can now afford," there's a hill near Hattin that is in Kabul's second ring.  I pay 235 gold for it.  Now, I need to get a builder over there...

T214: I have a trade route to restart in Damascus.  It's going to be Cairo for 4F6P+civics, but some of the other ones are looking pretty crazy.  Jerusalem is up to 17 gold and 4 faith (including civics, while Jakarta is at 20 gold and 1 faith.  The AIs can't hold a candle to that in their cities, sadly.  If only Cleopatra hadn't conquered the two culture cities nearby, they'd probably be better than trying to trade with them after she burned them down!

I also bought a privateer for a quest; it's going to explore the eastern sea where I don't think there's much of anything, and then around the coast to maybe see the north of the continent.

T215: Hattin completes its industrial complex.  It's 6 turns for a workshop and 12 turns for a commercial hub.  The commercial hub will probably net us 6 production per turn, at least somewhere, so it's a better deal to build that first.  (Also, completing the district gets us adjacency bonuses for a hammer and a gold, on top of the 3 gold it would produce innately.)  It's 19 turns to the factory, which would get us a distributed 11 production between the two of them.  I just bought a privateer, or I'd just buy the Workshop outright, I think.  I'll do that if I remember in a turn or two when I can afford it.

A builder built a steel mine, boosting research for Steel.  Hattin had also expanded onto a crabs, so my sailing worker builds a fishing boats there.    Due to not planning ahead, the nearest worker to mine the hill tile I bought is all the way over on the coal.  He'll run back and mine it next.

T216: Economics comes in, and I decide it's time to get the final encampment building.  I can't build bombards (because no niter), so I'm going to finish Siege Tactics (3 turns) and then I never built a Knight (Mamluk) due to not warring, so that will be 7, and I'll have the Military Academy.  It gives +3 production and a housing for 355 hammers.  Given that Sewers (from Sanitation, which I'm currently ignoring in case I decide to actually build the two neighborhoods to boost it) cost 405 production for 2 housing, that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

A factory completes somewhere, I'm not sure where.  (I think it's Baghdad, because it says "shipyard complete": I wasn't building a shipyard last!  Anyway, it boosted Class Struggle, which is great!  I've been eying the communist government for its +10% production bonus.  In any event, Baghdad can build a district because it's size 10, and I have nfc what it should be.  I have a spot which gets +1 and would get another +1 if something gets built on an adjacent hills which is currently a mine.  (It's "breathtaking", though!)  Meanwhile, building it would give +1 to my commercial hub.  The big candidates are either a campus or a theater square.  Given my total lack of those (giving me the below-average discount) and my relatively lagging cultural research, we'll go for a theater square.  Besides, I need to build an archaeological museum to get a boost on one of my civics.  It feels far from urgent, though: I'm going to build some commerce district buildings first, as they pay off more.

Also, I renewed one of Aleppo's production trade routes.

T217: Tripoli founded:

That banana tile has a trader on it.  The trader is insubstantial, so it walked through my builder, but, while my builder could chop the jungle (getting us immediately to size 2 along with getting the granary almost done), I could not move another builder in to build the plantation I want on the bananas.  Actually, I take that back; it was just a command-giving bug; I got the whole thing to work later in the turn.  I am borrowing the coal for the moment to help with that, and probably will hang onto it until a couple of districts are finished.  Also, this city is going to grow so ridiculously fast that I am actually going to wait until size 4 to build the campus.  It shouldn't take very long at all, at this rate: we're almost size 3, and there's another jungle chop inbound.  Finishing the commercial district which will provide long-term production through trade will likely take longer!  As for the city itself?  It's basically going to be a research station, after that.  Maybe a harbor and/or industrial district will get built, but that's basically all the ambition I have for it: there are no good tiles here.  (That ring 3 forest?  I'd so badly need production as to make it a lumber mill if we ever get there.)

Homs finishes something (workshop?) and starts on a factory.

I have envoys to send.  One each go to Hong Kong and Seoul to get their 3-envoy bonuses.  I also get suzereinty over them, but those are less interesting to me.  Seoul is more of a prize than I'd thought: improved coffee, unimproved silk, and the random eureka bonus on going up ages is weak, but not worthless.  Hong Kong is mostly good for the +2 everywhere we have an industrial district.

Interturn, Cleopatra complains I'm settling too close.  (I am!)  I tell her to pound sand.  I kind of want to provoke her into starting a war, because I'm certain I'd win.

T218: Mecca finally reaches size 15, boosting urbanization.  That's going to be next to research on the civics side after Nationalism.  I also have another great admiral recruited.  I bet I can beat Egypt to a third one before their points get there, because AIs don't seem to realize how valuable seaports are.  The admirals himself, Santa Cruz,  I'm sort of meh about.  He retires to form an armada.

Tripoli completes its granary and has 9 turns to grow to size 4.  That definitely calls for a commercial hub before a campus, since I still need to chop the campus site.  I'm I'll end up building the campus first, too.

Aleppo finishes its Armory as well.  The next build is the Forbidden City.  I have this nice tile reserved with The Forbidden City, Allahambra, and something to build on a marsh by a river next to a commercial district slated to go on three sides.  That's definitely going to be a Theater square soon.  The final challenge is getting something on a fourth side (2 others are a hill with a mine and a cattle pasture, both solid tiles) to really make things great.  A few things need to be next to that kind of district, though.

Interturn, Cleopatra denounces me.  Maybe I'll get my war after all... or maybe not!  Anyway, she denounced me for not making a promise.  (Which, tbf, I would have kept: I don't have more settlers in the pipe atm.)

T219: Siege Tactics comes in, unfortunately raising the price of my districts, as I finally have the builder in position to chop the jungle for the campus.  Tripoli really, really lacks for good productive tiles, however, so I borrow a desert hill mine from Damascus to help.  It's far from efficient, but it's a more important use of my production than the alternative.  I'll give it back once the campus goes up; the other one can be slow.  I also pay on the order of 400 gold for a jungle plains and a forest hill grassland which I had thought was flatland.  At this point, I discover I'm running out of builders!  I have just 2 builder actions left in my empire, and it's going to take some turns to get the second one back since I had him running across the map to a different tile which I have deemed lower-priority.

Interturn, Teddy complains about my impact on the environment.  He really doesn't seem to like me, while not actually being frowny-face with me.

T220: I embarrassingly belatedly realize this map is cylindrical (the map fringes had me fooled) and sail my privateer east.  I'm going to go find the other side of the continent.

Interturn, I learn that, no matter how much she hates me, Cleopatra can't actually live without my trade: having not expanded onto luxuries, she has driven her economy into the ground and offers this trade:

Y'know what?  How about no?  It may be all she can afford, but it's a drop in the bucket for my economy, and I'd rather keep her down at this point.

Tojo follows up with a similar offer, only it's 9GPT and no luxuries for two of mine.  He's basically dead, though, having been reduced to only a single satellite city and lost his capital city.

T221: A trade route ends in Hattin.  That city is also highly reliant on trade for production, but I need it more in Tripoli, so I move the trader there.  Incidentally, Cleopatra managed to convert Tripoli, even as her own city Nan Madol loses having any dominant religion.  I think this means I can declare Holy War whenever I decide it's time to take her stuff.  (You've activated my trap card!)  I'll wait for the traders to her cities to come back, acquire a couple more techs, and then switch to war mode.  I might want modern artillery for that, so I suppose I should switch over to Ballistics (and then steel) to get it.  It's only 12 turns, currently, if I do that now.  Then, I can overrun them with field cannon (upgraded crossbows) and artillery... backed up with Mamluks or pikemen or something to finish taking cities.  It'll be a short victorious war.  I won't get that causus belli soon enough to boost Nationalism unless I get going sooner than I want, though, I suspect.

T222: Egypt sent an envoy to Jakarta, so we lost suzereinty over it.  Also, our privateer made it across the map, and finally found the English.  Based on empire size, she's probably got a second city, but 5 wonders and 9 great people.  Speaking of great people, that reminds me I have one who provides wonder production.  I use a charge on Allahambra, and I'll use on on the Forbidden City next turn.  That will get that pair of wonders done significantly more quickly.

Mecca finished a factory and starts on a bank.  In a couple turns I'm going to swap in the enhanced builder-production card and crank out some builders.

Damascus has a trade route to renew.  Baghdad or Homs would be +6, while Hattin is +5 on the production part, but I really want that route to get roaded, so I'm setting it here.  It's honestly not that far behind, since the commercial district is still under build.

T224: Egypt sent an envoy to Hong Kong, and I no longer have suzereinty there, either.  It's no causus belli, but she's interfering in my imperial ambitions. 

I also have a great person to claim this turn.  It's Emilie du Chatelet, and he triggers a Eureka on 3 random Industrial or Renaissance techs.  I have exactly four of those, and none of them are currently boosted, so let's get that done today.
We rolled: Ballistics, Military Science, and Rifling.  This is pretty good, as Sanitation's "build neighborhoods" is at least plausible that I might have done without contrivance, while the others weren't, really.  Also, it cut off a couple turns from my sprint to artillery.

I do the single-charge builder shuffle near Tripoli to get us a workable mine.  Tripoli has exactly 4 tiles that don't yield only 2 resources of whatever type.  Despite that, it's nearly size 6 and still growing strong, although the next size will produce housing problems.  Chopping that forest and starting the trade route got us to only 6 turns remaining to complete the campus being built.

T225: Ballistics comes in; Steel is up next in 4 turns.
Also, it's Great Person time again!  It's a great engineer this time, with ... more production for wonders!  I'll take it.  Most of my current batch of wonders are almost done, but there's still Big Ben after Allahambra and the Ruhr Valley and the Forbidden City.

Homs has two trade runs complete.  ONe transfers to Tripoli to help with bootstrapping, while the other goes back on the trade run to Mecca.

T226: I appear to have suddenly undergon a crisis of unhappiness.  I'm really not sure why, as we were way above happy cap last turn.  Maybe it's the auto-happy-distributor screwing up again.  Cairo is at 8/6 while Homs is at 2/3.  In fact, it appears that, when you have an empty policy slot, all policies are turned off until you fix that.

I sent my engineer to go finish the Ruhr valley.  I realize when my turn comes in and I get a free civic swap that I should have sent him to finish the Forbidden City instead.  That would have gotten us two new civics instead of just one.  The aforementioned civic swap also gave us an envoy... or rather, it gave us two, because apparently moving to a double-envoy government doubles the "grants envoy" text on those civics, too.  I send one of the envoys to Jakarta to get us to 6 envoy points (and also gets us suzereinty back, but I'm not using that bonus much) while the other one is going to Jerusalem to (1) distract Egypt (I'll get yet another when I get around to recruiting a great general) and get access to Jerusalem's diamonds.  Hong Kong can wait, because I don't actually get anything useful from suzereinty, just from putting another three envoy points in to get to 6.

I checked, and I do indeed have causus belli for holy war against Egypt.
So, here's the plan: It's 5 turns to finally study Reformed Church, in which time I will get Steel to build some modern artillery (and battleships).  In that time, I am going to build a bunch of builders because I am out of builders.
When Reformed Church comes in, we switch to theocracy and go on a war footing.  I've been letting faith pile up once I started winning all the GP races and stopped building apostles and started getting 100+/turn.  I also have 1.6k gold and a net income of 200+/turn.  In that turn, I will spawn as big an army as I can in one turn and proceed to wipe the Egyptians off the face of the earth.  (Teddy is going to hate me.  Sucks to be him.)
Here's my civic cards for now:

The big things to note are the unit upgrade discount, which I plan to use to upgrade all my garrison units before switching governments to increase my army's size, the lack of the housing card, and the fact that I swapped out my envoy card for Raj, since I have suzereinty over 5 city states.  I figure +10 science, culture, faith, and gold beats +26 gold.  I'm also okay with somewhat stalling my cities' growth for 5 turns when I will potentially soon create a bunch of unhappiness penalties.

Interturn, Teddy wants luxuries.  I'm happy to share, as I am keen on making use of those open borders of his.


T227: Ruhr Valley completes.  This boosts Flight, because it's a modern wonder.  I also have points for a great merchant: Jakob Fugger gets me 200 gold (heh) and 2 envoys (now that I can use).  I sink the two envoys into Hong Kong, getting us to 5 and returning sovereignty to us.

Also, *something* happened, and I gained a bunch of culture.  Suddenly, Reformed Church is only 2 turns out.  At a guess, the estimate didn't update when I added 10 culture from Raj.  If that card were a city, it would tie for third most culture contribution, and that's with the +1 culture per district civic card in as well.  (On the science side, campuses are distorting, and you get more per citizen.  It's a tie for fifth place, then.  Meanwhile, faith is almost entirely produced by three cities which have holy sites, but that's completely unsurprising, given that you don't get natural growth of it.  Several cities only produce faith from trade routes right now.)  This development is great, actually, since it keeps us in these civics for less time.  I queue up builders in all the cities which can build one in 2 turns.

Interturn, Cleopatra taunts me about my army.  She has a surprise coming.  She also declared a Merchant Republic.

T228: All our techs and stuff complete next turn.  It's going to lower happiness levels, but I move my units out of cities towards our expected targets to provide space to bring more units in behind them.  Next turn, I'll do the upgrading spree, before switching governments.

Interturn, Victoria offers quite a bit for one of my Jade.  I accept:


T229: Welcome to the modern era!  This is going to do awkward things to my warmonger penalties, I'm sure.  Seoul gives a suzereinty boost to Electricity, so we won't even be considering building 3 privateers at this time.  It's tempting to go straight for it, tbh; that unlocks power plants (and seaports, but that's less important).  5 turns and then we have access to another crazy AOE production boost for a bunch of cities to build.  I've got a civic to pick, too.  Until we actually declare war, I'll put it into Natural History.  (Afterward, we're switching to Urbanization.)

Homs whiffed its builder by 4 hammers, after the accelerated schedule and moving garrisons out of cities.  That's going on the shelf for later, because we're not keeping that civic card.

From the blooper reel, in my haste to move units forward before upgrading, I walked one of my crossbows straight out of my territory before realizing what I'd done.  He's probably still fine, but he might go back to garrison duty until he learns not to jump the gun, too.

Exploring with my privateer, I found Kongo.

It turns out modern units are expensive.  I purchase one artillery in Tripoli to support an assault on Nan Madol, and that was pretty much all I could afford before switching governments.
Here's the new government:


We get some great news on switching to Theocracy, at least: the conversion for faith purchases is 2 faith to 1 production instead of 4 gold to one production.  I buy a second artillery and get maybe a little overenthusiastic about buying units in the backlines.  By the time I get to the front lines, I'm buying Mamluks because they're cheaper.  At least they'll upgrade when we get to tanks.

I put the war off by one turn, though, because I want to finish Tripoli's campus and university system.  Next turn, we can run through a bunch of apostles if they stick around.

Interturn, I learn that Egypt just researched Castles.  I'm about to drop some modern artillery shells on those castles!

T230:  War!  All my city states declare war, too, which hopefully won't end too badly for them.  I get -16 with everyone for warmongering.  Teddy doesn't like that I'm peaceful anymore, either.  Somehow, that's still "neutral" because he won't let me open an embassy.  The war also completes our path to nationalism, and we can switch civics over that, but it's not clear to me there's any civics I want to switch.  Maybe I'll take the garrison one out because we're not really going to leave units at home.

Step 1 of the war: some recently-purchased mamluks (which I was lamenting last turn were because they are cheap) murder some apostles which were trying to make their way into my territory.  Sikhs everywhere hide in fear.

Step 2: a crossbow and a field artillery blast away at the useless naval unit in the ocean-lake nearby.  Did you know that ranged units can attack with 0.25 of a move left, even while melee units need the full movement points to enter a tile if they want to start an attack?

I had a loose trader for a change, so I transferred it to Hattin, my current lowest-production city.

Interturn, Kongo and England  denounce me for being a warmonger.  Neither one can really do anything to me, being on the other side of the map, but I also have no good relations with them.

T231: The trader in Hattin starts a route to Baghdad, since that one gives the most extra stuff after picking maximum production.

I'm not feeling too concerned atm, especially with my depleted faith and gold pools ticking back up, so Cairo starts on Big Ben after finishing a pikeman.  I don't want to crash my economy because I built too many units, after all.  Similarly, Baghdad has been building a Theater Square for no big reason other than civic boosts and moves on to the amphitheater for it.  (Actual target: history museum)  Aleppo goes to work on a stock exchange.  We're going to need the extra money to pay for this army, anyway!

Exploring with my privateer finds China.  China appears to be the only other civ (well, and Rome) to have actually expanded.  China and Rome put together have fewer empire points (I suspect this is tiles-in-borders) than I do alone.  China is currently in second place in score, as well, mostly on the strength of that expansion.

Interturn, America denounces me.  I also get a complaint that I have too many troops in American territory, which, well... I'm running a line straight through his city, yes.

T232: Damascus finishes its commercial district.  Time to build (at hilarious speed) some market buildings.

I experimented with building a corps.  It looks like this drains all movement points from the unit in question, which is a little annoying.  On the other hand, it really is quite nice for cutting down on the clutter a bit while increasing my already overwhelming combat strength.

On the other hand, our artillery is performing beautifully.  Shot 1 blew away the walls, and shot 2 is probably going to make it so we can take the city.  If not, well, we've got a field cannon which ought to be able to finish the job.

Interturn, Victoria reminds me that she is displeased with me.  China denounces me for being a warmonger.

T233 is still ongoing, but here's a quick picture of the war, because I have neglected to post pictures so far.  It's been pretty uneventful, though, up until this turn.  We killed a chariot skirmishing with a pikeman and then rotated the pikes out to heal, and that's about it.  So here's the State of the Traffic Jam, start of T233:

It's mildly traffic-jammed, and I'm going to start merging more units into corps, I think, to cut it down further, but it could probably be a lot worse.
Also, notice the denuncuations. All we're missing is Japan and Rome, and we'll have the full set. (I'm expecting Japan; I'm not expecting Rome.)

[Ranamar]

T233 for real:

Similar to the above picture...
Ladies and gentlemen, modern artillery versus ancient walls defended by people with spears:

Last turn, the arty stripped the wall.  The extra damage is from the field cannon shooting.  Also, the only reason I didn't try to take the city this turn is that I didn't know pillaging took an entire turn.  But seriously, some of those sphinxes need to be torn down.

Continuing to explore with my privateer, I finaly find Yerevan.  Looks like the AIs have been playing influence games over there: the suzerainty requirement is 9.  I bet none of them can use it effectively, either.

Also, the traffic jam by Ra-Kedet and Boston did get bad enough by the end of the turn that I merged another pair of Mamluks into a corps.  That city has taken no damage so far because my Crossbowman stopped to pillage a trade route instead of shooting anything.  He's probably going to take some fire next turn, though, because the city is walled.

Interturn, the aforementioned crossbowman takes 31 damage.  I think I'll move him to intercept another incoming trade route and leave the fighting to the more modern units.

T234, Military Science comes in.  I can build military academies now, as well as light cav.  I'll build some of one of those, and it's not the unit.  Next tech is rifling.  We're aiming for Combustion soon.

Baghdad finishes its Amphitheater.  I flat out buy an archaeological museum, because it's 1k gold and we have gotten back up to 1.7k gold in the past couple turns.  I want it to boost Natural History, which I'm researching for zoos and to hopefully extract an artifact to boost combustion, although it might just be faster to slow-research it.  Natural History, the civic in question, is 2 turns out after the purchase.  As for the build?  Power plant, like everyone else.

Homs finishes something too; the interface says factory, but I find the interface is ... unreliable about what I actually was building.  A factory had completed, though, so the next build is a power plant.

In the war theater, I move a singleton mamluk to plunder a trade route.

After some movement flubs, I manage to take the city and get greeted by an interestingly sparse screen asking if I want to liberate, keep, or raze the city.  Unfortunately, I failed to get the picture I thought I had taken.  I strongly consider liberating it to see if I can get the suzerainty bonus of +2 culture in every district on coastlines, but I decide to keep this one.  It gives a trade route with no effort applied because there's already a harbor built, and I need the city because my logistical highway to the north runs through it.  Taking the city apparently deletes all Egypt-specific improvements, so I wish I'd plundered more sphinxes before conquering it.

The city has a bunch of things marked pillaged.  I'm going to start by repairing the granary, probably followed by the theater square.  Repairing the theater square might get put on hold if it somehow grows to size 7 (commercial district) before it gets done with that.  It's occupied, for now, so there's no growth, anyway.

Also, two field cannons got traffic-jammed, so I decide to create a corps of them.  I think that's going to be my general criterion for forming a corps.

I mentioned Nan Madol gives a trade route.  I buy the trader in Tripoli, which is trying to finish a commercial hub and is about to grow another size: at that point, I'll move on to a harbor purely for the trade route... well, that, and because I have no idea what else I'll use this city for.

T235: A trade route in Baghdad completes, and we learn that, apparently, Baghdad is currently not self-sufficient on food.  There are two unfarmed tiles that it could be reasonable to farm, but I want to wait a little more on that because I keep thinking I might build something there.  In the meantime, however, there's a tea plantation I can swap over, so I do.  Cairo doesn't need it anymore, because Cairo has a bunch of farms after I farmed a couple tiles between two rice resources for adjacency bonuses.  The Baghdad trade route is still important, however, because I want to finish the power plant building there ASAP.  It was probably going to Mecca (4F6P + civics), so I send it there again.  Similarly, a trade route in Mecca completes, and I send it to Baghdad.  On the subject of trade routes, the Tripoli trade route goes to Homs, for another +6 production.

I decided to build a farm in a spot I'm strongly considering eventually using for a district of some sort, because it's the only unimproved un-jungled tile that I can improve in range of Tripoli.  That city is really starved for production other than its coal mine, and it's kind of my fault for building a commercial district on top of a mineable hill.  I should have gone for the harbor first; so it goes.  At least the city seems to be reasonably well fed, at this point.

War map before moves on T235:

I didn't do this at the end of last turn because it's easier to see the icons when they're active units instead of inactive ones.

The primary order of business is to get my artillery in range to flatten the city next turn, but it turns out that my regular units are just fine at the job of knocking these cities down, and they don't even take too much damage.  My units are all stronger than the city with its ancient-era garrison, and damage to the city doesn't help matters for them.

Interturn, a spy sabotages my industrial district in Cairo.  This is really obnoxious, as it set things back several turns, and, in fact, I need to repair the buildings there (which I think it may be doing automatically?) before continuing.  It looks like I need to finally actually build a spy or two.  I'd been balking at their 300 production cost when I had other things to do.

T236: Natural History comes in, and we're changing some civics.  In particular, we don't have garrisons, so I swap that out for an increase in Industrial Zone adjacency bonuses.  Most of these industrial zones are pretty well placed, so that's going to average +3 production in most cities.  I considered the spy cost reduction, but I think I'll do that one the next switch.

Hattin completes a commercial hub  (I think?  There's a trader who needs to do stuff, but I didn't build or buy one), giving us another trade route.  The next build is a workshop, since apparently we haven't built one here yet.

Also, I've got envoys to send.  ONe goes to Hong Kong to increase production in industrial districts by another 2.  (Actually, I think that's 3 because of my religion...)  The other goes to Zanzibar.  With one more envoy acquired somehow or another, that's another +4 in all my commercial districts, which is basically everywhere.

I forgot to take a picture of the combat zone, but the city is now at 0 HP and I'm running around pillaging all the sphinxes before taking the city.  It appears that pillage takes 3, not 2, moves, so I'll probably leave one next turn because it's not worth drawing out any longer.

T237: Rifling comes in.  Next tech is Combustion, at least for now.  It's 6 turns to get, but I haven't built an archaeologist yet.  The fastest way to get there, in any event, is to hard-research it: the archaeologist can only be built at the museum, and costs 400H.  That's not happening until that city finishes a power plant at the least: I have my priorities.

Tripoli finished a commercial hub this turn and is starting on a harbor.  Maybe I'll backfill buildings later.  For this one, currently, I'm buying a trader in Cairo and we'll see if there are any plausible routes.  If not, it will go somewhere else that needs production.

War zone, start of T237:

First, I pillage all the sphinxes I can get my hands on this turn (that's 2) for 25 faith each.  Okay, I'll grant that's not a huge amount, but they vanish when I take the city, so it feels like free stuff.
Then, I walk my pikes in; they get some exp for that, of course... and it turns out that the worker hiding in Ra-Kedet's encampment gets captured when the city comes over to my side.  That's handy!  He only has 2 builds left, but free units are free units.

Moving right along with our scouting for Egypt's final city, it turns out that Egypt did, indeed, build one settler this game... and apparently had no idea what to do with hit, because it is cowering in a corner under a chariot at this point.

Here's the city we captured:

Ra-Kedet is actually a pretty good city.  It feels criminally incompetent that the AI couldn't manage to expand with a starting city that has two bananas, two rice, two elephants, and apparently several forests that haven't been chopped yet.  I suppose it's a little weak on hills for production, but I see one right here in the second ring that wasn't mined.  And yet, what would probably have been a size-15 city like Mecca had I been in charge is size 8!  Only some of those blank tiles had sphinxes on them.

War zone, EOT:


On her turn, Cleopatra runs her settler away into the fog.  This is what I get for not doing more recon up that coast, I guess.

Also interturn, Mvemba demands not just a luxury (which I might have given him) but also gold per turn.  Nope!  Not when I'm about to roll over the world with tanks!

Finally, Teddy declares war on me.  I guess it's time to turn my cavalry and siege train around to go take Boston.

Given urban defenses meaning that I need neither walls nor garrisons, I'm not at all worried.  Besides, he's running around with chariots.

T238: I finally earn a great general.  It's Joan of Arc, who enhances Renaissance and Industrial units.  That means everything except my artillery, at the moment.  Soon, it will mean nothing because I'll be upgraded into the modern era, and I'll turn her into a relic.  In the meantime, I move her to Mecca and buy a Mamluk to serve as an escort, since they're both pretty fast.

I found the settler, whose escort apparently got killed by barbarians, from a nearby camp that Egypt either couldn't clean up (They're swordsmen and archers...) or kept having spawn due to not defogging.  I decided to spare a second Mamluk unit to go help clean that up, but I couldn't get anything on the settler tile this turn.  If it dies to being shot by an archer or whatnot, I'm going to be mad.

Damascus finishes its power plant, and I decide to sacrifice one of my precious hills from that city to build the Potala palace in what promises to be only 12 turns, for an extra Diplomatic card slot.  That just leaves Big Ben (sometime in Cairo) to get the full set of civics wonders.

Taking Ra-Kedet got me a trade route, and, this time, I'm buying a trader in one of my new cities.  I hear the occupied status goes away if you wipe a civ out, so I should be able to get it fully online soon.  On top of that, I want to run modern roads down from there to somewhere useful, which means Ra-Kedet to Damascus as a trade route, I think.

T239: Interestingly, Damascus isn't a great trade target for Ra-Kedet: it's  4F4P, rather than 5 or 6 production, because it's missing an encampment and a harbor.  The harbor is theoretically fixable: there's exactly one sea tile in range of the city, and I might buy it sometime.

Aleppo finished its last build.  The advisor is suggesting a harbor, which is not a horrible suggestion, despite the 400 production cost.  Trade routes really are that good.  It's also more than a military academy.  I'm going to lay down the harbor and then queue the academy.  A theater square next to likely a bunch of wonders is also tempting, but I'll put that off if I do it at all.  They're still reduced-price for me, so the scaling, while still bad, isn't quite as bad: it's only 300 production.

Interturn, Mvemba suggests I'm not spreading my religion because I lack conviction.  This lack of spreading is true, because I'm lazy, but he's also on the other side of the map.  I assume this is just his generalized "I'm annoyed at you" line.

T240: I get a little distracted chasing after enemy units and therefore don't hit Mohenjo-Daro.  Also, it appears that ranged units like field cannon cannot always shoot 2 squares away sometimes... later experience will reveal that it is lack of line of sight.

Northern war zone:


Southern war zone:


Hattin completed its workshop, but it says it completed the shipyard.  I start it on a factory.

Ra-Kedet finishes fixing its granary.  I remember I can buy city center buildings with faith and buy a watermill for about one turn's worth of faith: there are two grains it will boost.  I'm also reminded that the same Suzerainty bonus that gets me that lets me buy encampment buildings.  I buy an armory there and an academy in Cairo.  (Cairo needs the housing.)  I don't buy more because I'm running low on faith.  Aleppo is building an academy, anyway, and even though it's one turn only sunk in so far, I'll roll with the sunk-cost slow-build.  Ra-Kedet starts on a market.  I also buy Ra-Kedet the niter tile nearby and build a mine on it.  This will allow me to upgrade 3 warriors to musketmen in time to boost the tech that gives me infantry, which is the actual prize as far as I'm concerned.

Cleopatra sues for peace:

Not shown, making it a little more reasonable, at least... ceding Nan Madol and giving me her relic.  Still, no, I'm wiping her out.  ("That is such a shame.")

T241: Nan Madol finally finishes repairing a granary.  I think we'll repair the monument next.  The Theater district seems to still give its adjacency bonuses when pillaged, and they're less culture than the other one anyway.

A single artillery shot reduces Mohenjo-Daro.  I send in the cavalry, because there's a barbarian threatening it, too.  Actually, two: a cavalry and an archer.

Egypt is gone... and Cleopatra apparently commits suicide:

Mournful music plays.

I liberated Mohenjo-Daro back to its founders, since it turns out that this means I really do my envoys to them back, along with that sweet, sweet freshwater-everywhere bonus.  (There are about two cities that actually care, but the ones with aqueducts do gain another housing, too.)

T242: Mecca finishes its power plant.  It's also housing crunched, so I queue up a seaport.  Nothing gets boosted by building those, but that at least will give me a definitive place to get naval units from.

This was besieged by field cannons, because that artillery can't see the target:

I had damaged it to maybe halfway through the walls before the turn started.

Since the newly-captured Boston is "occupied", its output is reduced by half (or worse).  As a result, I'm going to improve the resources around it, but I'm going to ignore everything else until the conclusion of hostilities with America.  Forest-chopping can happen later.  Since where I want to put my commercial district is on a forest, and forests are worth tons of production, I'm going with a harbor first, instead.

I also have a settler in the north, and with the reduction of the barbarian threat, there is a tone of empty land that feels like it should be settled.  Additionally, with Mohenjo-Daro, I get full health anywehre I settle.  I'm going to wait a turn, though, because next turn oil gets revealed, and that may change my settling calculations.

Interturn, Kongo finally built another city: Kinshasa.

T243: Combustion and Urbanization complete.  Combustion reveals oil.  Let's play "find the oil"!

This could be useful if we had Plastics, the oil rig tech:


Here's an oil out in the trackless wastes, along with a water one nearby

Clearing the barbarian camp for it is no big deal.  That city is going to be pretty marginal without Petra, though.

There is another sea oil off the peninusla sticking into the southern sea by the whales, too:


Now that we have Nan Medol safely in our backlines, all of those sites can be settled wherever, but they're largely underwhelming sites.  The third one is probably the most viable site if there's a long term, but it will actually require effort to secure than the antarctic source.

Our one settler to the north is 16 tiles from that desert site.  We can build a settler in 4-5 turns and research Plastics in 7, unboosted because boosting it requires building a land well.  I was thinking I needed a canal city, anyway.

I feel like I'm going to want a bunch of settlers and more builders soon, because I'm laying down at least two cities and will probably be taking more off of AIs who don't build improvements.  I swap out the double indy adjacency out for the builder boost.  The plan to follow is that I study Scorched Earth and, in 6 turns when it completes, I will switch to the advanced settler civic that it has.  Then, I'll build some settlers, although I'll build the one for the oil site ahead of this.  The other thing I'll switch to then is the upgrade civic, at which point I'll upgrade my cav to tanks and my warriors to musketmen, which will accelerate researching infantry... and I'll upgrade again.

I don't entirely know what I'll do with the settlers, but, with aoe industrial zones and automatic water anywhere, a new city in the most marginal of spots is only a problem to the degree that it steals tiles from more productive cities.  I don't even need to worry about finding a way to have an aqueduct, because it doesn't do much anymore!

T245: For the past couple turns, all I've been doing is cleaning up barbarians with several corps of Mamluks  The heal-on-combat is incredibly handy for extended campaigns like this.  I'll need to remember to bring them back to upgrade them, or maybe I'll leave one or two off campaigning until it runs out of room and do it with a later wave of upgrades.

T246: I got another trade route online, so I'm buying a trader for Damietta to really get that city starting going.  Like basically every trader, I rushbuy it.

Also, it suddenly dawns on me to try checking if a plantation for bananas says it removes the rainforest it's on.  The answer?  It doesn't!  I bet it's the same for spices and I completely unnecessarily chopped at least one jungle early in the game.

T247: I completed my third military academy, and that boosted the Totalitarianism civic.  I probably won't use it even if I go for conquest, but I certainly won't complain.  Also, my envoy meter filled up, so I put two in Seoul, getting another 2 science per turn in all our campuses.  (We have 3.)  Interestingly, this counts as adjacency bonus, so it also boosts our Madrassas' faith generation.

Hattin finishes a factory and starts on the power plant.  For lols, I check Damascus, our Ruhr city.  Current production is 112/turn.  Included in that is buffs from 4 factories and 3 power plants.  Also, 12 from trade routes, which I think I'm going to move to more needy targets after this.

The trade route at my newly-settled city in the north, Damietta, goes to Mecca, the gold standard in maximum internal trade output.

Exploring, I find this, which would have been an amazing city site for someone... except Egypt didn't even break into this area, as you can see from the still-available goody hut:


T248: Baghdad finishes its settler for the oil site, and I finally start building an archaeologist.  I want to see what this is about.  Homs finishes one of several workers I've built and I start it on a settler.  Ra-Khedet finishes a builder, perversely just as the ones I walked over arrive, and starts on an archaeological museum.  There are ruins up there, as well as down south, and I figure I'll go for both.  If I don't get conquest, I can see if I can get international tourism.  I'll need to start on some international trade routes, of course.

Also, this appears to be Rome's core empire.  Given how low the empire score they have, I'm actually rather impressed.  This is almost approaching a human's output, at least in density.


Unrelatedly, I've decided it's finally time to do something about all this residual Sikhism.  I buy an apostle and I plan to use him to declare an inquisition, unless it's got one of the fun promotions like proseletizer, in which case we'll do it over again next turn.

Interturn, Japan is building more settlements, too.

T249: The Potala Palace completes.  Also, we get to switch civics.  This confuses the hell out of the game (noting again!) until I fix my civics.  Here is what we're going with:


The apostle got medic or triple strength in other civilizations.  Neither of those are interesting, so we're kicking off the inquisition.  We don't have many yet, so inquisitors seem to be pretty cheap right now.  However, they appear to escalate by 10 faith per, starting from 70.

We also got a new great engineer because there's basically no competition for them.  This one gives us a unique luxury: toys.

I need new roads to Hong Kong, so, when the trade route in Homs completed, I set one to Hong Kong.  This will make our road net out into the hinterland not suck.

Also, proof positive that the fog of war here is more than a little goofy:

This city was founded last turn, and I can already see it.  Maybe it's something about diplomatic access, but it reminds me of how barbarian camps founded in the fog show on the map.

With the new civics, it's time to build some spies!  I queue one up in Damascus: with a 50% cost reduction and its crazy production, this is scheduled to take only 2 turns.  I think I get a second one, so that comes next.

Tripoli finished its market but says it finished its harbor.  I set a lighthouse to build, for a little extra housing.

My civic granted a pair of envoys, so I'm putting one in Zanzibar (for a total of 3; it's commercial) and one in Kabul for a total of 5... but next turn we're recruiting a great admiral, which will get us that city's quest and the sixth one.

Interturn, Trajan makes a fascinating offer:
He offers Sugar, 1 gold, and 5 gold per turn for one of basically every resource I have doubles of.  (He's also apparently broke; this is probably what he can afford.)
Somehow, removing the 1 gold lump sum results in the trade no longer being equitable to him, and making it work involves removing the gold per turn, too.  I don't understand the AI haggling strategy at all, on top of the fact that they seem to only accept absurdly one-sided deals.  I think it's because open borders gets offered as a matter of course, and that's valued highly by them.  My best guess is that they apply some sort of equal-burden philosophy which results in all trades with highly-advanced empires looking like shit for the advanced side.


T250: Plastics comes in.  It's supposedly 1695.  I know Civ has always been a game of "to do well, you must hit flight by 1600" type of game, but doing that on Prince is really crazy.

We have not one but two great people to recruit!  Gustave Eiffel is a great engineer who does the boring thing and adds production to a wonder.  I'll need to figure out what wonder I'm using him on.  (I did lay down an Eiffel Tower at one point, I think...)  Meanwhile, Ching Shih is (another) great admiral, this time with a bonus to Industrial and Modern ships, which is nice.  Retiring her gives you 100 gold (heh) and a big bonus to plundering sea routes.

Our newest city, Medina:

We've got a loose trader, so they're going to be transferred here to help bootstrap.

Also, after our civic switch, I upgrade my two (whoops! need one more) warriors to musketmen and buy a third one with faith.  I need my gold for the even more upgrades that I plan to do in the next few turns.  So far, I've just upgraded my galleys to ironclads: I now have three of them, which would be useful if anyone actually poses a naval threat.  I suppose there isn't much of that, though.

Since the only units that Joan of Arc can actually boost anymore are the field cannons, she's turning into a relic now.

T251: The trade route from Medina is going to Mecca, just like with everyone else.  I considered Cairo, but I decided that the extra production was more important than the extra food.

Here's another example of that see-unscouted-attributes-in-the-fog:



Also, it looks like I need to run a ship over.  This sounds like a great thing to do with my brand new canal city.

Finally, since T250 passed last turn and I forgot to take a picture, here's the current score state:

I'm basically twice the next competition in every stat, and they all add together.

T252: I finally finished building all the other things I wanted to build in Cairo, so we're back to Big Ben.  It says 20 turns.  So, that's something for the Mr. Eiffel.

Also, I tried to chop out a harbor district in a new city, but I forgot to flip the tile and chopped it out in Mecca instead.  Oh well...

Interturn, Victoria seems to be in a good mood.  She compliments me on my piety.  I guess warmonger penalties are going away.

T253: Replaceable parts comes in.  Since people actually seem to be not too worried about warmongering anymore (aside from Teddy...), I should probably go for a cultural victory because it might well be faster.  I set Computers as the next tech to research, since maybe I can pull off a tourism win, after all.  The other one that seems worthwhile is flight.

With Replaceable parts, I upgrade my muskets to infantry.  Also, I'd merged the third musket I got with one of the others because the only reason I'm keeping units separate at this point is if they already have experience points.

[Ranamar]

T254: Aleppo completes its harbor, giving us another trade route.  It's 2T to build a lighthouse, so we will.  Nan Madol kinda needs production support, so we'll buy the trader there.

I've been making a broadly amphibious crossing to get at America, and I have discovered something sort of interesting.  It seems that, broadly speaking, you get however much movement you had at the start of your turn.  Embarking or debarking costs 3 moves or your turn, unless it's a harbor, in which case it's 1.  However, my embarked units have 6 movement because of the various residual naval movement bonuses.  This means that, if I have, say, a field gun in a boat, it can land and move 2 tiles overland and still shoot, while, had I started on land, I would not be able to go two tiles and also shoot.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of the movement ranges, but here's the water:

About half my land units there were in boats at the start of the turn.

Interturn, Trajan asks for an embassy... and Teddy finally sues for peace:

Not shown: cede Boston, a bunch of gold, and the peace itself.  This is basically everything he has, since it is now obvious that I'm just going to roll over him.  He even offers a luxury I already have.  I have no idea why he decided to offer this much.  I would have quite possibly taken just peace and cede Boston.

He wandered another settler over into the unsettled area, and I expect it will settle soon.  I actually sort of feel like I have too few units to properly clear the map, so I'm going to take it.  I have this idea of maybe going for a tourist victory if I can dig up sufficient tourist stuff, anyway.  Meanwhile, I'll explore the map instead of just moving to kill all his units.  Besides, I want to start developing Boston.  It has stayed in occupied size-1 hell for long enough.

T255, I decide to ask for an embassy with Ameria again, and it's finally accepted.

Baghdad completed its archaeologist, and I discover that you can actually only build one per museum.  Presumably, it picks stuff up for that museum and then quits.  Next build is a stock exchange.  Qssim the archaeologist gets a move on to start looking at ruins.

I made an interesting discovery about inquisitors: they do give you a bit of religion spread, but you can only inquisition places that already have some of your faith.  I was putting off building more missionaries because I thought maybe I'd build the Hagia Sophia, but it looks like I'll have to build one after all, just to get the ball rolling.

Nan Madol starts a trade route to Mecca.

Our newest city; standard bootstrap procedure of buy a granary with faith and lay down a harbor, which will get us 2 gpt and a trade route:

Wow, check out that carpet of American units I was about to plow through:


This random island with, as far as I can tell the only pearls I've seen in the entire game feels like I've suddenly taken a trip to a blockbuster pirate movie.  If I can figure out how to rename it, perhaps that pirate ship, I mean privateer, should be named the Black Pearl:


T256: Mobilization comes in.  We're no longer at war, so let's switch some civics.  (Well, that, and our maintenance-reduction card got obsoleted by a new one.)  New policies:

Settler building is out.  Wonder building is in.  We're not really garrisoning anyone right now, but we could if we need to.  Also, certain areas do actually need some zone defense because I'm not going to fill in the fog at this point.

Next up is Conservation.  I have some tech to catch up on to boost Mass Media: Radio is behind flight, which I've been ignoring.  Also, Mass Media wants a national park, which requires Conservation, which wants a neighborhood with breathtaking appeal, which... well, okay, I can do that: Damascus has some lovely desert property and is housing crunched.  The neighborhood is only 4 turns to build.  I did make a slight mistake because I didn't plan this ahead, though: I just took the Expropriation card which reduces tile purchase costs by 20% out and now I'm buying a tile for it.  It's not like I can't afford it, though.

Ra-Kedet finishes its archaeology museum as well, so we're starting on an archaeologist there.

Interturn, a barbarian caravel tries to shoot at my ironclad.  That was funny.  I'm impressed it didn't just get blown away altogether.  Easy enough to fix...

T257: Computers come in.  I'm now at 10/67 for foreign tourists, with the doubling, with Kongo being my biggest opponent in this, having 66 domestic tourists.    I'm definitely going to try to steal their artwork, but I'm also strongly considering just declaring war on Kongo and removing their tourists by force.

Homs completed something and is 1T from a settler, so we're building a settler.  This is one other place that might need a neighborhood, but I won't worry about that for now.  Homs completed a power plant, and apparently is also housing crunched.  Hmm.  Homs is stuck against the sea, though, and doesn't have many tiles.  We're building a market and shifting trade routes when they finish, I think.  There's not much value in growing it any larger.  Tripoli finished its lighthouse and starts on a bank.  Next turn, it will have population for another district, but, honestly, I'm not sure what I want to lay down, and there's only one tile where I can.  It's a similar situation to Hattin, and Homs, for that matter: all marginal sites built mostly for a specific minor reason.

There's another barb camp on the peninsula by Tabuk, so our infantry goes to clean it up.

While moving units around, I notice that America's settler seems to be wandering in circles.  I figure this is an apporopriate description of what they're doing:

Mecca finishes something; starts on stock exchange.  Homs finishes a settler and starts on a seaport.  I'm actually running low on non-unit things to build that aren't random ancient wonders, which is a shock.  It's the seaport or a neighborhood, just about.  Hattin completes something and starts on a bank.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the settler, tbh.  Anywhere I can put it is outside of my industrial heartland.  There's some reasonably lush land, though, especially with my freshwater bonus.  Just plunking it anywhere and sending some workers would make it about as productive as we're going to get.  Actually, I know where I'm sending it: I want some permanent defogging on the end of the peninsula that Tabuk is on.  Also, that area has some solid resources, at least for food, with several whales, a couple fish, and deer.

Interturn Teddy and Mvemba complain about my armies by their territory.  They're right to worry, but I'm not trying to start a war this time... just do enough recon to start an effective one later!

T259: Flight comes in.  Next up is radio, or at least we're getting started on it.  I might put 2 turns in and then switch to other stuff like Advanced Ballistics.

Also, let's actually politely take my units away from these borders where they're complaining.  I'll probably declare colonial war later, being not two but 3 tech eras ahead of everyone else, but that's no reason to do it before I'm ready.  Staging units in the fog at sea seems perfect for this, given that you keep your 6 sea movement when you land off a ship.

Exploring, we actually met a new city-state: Kandy.  It's another religious one.

Also, after watching more inquisitors fail, I finally figured out what the actual requirement for inquisition is: I think you can only use it on cities which are actually yours, and not, for example, city-states.  That's less useful than I thought, but it makes sense.  It certainly allows you to defens against other civs' religious spread, at least.

T260: Damascus completes its neighborhood and starts on an aerodrome.  I do want to be able to build some aircraft, after all.  Baghdad completes something and starts on a spy.

I also somehow hadn't noticed when Nan Madol reached size 7: it's size 8 now.  I lay down a commerce district which is probably never going to pay off, but it's about as useful as the theater square I've been trying to repair.  At least the price will get locked in.  The theater square only has 9 turns left, so that's a thing to go for first.

Baghdad had a trade route finish, so I shift the trader to Tabuk so it can actually get off the ground.

I've got a bunch of camps now, so I set my research to Synthetic Materials.  I also buy a light cavalry with faith before it goes through: I want to use it for zone defense up north, and the atomic age upgrade, a helicopter, is actually slower (4 move) than the light cav (5 move).  I don't know if that's a numbers problem or what, but it's one of those little weirdnesses like machine guns only having one range unless they're fully upgraded, when field cannons have 2.

T261: It's great person time again!  This great scientist is Charles Darwin, and he gives science for natural wonders.  I'm completely underwhelmed.  However, I'm pretty sure I'll get to the next one first, too, so it's not worth passing and hoping someone else takes him soon.  (The next one, Mendeleev is really nice, though: he boosts Chemistry and one industrial tech.  As it happens, Chemistry is really annoying to boost (it requires a research agreement; fat chance!) and I have exactly one unboosted industrial tech, its prereq.  I care mostly because a city-state has boosting Chemistry as a quest... and because I'm probably going to get him anyway.

I finish one themed museum with archaeological artifacts.  I'm up to 11 foreign tourists.  Ugh.  I think it'd be easier if I just conquered the world, after all.  America has two capitals of their own, so they're the obvious target.  If I can get units in the sea near there, I might even be able to take the whole thing from an ocean first strike.  Well, second strike, because I don't think I can quite reduce it fast enough without artillery on the ground.

I found Sana'a near tabuk.  It has 2 whales and a fish in ring 2, so this should grow nicely.  It's also on a hill for a change, revealing that the hill production bonus sticks around if you settle on one.

I move a bunch of units around to see if I can get in position to hit Kyoto and Washington sometime soon.

Interturn, Qin congratulates me on my ability to keep my people happy.  Thanks!  I work at it!  (I'm still denounced by him, though...)

T262: Conservation comes in.  I decide to set Cultural Heritage.  It's not like I need anything further up any of these trees, and it is relevant if I want to try for that cultural victory, since it increases artifact and art tourism.

Conservation lets you build national parks.  This is what the civilopedia says about national parks:


I had to read it a couple times, but I finally figured it out.  We have an obvious national park right here, in this diamond of mountains:

I thought about doing it for Taif, but that city is much smaller right now, so I figure I'll give the amenities to a city that definitely needs them right now.  Actually, if I remove a farm at Tripoli, I might even be able to cram two of them in here, and that lonely farm isn't getting us a whole lot of food.

Naturalists not only cost faith, though, they're absurdly expensive.  Like, 800 hammers and then you have to buy it with faith.  I'm definitely getting value out of my theocracy to get those.

It's one turn to do naval tradition, at this point, because the civic is so old, so I'm going to do a bunch of quick civic swaps to save me money.  In particular, there's a mamluk I want to upgrade, several tiles I want to buy, and the civic gave me 2 envoys, which are convenient for me to use the doubling card on, because there are two city-states which have no envoys.  (That's probably the last time I'll use that.  The payoff horizon is already around 25 turns.  However, the Naval Tradition civic also grants envoys, so the payoff is arguably shorter: In those two turns, I went from 0 to 3 at two religious city states, which means that the maneuver netted me +2 faith at all my holy sites (of which I have 4 now) on top of the extra gold from putting the gold for envoys civic back in this turn with 2 more envoys than I would have had.

T263: Mecca finishes building its stock exchange (I think?  It says seaport, but I know that was earlier) and starts on a battleship.  Mecca has a seaport, so I could build a fleet directly with the virtual second battleship being a little over half price, but, honestly, there are no other ships in the sea, so squashing them together doesn't do us much.  I'd rather build 3 battleships at 100% strength than 2 battleships at 115% strength (+10 to base stats of 70 attack), given that they have three range.  An armada is even less appealing, being somewhere around 120% or 125% of a battleship for more than twice the price even with the discount.  I don't need to actually match strength with anyone here.  I do need the 3 range (submarines are actually more powerful than battleships, because battleships are WWI-era battleships, because Washington is 2 tiles away from the coast.  Actually, noticing that, I'm going to spend the extra 4 turns to make it a battleship fleet.  There's exactly one naval bombardment tile for that city.

Hattin also finished something and starts on a stock exchange.  Damietta *finally* finished its harbor, so we're building a commercial district next: it's size 6, being slightly production constrained.  The new trade route is going there, too.

After all our civic shuffling, this is our current set of cards, based on what is actually mattering for me:


Auto-move moves Darwin onto the Galapagos EOT.  I push butan and he finishes Synthetic Materials for me.
I discover some goofiness in the tech tree, as a result.  Composits, which gives us "Modern AT", does not require Chemistry, which gets us the WWII-era version of AT.  It's also only 2 turns at the moment because of Darwin's beaker boost: Synthetic Materials had only the barest sliver of science needed to complete, which means 1500 science gets us almost halfway through endgame techs... and boosting does the other half.  Sure, why not!  I've been ignoring Chemistry, so let's get something we can upgrade our pikemen to.  Anti-cav is weird, because it goes two whole ages without an upgrade, between pikes and basic AT.  In general, the anti-cav in this game is too weak, IMO, relative to the cav you can get in between, so you might as well just plink them down with ranged attacks instead: those actually scale with age reasonably.

Interturn, China wants to give me iron and open borders for all my spare luxuries.  Iron is a token, anyway: I already have two.  LOL nope.

T264:  Actually, Composites completes in one turn, not two.  Welcome to the information age in 1765!  (Charles Babbage would be pleased.)  Welp, my warmonger penalties are going to be real, if I actually declare war on anyone.  The next tech is going to be advanced ballistics, because I figure I'll go see if where they ended up putting Uranium after all.  I hadn't noticed that was required for it, or I might have picked that last turn.  Oh well, whatever: when I get a chance, I can spend a bunch to upgrade all my units in one blast, soon, and never do it again.

Taif finishes its commercial hub.  The build while we wait to grow to size 4 is a market.  (Taif is a surreal city: all of its production comes from aoe bonuses from all the industrial zones around.  It actually only has a handful of workable tiles anyway.  The trader, however, goes to Nan Madol, which still seems to have production problems, to the point that I'm strongly considering planting forests for lumber mills.  It's that flat.  The theater square is almost repaired, though, so we'll start doing culture, slowly, there.

Interturn, Teddy denounces me.  He doesn't like that I won a war against him (and would again!)  I'm hoping this means he starts a futile war.

T265: Big Ben completes.  We get one more economic civic.  It also lets us change civics for free, but I actually only want to add one, not change any.  I put in the double faith from buildings civic, because I'm about to spend an enormous quanity of faith on a naturalist.  I need an airstrip to boost Combined Arms, so the next build is a military engineer.

Ra-Kedet finished its archaeologist, too.  Districts are so expensive at this point that, while an industrial one would be welcome, the payoff just isn't there, as it'd be only a +2 district (plus buildings) at best, it looks like.  Probably better to just support the district off trade routes...

T266:  Time to make a national park near Tripoli!  I go, select my naturalist, and... Oh:


I could not, by hook or by crook, convince it that anything else was a valid national park.  (I could, however, convince it that there were no national parks, by flipping the mountain tiles around.  Besides, it wouldn't be able to do the nearby one this turn anyway because the builder would need to get out of the way.  Fortunately, naturalists have 4 moves, like missionaries, and we have a very good road net at this point.  (For one thing, every district automatically gets a road.)  Next turn I'll found that one national park anyway.  I do hope, however, that (1) it doesn't require that something never have been improved, and (2) that the parks aren't required to be vertical like that one.

For the rest of my turn... I'm informed that I broke my promise to the Americans, which, yes, it's a fair cop.  Let's really break it, though, since they've noticed...  He's already denounced me, so maybe I can get a war provocation out of it.

Tripoli is running out of, well, tiles to build stuff, with the remaining options being units or things which are really obviously never going to pay off.  I queue up an observation balloon for the moment, because it'll boost the range of my two artillery, and that could be handy to have, especially since they can move or shoot but not both and are currently only range 2.  (Rocket Artillery with range 4 sound pretty fun too, though.)

It's great person time again; I have gotten a great merchant.  He gives me 500 gold and 2 envoys.  I put them in Kandy, because I'm getting a great artist sometime soon, and that will make that one have 6 for another +2 at all my holy sites.

Boston completes a harbor; next is lighthouse.

T267: Advanced Ballistics comes in.  Next up is Radio, in 2 turns.

Cairo completed a military engineer, who is going to build an airstrip to speed Combined Arms... but it's going to be in the frozen wastes near Medina: I don't want it on a tile I later wish had something else, although I suppose I can pave over it just fine.

Cairo says 10 turns for Hagia Sophia, which is sounding pretty nice right now.  A city state or two are asking for conversions, and I don't want to deal with 2-charge conversion units ever again.

Damascus finished the hangar on its airfield, so we're building some biplanes there now to boost it.  The horrible irony is that the airplanes are so expensive that we could easily finish advanced flight before the airplanes are done, even with Damascus's 102 (the trade routes were moved away) production.

Nan Madol finally finished fixing its Theater Square.  I put production on an Amphitheater, but we might go for the unfinished commercial hub after that.  I need to give it another trade route: it only has 31 production, and 40% of that is already from trade routes.  Speaking of which, Damieta is also struggling with production, so my other missing trader is going to be bought there.  It occurs to me afterward that Sana'a and Tabuk also need more traders; they're both worse off on production than the aforementioned ones, but they're also smaller... and being new, they're pretty forgotten.

Homs also finished building everything we could for the moment.  I set it to build a battleship.  We'll have a battleship fleet in 7 turns and another battleship in 8, for the strongest navy the seas have ever seen, and a second navy that can't quite rival it but would still beat the pants off everyone else on the seas.

Taif finished its market, so we're laying down a harbor.  At 13 turns of largely free hammers, I don't mind the cost.

I have a spy in Mbanza Kongo, and I'm trying to steal their art.  Kongo is the single largest competitor for tourists, so stealing it will win twice for me, in both lowering the threshold and raising my tourism.  Here's the odds:

If Kongo wants to go to war over my art thieves, I welcome the chance to take their stuff by force.

Interturn, Kongo denounces me.  This is probably because I wandered a tank past his borders again.  Yeah, uh, sorry, I'm exploring, and I'm not scared of anyone anymore.

T268: It's great person time again.  This time, it's for Ada Lovelace, who is completely useless to me: She triggers the Eureka for Computers (we have it) and lets a city build one more district than it's supposed to (I'm out of tiles, anyway).  I wonder if I can disband her for money?  (I can!  She gives 750 gold or so if I disband her, which is pretty nice for me.  That will buy a trade route and a half.)  The thing is, nobody else is even competing for them.  I don't think anyone has industrial zones anywhere.

Baghdad completes a spy.  Being close to the housing cap, I guess I'll go for the seaport after all.  It's not like I want to build anything else...

T269: We got a great general.  He boosts industrial and modern, so, currently, it's pretty much right on target.  Whenever I decide to do an upgrade spree, of course, that's going to change swiftly.

Interturn, an apostle unwisely decided to try to attack my Debater apostle.  This ended poorly for him: my apostle took 9 damage and theirs took 90.  Thus is the effect of stacking a +20 theological strength and +5 from theocracy.

T270: Cultural Heritage came in this turn.  I can switch civics, and I think I don't need the double faith output anymore, because, if I'm getting a second naturalist, it's next turn... I'm definitely not getting a third.  So, swap that out for the art and artifacts tourism card.  I also just checked battleships, and it turns out that they are modern, not industrial.  (There are, after all, two eras after that...)  I put the reduced strength penalty for being injured card in, as that could be handy when patrolling after barbarians up north.  Other than that, things stay the same; we're still building a wonder and might build more.

Also, Radio got us Broadcast Centers.  I switch Damascus over to building one, from the seaport that had been in build.

T271: Combined Arms comes in.  Next tech is Nuclear Fission.

Damascus completes its first biplane and starts on a second.  Ra-Kedet completes a bank and starts on a broadcast center.  Boston completes its lighthouse and starts on a commercial hub.

T272: nothing of note beyond starting a +6 trade route in one of my cities, but, interturn, Trajan compliments me on my airforce.  One can guess which agenda he has.

Also interturn, Rome declared war on Kandy.  RIP Kandy, I guess.  I wonder if England (Suzerain of Kandy) is going to get in on that fight.

T273: Tripoli finishes an observation balloon.  I'm really out of stuff to build that would actually pay off, which means I need to move the trade routes when they get done, since half the production is from trade routes.  I queue up a water mill to keep things busy for 2 turns while I formulate a plan.  The plan involves chopping the nearby jungle (which, uh, actually completes the watermill) and then laying something done in the tile that was cleared.  Something like an encampment, because, once I finish pouring hammers into it, I can not feel like I'm missing some optimality when building units there.

Also, after some experimentation, I have determined that the game has also identified an area near Ra-Kedet that is appropriately pristine for these picky naturalists, so I buy a naturalist there to make it.  In other tourist news, the archaeological museum in Ra-Kedet filled up with artifacts.

T274: One of  Tripoli's trade route ends.  Now, we discover that Tripoli can't actually feed its population without trade routes, just barely.  I set this trade route to the highest-food option we have, which is Cairo.  I'm trying to squeeze one of the three trade routes out, so hopefully I can drop one next time because of this.

Mecca finished the battleship fleet.  It sails out, and I use my Great Admiral to give it a promotion and some extra experience beyond that.  The next build is going to be the Sydney Opera House.

T275: Someone is sinking envoys into Kabul.  I'm no longer suzerain there.  However, I have one envoy for some reason that I don't know, so it's going into Kabul to get that back.

My attempt to steal Don Quixote failed.  I have two spies there, so I decide this time I'll roll the dice twice, for a 75% chance of stealing it.

Homs finished its battleship and needed something new as well, so I start The Great Lighthouse.  Mecca had started the Sydney Opera House last turn.  They're both next to a spot of land with a forest on it.  I am going to chop the forest into the opera house and then lay down a Theater district there from Homs.  I'm not sure how much I need the culture, actually, as opposed to the GPP, so I think I'll move straight into that, and come back to the lighthouse later.  It's only 6 turns to complete, anyway, so it will follow on pretty quickly at some point.

Because I tried it, I discovered that, while you can't build an airplane without an aerodrome, you can still transfer them to any city.  This significantly devalues military engineers, I'd say, because the airstrip improvement is useless inside your borders unless you need a forward base for some reason.  Perhaps you can airlift to it, though.

T276: Hagia Sophia and the Eiffel Tower both complete.  The plan is to get Broadway going, but that means we need to build a theater district.  Aleppo has the population for the Theater District now and will take 6 turns to build it.  Cairo actually has worse production because I've been moving its trade routes off, anyway.  While we wait, Cairo is building an infantry.  While I don't need more units, they don't really hurt.

Damietta finished the commercial district.  In a fantastic irony, the only +3 industrial zone tile by Damietta is a forest I built a lumber mill on.  It'd be about 1500 production for a full industrial zone, and we'd get 11 production plus 7 in Ra-Kedet.  If we do the same next to it in Ra-Kedet, it becomes 12 production because of adjacency for that one (because it'd be sandwiched between that and an encampment.  So, 3000 production for 37 or so production.  I really hope this game doesn't last another 100 turns.  Instead, I'm going to build a theater district, and follow that with something for GPP, or at least an amphitheater.

I do the chop-and-district that I was planning for Homs.  Apparently, we have hit the point where Theater districts are now not relatively discounted, so it'll be 9 turns to build.

Since I mean to convert a couple cities, I buy an apostle and two missionaries, now that I've got Hagia Sophia and plan to convert some cities.

Interturn, Rome asks for whale and jade for a minuscule amount of gold.  However, he's also offering to trade open borders, and I'm willing to do it for that.  Besides, Trajan is the only AI that actually likes me, because I'm the only one who expanded effectively.

Also interturn, Kongo drops a settlement here:


I'm not hugely concerned... at the moment, but you can bet it's going to be handy to snap up.

T277: Nuclear Fission comes in and I get two notifications that we have discovered it... but I can't seem to find it from where the notifications center.  Time to go looking!  This time, I wish I had something which can turn units off.  the best I've got is the citizen view.  As it happens, we actually found two... by Mohenjo-daro.  Fortunately, I'm suzerain and can send a builder in to get them.  There's also one just outside Valletta's territory... and one by Hong Kong.  That's easier to get to, if possibly less safe.  And yeah, I think those four are it.  I have a builder near Mohenjo-Daro, so that's the one which will get mined.  I'll send builders to both.  Or actually... the interface says I have 2 Uranium.  I can't for the life of my figure out where from.  Probably, they're under some of my districts, since you get it, but you can't see or use it.  Ah well, at least I have it.

The next tech is Advanced Flight.  It says 5 turns, but in 2 turns I'll finish a third biplane and boost it.  Then, we're going to upgrade all those biplanes to something that doesn't suck.

We also got a great person.  Adam Smith gives us another free econ civic slot.  Not that I'm complaining.  For now, I'm adding double adjacency for harbors, but really it provides some leeway so I can move my wildcard policies out to actual econ slots, if I need to.

Also, let's kick off a war.  I'm tired of sitting around trying to decide how to increase tourism, America has denounced me (which lets me use causi belli) and they're the only other civ to have conquered someone else's capital.  So, let's go back to the colonial war well and declare war on America.  (I could also go for Holy war, as it happens, but this feels really colonial.)  Declaring war gives me -16 with everyone else, again.  Now time to wake up all these units I have scattered around.

Everyone kicked a bunch of ass except one pikeman I had fortified in a forest.  It was not getting good numbers, because it's several eras behind, so they're going to sit tight and hope to weather the bombardment while newer units come to save them.  Then, we're upgrading to Modern AT and shooting freaking rockets at them.

Interturn, England denounces me for warmongering.  Guilty, I'll admit.  China denounces me too.

T278: Tabuk is having amenity problems.  It's also behind on laying down districts, it looks like.  We lay down an encampment that commands the peninsula it's on, and we'll put in for a a commercial district soon.

2 battleships shooting at Kyoto reduced the defenses entirely.  Infantry walk in, shoot the remaining defenders and occupy it.  Now we get something hilarious: the instant you keep the city, you can use city bombard... which I did to shoot a set of spearmen.  There's something to be said for culling the herd, even if you don't get exp for it, with this many units.

I also made an interesting discovery: yes, you can rebase fighters to cities.  However, I can't figure out how to rebase them from there.  Maybe I can do something like that if I upgrade them... or, alternately, I can just build a carrier (which I need to do to get them to the battlefield, at the moment) and see if it can pick them up along the way.

Interturn, Mvemba asks for all my luxuries for diamonds.  I'll take it, because I need amenities.  Besides, it's really no skin off my nose.

T279: Ideology completes.  Now, I can research modern governments (which will end my time of hilarious faith purchases... but I think I'm done doing that anyway.)  Since I'm not actually building units, the target government will be Communism.  I expected Advanced Flight to finish this turn, but it appears the biplane hasn't finished.  I switch off to Sanitation until it finishes.

Nan Madol finishes its amphitheater.  Time to get our trade route on with a commercial hub.  Medina finishes a commercial hub, and we have a ton of money.  I queue a market and buy a shipyard outright.  It's probably not efficient, but whatever.

Two turns after declaring war on America, this is what the remains of America look like:

The units over here have been thinned out by all of three of ours: a tank, an infantry, and a field cannon.  Linking up with the rest of my army actually looks like a problem, but we fortunately already know that a battleship will reduce cities in 2 turns (one for the walls), so it shouldn't really be a problem.

Interturn, Victoria demands elephant.  I assume she doesn't have anything to offer for it.

T280:  Our third biplane completes, getting us Advanced Flight.  We already have three sources of Aluminium... somewhere.  If I'm reading this right, I've built wonders or districts on all of them.  Given the state of my urban sprawl, this is far from surprising.

I have been massively neglecting my trade routes and have 5 new ones to build.  I buy a bunch, but I won't really detail it.

I got a great Artist from my GPP.  I have 2 slots I can put it in, in a bank, or I can hang onto him for a bit to finish an art museum somewhere.  I think I'll put this one in the bank, and art museums can come for the next one.

The fleet has arrived:

One bombardment from our battleship fleet blew the walls off, and the tank just rolls in and takes it.  Apparently, I finally actually got an Aluminium mine by taking that city, which boosted Nanotechnology.  Oh, while cleaning up that carpet of units, I discovered I had misplaced a tank: I had fortified it somewhere for this exact eventuality and then failed to wake it up when the time came.  this could have been even more one-sided around Washington!  (TBF, the other part was one-sided, too.)

It turns out that you can't upgrade without having every step along the chain.  That means I need chemistry, and soon, for our pikemen.  The next gsci is Mendeleev, and I'll get him eventually, but I want him now, so I pay 2870 gold to get him now and start accumulating GPP for the next one.

Damascus, having finished its biplanes, starts on an airport.  Taif finished its harbor.  We'll start a lighthouse for a little more housing.

While I was buying Mendeleev, I noticed the next great engineer I'm going to get instantly builds a factory.  That means, it's time to build another industrial district somewhere.  I've identified a specific hill which will hit Ra-Kedet, Damietta, and Nan Madol, so, even though the location is not amazing (only a single mine adjacent), we're going to put it there because it will boost the maximum number of cities.

T281: Use Mendeleev.  Sanitation boosts and completes.  Chemistry boosts, too, of course.  Next up?  Chemistry!

Sana'a completes its harbor and starts on a commercial district.  I drop one adjacent to the harbor in Tabuk as well.  Sana'a is size 7, though, and we are running low on luxuries.  I think its next build is going to be an entertainment district... just for the two of them, I guess, but what can you do?  I need more amenities for places.  One could theoretically build one for Kyoto and Tabuk, but Kyoto is actually very small, as it happens.  It also desperately needs some development of its tiles.

Cairo finished its infantry and starts on Broadway.  Aleppo completes a theater square and starts on a 1-turn amphitheater.  I'm going to build an art museum afterward, to have someplace not a bank to store that kind of art.  Baghdad moves to finish its seaport, and then will probably build an aircraft carrier, as they really do look to be the most convenient forward basing for aircraft.  Tripoli finishes an encampment and starts on a barracks.  Medina is near housing cap, but we need amenities urgently, so we're laying down an entertainment complex, which should free up amenities and eventually provide them in an area.  It will reach as far as Cairo.  After that will probably be a sewer.  Taif starts on a bank.  Kyoto starts on a lighthouse.

Kyoto has a mess of units around it:


The good news is, we have open borders with Rome.  I can sail the lot of them around to something resembling the front.  (If I'm fighting someone next, it's going to be Kongo.  Even if it won't directly win, I might be able to take all their art slots.)

T283: We Communists now:

There's a really impressive-looking internal trade route food civic, but I'm not sure if I want that kind of explosive growth just this moment.  I need to fix the amenity problem I have, and then I'll consider going back to explosive vertical growth.

Professional sports is coming up, so we lay down or set as next to build three entertainment complexes.  The amenity crunch is real, and the civic boost is desirable.  They should finish in around 10 turns.  Two of them feel pretty marginal, though: they only hit two cities, so I'm going to build the +1 building for sure and might just leave it at that.

Interturn, a spy sabotaged Cairo's industrial district.  It's the second time that has happened, so I think I need to recall a spy for counterspy work.

T284: Chemistry completes.  We can now upgrade our pikes.  Next tech is Robotics.  It could be boosted by Globalization, but we can already research it in 7 turns, so who cares.  It gives +1 production to pastures, which is nicer than going for an upgrade to our artillery or infantry.  (3-move mech infantry sounds nice, though.)  Chemistry also gives us research centers, but our tech rate is already out of control.  Research Centers would not be worth it to build at all.

Ra-Kedet finished something, maybe a bank.  We switch onto the industrial zone I mentioned before in anticipation of a free factory.

Tripoli finishes a barracks and I remember that we can pay faith for this stuff.  I pay faith for the armory and start on the academy.  Damietta completes a theater square and starts on an amphitheater for it.

T285: Combat around America's last city is pretty rough.  It has walls and a garrison which are getting it to strength 42, and that means our strength 60-70 infantry and tanks can't roll right through it the way we could earlier.  The fact that we could have a battleship strip walls before probably made a big difference, too.  I get the impression that walls are extra resistant to melee units at least.  Fortunately, land reinforcements will be on the way soon.  Also fortunately, the city can't seem to do much damage to us if we don't directly assault the walls, so we can just sit here and thumb our nose at them.

Interturn, someone completes The Great Library.  Its use, except as a place to put works of writing, is pretty much gone.
Also interturn, Rome asks me about all my troops on his border.  I tell him they're just passing through, which they are.  I decide to route them around his territory instead of through, though.  Trajan likes me.  That means I'll stab him last.

T286: I set a harbor for Washington in the one tile it can build it in.  Then, I go back to repairing buildings, this time a monument.

Also, my field gun is in place to start shooting at New Orleans, so it starts the very slow job of maybe reducing a city with walls by nibbling at it.  We'll see if ranged bombardment or the arrival of artillery succeeds first.


T287: Aleppo completes an art museum and starts on Cristo Redenetor.  If I end up going for the tourism win, I probably need to build some beachfront resorts, which I think come from workers, and this wonder will double their tourism.  (As a quick check, I'm at 47 or 82 foreign tourists needed.

Damietta completed something, probably an amphitheater and starts an art museum.  Afterward, it's probably time to start seeing about beachfront property.

So, it turns out that a 90-strength tank corps is a lot more effective than a 60-strength infantry at reducing a city:

That isn't the attack this turn, but it could be the attack next turn.  Anyway, that's after hits from two mostly-full-strength tank corps.

Interturn, Teddy sues for peace and cedes both cities, and basically everything he's got.  I'll take it, because I'm feeling magnanimous.  I have the capital that matters for the domination win condition.  Not sure where I'm going to send my army, but that's for the next turn, right?

T288: Cold war comes in.  Next up is Professional Sports.  It says 8 turns to complete, and we will get our entertainment districts in 4, so we'll get it at least close before it boosts.

Also, I wonder if I was getting war weariness and just hadn't noticed: peace with America has people largely happy again.  Then again, I did also get a luxury resource from it.

Damascus finished its airport, and we're starting on a harbor.  This is probably not terribly efficient, but it completes quickly, and then that city will be able to build sea units at high speed as well.  Considering the expected next war will involve going that direction, it's a good place to be able to build.

Our units got bounced out like this:

I literally can't get most of my army home without either going to war with Kongo or cutting an open borders deal, and and he's denounced me.

Since open borders appears to not even be an option in the trade menu (excuse me, demand menu; he won't trade with me) right now, I guess warmongering it is!  I don't know if you noticed from the picture, but he at least has tier 2 units.  There are knights there, and the funny symbol are Ngao Mbeba, a Swordsman replacement with extra cover against ranged attacks.  Also, unfortunately, I can't really use my navy for fire support, since Kongo is mostly up against an inland sea that I don't have a settlement on.  I'm going to take a few turns to heal up what I can, though, and maybe I'll finally upgrade the field cannons to machine guns; we'll see how effective they are at the outset.

T289: It looks like England is trying to convert people a bunch now.  A red apostle attacked my missionary going to convert Washington, anyway.  I figure I'll hold off a bit, then.  The missionary only has one charge left, so I'll do the half-strength spread, but, after that, we're going to hold off.

Interturn, Mvemba demands gold per turn and an elephant.  Nope; not when I'm considering declaring war...
Also, something I couldn't entirely make sense of involving Rome and a city-state.

T290: Nan Madol completes a commercial district.  It starts on an archaeological museum: there are three very nice ship wrecks right here.

Alright, let's start up this war stuff again.  I have a few more warmonger penalties, but I'll live with that... either this ends in domination, or it ends in me knocking out my culture competitors.

Interturn, Japan denounces me for being a warmonger.

T291: Robotics comes in.  Next up is Rocketry, required for the techs that get the rest of our unit upgrades.

Baghdad gets started on an aircraft carrier.  I'll load my three fighters on there and have a longer-ranged sea artillery with that.

Homs completes the great lighthouse and gets started on an archaeological museum.  Kyoto gets going on a shipyard because the alternatives are units which I probably don't need (and can rushbuy anyway) or religious buildings for even more faith that I"m not currently using.  I buy a builder, though, since we probably need another couple builder charges soon.

As usual, the slaughter continues, although it's a little harder now.  I'm actually upgrading some of my tanks to modern armor and field guns to machine guns, because they aren't one-shotting things anymore.


Also, I finally figured out the war weariness conundrum: certain cities, in particular the capitals of people I have defeated in war, have war weariness, probably from all their units that I cleaned up.  It's sucking up my floating amenities.  I'll need some peacetime to resolve that.

T292: Professional Sports, the civic, comes in.  Next civic is Rapid Deployment, followed by space race.  I like my civics, though, so they're not changing.

Ra-Kedet completes its industrial zone, so we throw the great person at it to boost it.  For form's sake, we'll finish with a power plant.  Damietta starts on a broadcast center, after the art museum.

I've now stolen two of Kongo's great works of literature with my spy.  However, they have only one display place that I know of, so that's not actually slowing them down; it's just improving things for us.  I also use my piles of faith (it's up to +300/turn) to grab a great musician... Kongo is still going to get the next one, tbf.

Interturn, okay, even Rome now denounces me for being a warmonger.  Oddly, America has decided its best bet is to declare war on Rome.  A bold strategy.  Let's see how that turns out for you.

T293: Enough bombarding of Mbamba by a battleship finally took it for us.

T294: Rocketry comes in.  I should build a spaceport or two, perhaps.  Or not; I'll be through the civic that wants it before I can build one, because they're so bloody expensive.

I'm feeling an artillery pinch fighting against the Kongo, who actually have halfway decent defenses.  The easiest way to rectify this is probably to acquire a bomber to base near the front.  Okay, I can buy artillery near there, too, and I'm going to do two of that, bringing us to 4 artillery pieces.

Homs finishes an archaeological museum, so we're going to build the archaeologist.

Interturn, China declares war on me.  Well, then.  I wish I knew what he was actually saying, because it sounded a lot longer than "You are the seed of evil.  YOu must be destroyed."

T295: Finally, an enemy with coastal cities I can reach.  That I have to go around the world backwards to get there is no huge obstacle.  I've already got my battleship fleet deployed there; it's just a question of deploying the non-fleet.

So, I managed to make two units per tile:

I gave a command that the tank took as a cue to move all the way to the city, but it walked into the encampment first, and appears to have gotten stuck there.

Interturn, I got a lighthouse pillaged because I forgot that China had a caravel wandering around near my shores.  Unfortunately for them, it was a 1-way trip: they did it not 4 hexes from a destroyer I had put to sleep and similarly forgotten.

T296: I got another great general, but I've kind of advanced past that.  I turn him into 2 envoys.

The war against Kongo goes apace, but also, a tourist check: Currently at 62/86.  (Kongo has somehow managed to get domestic tourism up to 85, despite the war.)  Also, I discovered that seaside resort developments are pretty excellent with Petra, because they don't prevent the tile from being used.

Interturn, I am reminded that city walls, when properly upgraded and with good units to power them are actually pretty dangerous: One of my artillery pieces is taking 16/hit from some random city I decided to bypass because it would take too long to reduce.  Success both ways, for the wall-builders.

T297: Rapid Deployment comes in.  This is asking for an aerodrome in Washington or the like, I think.  Somewhere with some level of production, anyway, that is near the front.  The next target is Space Race, which I'll finish in 7 turns, after all this culture stuff I've been building lately.  I actually appear to have surpassed my tech rate with my culture rate, at least as relative to the tree's depth.

We also get two GPs: a modern era admiral and a modern era merchant.  The former I'll use as an admiral, I think, but the latter is fire-and-forget: trade routes get +2 gold for every strategic resource improved at the destination city.  Oh, it also just gives me an oil, but I've already got 2.

Interturn, Teddy finally feels he can denounce me for my warmongering.  Also, the Americans managed to plant another city.  It doesn't look too bad.

T298: Our bomber completes.  I'm interested to discover that its rebase has a maximum range.  (The fighters do too, and it's shorter.)  Given how long it seems to take rebase to recharge when rebasing to cities, this really puts a damper on things.  Hopefully I'll be able to base it on a carrier, and that's not just fighters, but there's no guarantee of that, historically.

In war news, the capital of Kongo falls.  I even got a free settler out of the deal, but I don't know what to do with it either.  I'll see if I can get some sort of peace from them now, or at least I'll take it.  Honestly, I'm not interested beyond the capital.  China is next because they're already at war with me... and they're closest.  But first, a brief interlude to heal up.

Interturn, Victoria offers a rather lopsided trade in her favor, but I figure I'll keep her worrying about that to not declare on me in the next 30 turns.  Then, Teddy demands elephant and 15gpt.  I'm making 500gpt.  Sure, have a little.

T299: Guidance systems comes in, so we can upgrade our artillery to have 3 range.  Next up is Satellites so we can put our infantry in trucks.

I queue up a spaceport in Ra-Kedet for lols.  I don't really need to build anything else after the power plant, if I'm completely honest.

Interturn, Hojo makes about the same demand that Victoria did, only he asks for 34 gpt.  I accept that one, too, because I have everything I want from him.

T300: I negotiate peace with Kongo, for all the cities I took plus about half of their great works and only great painting.  It's time to start moving towards China, as I upgrade all my artillery.

The tourist check says 74 of 85.  Taking those things off of Kongo made a big difference for me, but it's annoying how little it did to reduce the threshold.  Of course, everyone else's threshold is 299 because I'm producing 298 culture, so there's that.  Cristo Redentor completes in 7 turns, and I suspect (okay, hope) that will push things over the edge on its own.

Somewhere between T300 and T302, Rome makes it into the industrial era.  That's cute.  I suppose it's about on actual target, too, timewise.

T302: captured Longxi.  Fighting the chinese is a return to the feeling of paper walls that I had against the Americans.  Also, my battleship has reduced the capital to 0HP and is keeping it there.

T303: Satellites come in.  So does Space Race.  That's fitting, I think.  Sean Bean's rendition of JFK's speech really doesn't feel right; it's not shouty enough.  I swap in the triple tourism from music civic; it doesn't really matter what for.  Next civic is Social Media, and next tech is telecommunications.  The latter is already boosted, and the former will be boosted when I get the other one.

Tourist check: 76/85

[Ranamar]

T304: As it turns out, battleships (or submarines) pounding a city for several turns will soften them up enough that you can take them pretty easily.  I had tanks roll into these cities because that was fastest, but anything that could survive attacking it would have taken it:

Also, the state of the roads here is disgraceful, for someone who got used to modern roads.

Interturn, Qin sues for peace.  I'll take it:

Not shown is an offer of their luxury and some gold, since that's not the important part.

T305: Telecommunications comes in, boosting social media.  Next up is stealth tech, so we can really just bomb everything from a carrier.

We also get a great artist, which is nice.  

Finally, with peace once again the norm, I have a ton of trade routes to do.  Finally, there will be roads that don't suck in my conquered territories!

T306: Broadway completes!

Counting our tourists shows that we're at 86/85, so I won't have to line up for a decapitation strike on Rome and England:


It wouldn't have been that bad, though, as their capitals are pretty close together.  I'd just have to spend 10 turns or something getting units into position:

(Most of those ten turns would be sailing a carrier across the ocean.

I basically hit spacebar on all my units and click next turn to see what happens.  A nifty video plays while achievents scroll in the lower left corner.  Apparently, I hit 1000 points, because I rank Henry VIII.

Some stats...

Here's cities founded, which, if you recall, I complained about a lot:

It looks like I wasn't the first to expand: England and Japan did a better job of that than me, and Rome took a long time (but still was the fourth to 2 cities.  However, around when America was founding their second city (4th AI to do so), I dropped several more, and I had 5 total by the time Rome and England hit 3.  You can also see the bit later where I pumped out a bunch of lategame settlers.
... and yeah, that completely flat green line is Egypt, my nearest neighbor.

Districts:

Given how central districts are to the game, this is deeply disappointing to me.  I admit I was building them when I should have been building military to just conquer the world, or something, but the AIs really don't build districts.  Like, at all.  Maybe one or two per city, for the most part, with the capitals doing better than that.

Here's an interesting graph I didn't expect to exist.  Total Number of Combats:

That yellow line at the bottom?  That's me.  It looks like the AIs spent a lot of time fighting amongst themselves not really killing units.

I say not really killing units, because this is units killed:

Japan took a beating this game; everyone seemed to have cities of theirs, but they appear to have kicked some ass when defending those cities.  Okay, I guess they killed units, but, when you're not doing an up-four-ages roflstomp, it takes a lot of hits to kill units... like, 3 or 4 at the least.

Great People earned:

You can really tell when I decided it was time to buckle down and build an infrastructure, because it's infrastructure that gets you great person points.

Total Cities Captured probably best tells the story of when I went to war:

I'd say it was surprisingly few cities, but my first war captured more cities than anyone else captured all game.

and now for a surprising one:

I really thought the AIs had constructed more wonders than one or two each.  I guess that's what happens when my perception is "someone completed a wonder" compared against "I completed a wonder".