[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

All right, with the news that Barteq finally sent us a diplomacy message, we're going to have to decide how we can take advantage of this without looking like complete slimeballs. I sent a quick message to him:

Barteq,

This is just a quick email confirming receipt of the message. We are happy that you chose to respond to us. We will give you another response shortly.

For now, we stay in war but let us agree not to attack each other and just defend. By next turn you will get a longer proposal.

By the way, you can choose to 'forward' all emails from your Gladiator's Glory email to your real email so you get all messages that way.
Regards,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

But here is the message that DT just sent us today:

Without your help we lost this war. Soon Rome will have 15 cities and place for next 10.

So we can tell that DT is annoyed that we couldn't really make any progress on the Roman front. But then again, I don't see how DT could have blamed us for this. Barteq is aggressive Rome, and he spent something like fifty turns building nothing but praetorians. And his target all along was DT. The general rule when this happens is that if a team like that decides to attack you, your game is over before it begins. Period. And what could we have built anyway that could have stopped praetorians in the field? Macemen and crossbowmen. Which requires us having a high tech rate. Which means we can't spend turns building axemen and catapults.

I think that the only way we can really take advantage of this is if we explain to DT that the war is lost before it began. He's not going to like the message, but there's literally nothing we can do at this point.

But is there a way we can make the situation seem like we tried a little harder? What if Barteq agreed to let us destroy his Antium stack (i.e., he puts them on the silver tile?), but then we negotiate peace right after that, so he doesn't lose any cities and we get a Great general for Heroic Epic (plus he doesn't have to pay maintenance costs for his units). Then, we negotiate a super-long NAP with him and open borders.

But the only way we really win out on this is if he agrees to attack SutOxy.

I've asked Yossarian for a chat in the second half of the turn timer as usual.

[DMOC]

Turn 133 - 450 AD

A much better turn than the past few ones, I'll say. First, with the news that Barteq is suddenly willing to talk to us, Yossarian and I agreed to send this message:

Barteq,

Would it be possible to follow this plan?

1. You sign peace with us starting next turn. (EggHeads have offered peace already.)
2. We both offer an NAP with you to turn 190, effectively until the end of the game.
3. You have carte blanche with England
4. We both sign open borders with you and keep them until the NAP (helps your economy)
5. Once Antium's silver comes into EggHeads' culture control, we will gift you the silver.
This way, we move on from the war and can try to catch up to suttree/Oxyphenbutazone. =)

One more thing ... EggHeads badly need a Heroic Epic unit for our future wars against India and other nations (not you guys, of course). We see that you have a Great General warrior in Antium. May you gift us that Great General warrior on turn 137 so we can unlock Heroic Epic? We will immediately gift the warrior back to you on the same turn or the turn after. We can offer 30 gold as payment.

Regards,
DMOC of the EggHeads team
Yossarian of the Blame Caledorn Team

Here's the situation in the game.

In case Barteq doesn't agree with the Heroic Epic unit plan, we can also ask classical_hero:

Just to be sure (lurkers, any help?) ... as long as we have any 10 xp unit in possession at any point in the game, that automatically unlocks Heroic Epic, correct? Even if the unit is gifted?

We did send another message to DT, saying that neither of us are happy with this war, but also that we really have no way of stopping praetorians in the open terrain. Both Yossarian/Caledorn and us honored our Defensive Pact anyway.

---

Of course, not all news is good. SutOxy built The Great Library.

Fortunately, I don't see any updates in technology (same for Cat/Bandit). My guess is that they are researching either Nationalism or Education. Probably Nationalism. Oxyphenbutazone was logged into the game at the same time, and I told him that it was obvious they were building Taj Mahal in Sneezy. He said: "Don't know how to respond to that."

Final city builds:

We are almost ready to produce our second Great Person. I've set it for no specialists, but we can hire 2 scientists next turn and still get a Great Person on turn 135. By the way, I think we should whip Berkeley for the courthouse once we get a Great Person from there. It's costing us almost 10 gold a turn!

And a few empire-wide screenshots. As you can see, we've got lots of wealth builds out there. Our break-even is 50% and 191 beakers. I've also gotten rid of some of our military builds and replaced them with civilian ones.

1. UMaryland is now building a granary.
2. UIllinois is now building a courthouse (and will probably follow that up with a libary).
3. Cornell is building a Hindu Monastery, for increased cultural pressure and hammer output.
4. I didn't whip either Stanford or UT Austin, since Stanford has good tiles to work and UT Austin I want to wait until we get the farm over there so we can regrow faster. There's benefit to keeping cities a high size, and we'll need them since we're far behind SutOxy in food. Let's hope Civil Service helps rectify that.
5. Princeton is how building a courthouse, and we're using the corn to grow it.
6. I stopped UWashington from an axe and set it to build wealth. Anything we want in this city?

Some things to decide for later turns:

1. MIT now has Hinduism. Should it build the Hindu religious buildings?
2. Georgia Tech is on wealth. We could build a Hindu Temple but we've got the culture locked down. Is it worth it?
3. UWisconsin is still building wealth but has plenty of overflow stored up. It doesn't have either of the Hindu buildings, but it could also build a lighthouse. What do we think?

I'm okay with growing a lot of our cities now. After Civil Service, I assume we're researching Metal Casting, so we'll want to whip a lot of forges in our empire. Forges are awesome, and from what I remember they make whipping more efficient, so we could get them in cities close to empire (e.g., MIT) and then whip courthouses.

And, as usual, the demographics.

[NobleHelium]

In RB games gifted units cannot be used to unlock wonders by house rule. I don't know if you guys have that rule in place or not.

[DMOC]

In RB games gifted units cannot be used to unlock wonders by house rule. I don't know if you guys have that rule in place or not.

Interesting ... I didn't know there was a house rule on that. My last game here was in Pitboss 2, and from what I remember we had to come up with tons of rules on the fly, so I can imagine that there would be some "standard rulebook" for most games now. I also have no idea if we've got that set up, based on the tech thread.

I hope people don't view it as a complete exploit if we're also paying for the unit. I offered Barteq 30 gold in the message so it's not like we're the only ones benefitting, and he can ask for more if needed.

[DMOC]

Turn 134 - 475 AD

We made peace with Rome/Barteq. So did Yossarian (who also finally adopted Hereditary Rule -- that'll allow his cities to grow to double digits). Here's the full message I sent, followed by his:

Barteq,

Would it be possible to follow this plan?

1. You sign peace with us starting next turn. (EggHeads have offered peace already.)
2. We both offer an NAP with you to turn 190, effectively until the end of the game.
3. You have carte blanche with England
4. We both sign open borders with you and keep them until the NAP (helps your economy)
5. Once Antium's silver comes into EggHeads' culture control, we will gift you the silver.

This way, we move on from the war and can try to catch up to suttree/Oxyphenbutazone. =)

One more thing ... EggHeads badly need a Heroic Epic unit for our future wars against India and other nations (not you guys, of course). We see that you have a Great General warrior in Antium. May you gift us that Great General warrior on turn 137 so we can unlock Heroic Epic? We will immediately gift the warrior back to you on the same turn or the turn after. We can offer 30 gold as payment.

Regards,
DMOC of the EggHeads team
Yossarian of the Blame Caledorn Team

I agree to your prospal.

1. 10 turns peace signed with both teams.
2. I agree to signed NAP to turn 190. If everything will works fine, I don't see any reason to not prolong it for a much longer time, maybe even to until the end of the game, as you mention.
3. Great .
4. I agree. It won't help now, cause of 2 main reasons - I haven't got to many cities and as I remember from other game, you need many turns of peace, to regain full trade percent bonus (I think, that at least 20-30 turns will be needed, to get 2 gold per city back). But, of course, in future it will be very profitable deal for me .
5. Thanks. When I only will finish new road to my new city, than I will rebuild it for now. Maybe, if I will win my war I will gain access to new one, but this is too questionable now.
6. General - let me think about it for. I leave him close to EggHeads team's border. I don't need him badly on second front, cause I got another one over there, but I have some doubts thanks to our national game. So many players like to put there knives into others back, that I'm always suspicious (I heard, that one player destroy another one with his own army, send as a gift :D - I don't play in this game - later this option was banned from a game by blocking it in new mod).

PS I must think about my economy already, cause it looks disastrous for a moment . I have still time to act, but it will be, very, very hard (I have one idea, but I won't be easy to set it in motion). Unfortunatly, my clock is ticking and deadline is when rifling will be discover. Until than my 'pretopults' (pretorians + catapults) should destroy everything what comes into my borders .


Regards
Barteq

Too bad he's not too willing to gift us the general. I sent him a reply:

Barteq,

We understand if you are nervous about gifting us a Great General. We just need any unit with 10 experience or more in our possession for a single turn. You can trust that we will keep our word and return the unit to you as soon as possible. We are also offering payment to indicate that we are serious. We honor our deals in this game. That is why we declared war on you even though we did not want a war. We honored our Defensive Pact.

Please let us know if you are still interested in gifting us a 10 experience (or more) unit in exchange for payment.

-DMOC of EggHeads

Again, we can always ask classical_hero.

With the end of the war, we're going to have to figure out where we want to allocate our axemen and catapults. I'll save the catapults and put them together in a stack and we can either gift to Arki later or use them against India. But our main army will be cataphracts, so catapults probably won't see too much action. For now, I put a few axes on the way to cities that'll need Hereditary Rule happiness, but honestly, we're in really good shape in terms of happiness. Many cities have lots of surplus happiness, so we're not growing enough.

We should also consider deleting warriors that are acting as city garrisons. Here's our cost screen. Will deleting units help? It says we have "free support for 34 units."

EDIT: Yes, deleting units should help.

I went ahead and looked at this CivFanatics artice: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141475

So according to our finances screen, we are paying for 22 units, while having free support for 34, so we've got 56 of them. Thus, it makes sense for us to delete warriors (and possibly our 0 experience spears and axes) to save on costs.

Unfortunately, not all the news is good. SutOxy got yet another Great Person ... and they also bulbed Machinery this turn to unlock Engineering.

Check out this city that SutOxy have. That's a pretty great Heroic Epic city, in my opinion, and I wish we had something like that.

Fortunately for our prospects this game, Cat/bandit finally responded to my message! Here's what they sent:

Hi,

Thank you for the information. We are also hoping for a longer NAP with Yuufo, if he is indeed negotiating with us in a good will, our western border should be indeed secure for some time. Thanks for TGL I hope that I didn't steal it from you I have no idea why Asterix was completely ignoring it for so long time...

I know about SutOxy run away but I can not help you in that matter (it doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to). My hands are just tied. Nevertheless I hope that I will be able to help you in that matter in the future.

Asterix left the empire very underdeveloped. Most of the cities missing crucial buildings like granary. Only Two or three cities (including the capital) where somehow developed but still in worse condition then for example Yuufo's 5th or 6th city... Many cities were even working non improved tiles (Way too few workers) a lot of unchopped forests along border with Yuufo! There were forests one tile from our cities and one tile from his border... Happy defending in case of war when attacking Yuufo would get bigger defense bonus on those forests tiles...

But I hope we are back on track. Chopping forests helped to improve infrastructure and now our economy looks a lot better.

We haven't yet decided on our tech path

Thanks and sorry for the delay!
B4ndit

Cat/Bandit are trading with SutOxy, so hopefully we can tell them to stop (unless they're bound to it by some deal Asterix signed, which I wouldn't be surprised, due to Asterik's bizarre inability to understand the diplomatic picture this game ).

As an aside, all this unused land near DT and classical_hero is making me sad. And in this case, their silver is in a much better spot than ours.

Meanwhile, here's what we've got going on in our cities. I didn't whip anything this turn. Next turn, I plan on whipping both UT Austin and UC Berkeley for courthouses, which will give us 7 total for the game. Once we get Metal Casting, a lot of our cities will stop building wealth in favor of forges.

Here is UC Berkeley, which will generate our next Great Person next turn. It will also be whipping its courthouse once we've got the Great Person.

Here is our capital, which is on pace to be the first size-14 city in this game, or at least will tie for it. This city will definitely produce our third Great Person. The question is when, and what do we want it to be. Remember, it can still 1-turn a colloseum if needed so happiness is not an issue now.

Here's Princeton, a city that, along with its close cousin Michigan, will need to use chain irrigation and share the corn in order to reach maximum potential. It's slow-building a courthouse as eventually costs will rise to roughly 10 gold a turn, despite it being close to the capital.

Finally, the demographics.

Team Notes:

1. There's a worker near UC San Diego who's on a forest. I think that was my mistake -- i'd rather he be farming with two other workers in the area rather than chopping. Fortunately, due to the road, he doesn't really waste any worker turns.

2. I'll send a reply to Catwalk/Bandit soon.

3. Next turn, 0% research, and possibly the turn after that. Ideally, we get Metal Casting in three turns if we're not revolting to Bureaucracy.

Questions:

1. Where do we put our espionage points on? I just sent Yossarian a message asking if we can invest some points on them. We really have no more use for investing points on Rome.

2. What do you think of this 17th city? We'll need to find a city to produce the settler. This is low-priority.

3. And now the important one ... do we switch to Bureaucracy next turn? Will need to think about this, especially if we get a Great Scientist and can start a Golden Age. We may want to delay it a few turns to get some growth going first, and our capital isn't a great Bureaucracy city anyway. It seems like plako deliberately designed the map to weaken the Bureaucracy civic, which I actually like since it makes the civic options more interesting.

[DMOC]

Turn 135 - 500 AD

We finally obtained Civil Service, so we've got lots of workers chain-irrigating our empire. Cities such as MIT will especially need those farms to really become awesome. We also got a Great Engineer from UC Berkeley, our second Great Person of the game. As planned, we'll save him for a Machinery bulb once we finish Metal Casting. A GE's first priority is Machinery anyway so we don't have to worry about prerequisites or unlocking any higher-priority technologies.

First, we need to get Metal Casting, so I've pegged that as our next technology.

Given that we're not planning on starting a Golden Age, I decided to revolt to Bureaucracy. Our capital is still our best city, and it's the first city in this game to reach size 14. If we give it MIT's mines (not too hard to do now, since we've got more farms there) it'll be even better. Thus, screenshots of this turn will be taken before our anarchy.

Of course, we have the daily bad news from SutOxy. They now have Feudalism.

Our domestic advisor, taken before anarchy. I whipped Berkeley and UT Austin for courthouses this turn, so on turn 137 (after anarchy) we'll be in good shape in terms of finances. Now the key is that we need to get our cities to match SutOxy in size. Hopefully by turn 145 we can get more than half of our cities to have double-digit pouplation. No whips are planned from turns 137 through 140 except for possibly whipping the courthouse in UIllinois.

Demographics.

Some other notes:

1. Just to be safe, I'll put in a Hindu Temple over at Georgia Tech while it's growing. We'll have to battle Arki for culture, but we should still win easily.

2. To cut down on maintenance costs, I deleted about five units this turn, all either warriors or zero-experience spearmen. I've got our stack of axes heading north and will distribute them evenly across the empire so that we can delete all our warriors without hurting happiness.

[DMOC]

Sent catwalk/bandit this message.

B4andit,

You can't help us in that matter? I mean ... you're their neighbor, so logically you'd be in the best position to attack them. If I were their neighbor, they'd never be able to pull off something like this. Also, I noticed from the trade screen that you're trading resources with them (due to population difference, a straight up happiness resource trade benefits them more), and also getting a gift of stone from them. We have stone that we don't need right now ... though admittedly a gift from them can't really benefit them.

My guess is that Asterix left you with a bunch of super-long agreements with SutOxy that you can't break out of. Is that true? If so we can try and talk about strategies, because they will just march on to a win.

-DMOC

[DMOC]

Turn 136 - 520 AD

This turn was really a repeat of last turn due to our anarchy. So first, let's go over a bit of diplomacy. B4andit responded to my last message with:

I can not disclose that information :/

Having said that, yes we can try talk about strategies for later game.

B4ndit

Yeah ... pretty obvious what's going on here. Here's my response:

B4ndit,

Unfortunately, based on your last message, I conclude that, indeed, Asterix did leave you with a bunch of deals you can't get out of. The reason is that if he hadn't, then you would be pretty open about it. But since you appear to have a secret agreement with SutOxy, that means you can't tell us. That's fine -- I honor my deals so you should do the same. (I deliberately worded the message that way knowing that no matter what, I'd get an answer.)

I'm also a little worried at the extent of agreements that you have with SutOxy. For instance, you are trading them incense for their silk. But instead of that, you could give us that incense, and we could give you our lone dyes in return. It is a net even for us -- we don't gain any happiness, but you would gain a happiness, and this way, SutOxy wouldn't get the incense. It's simple logic -- if you do that trade, you end up not benefiting two civilizations ahead of you in score, while also getting an extra happiness for yourself. We could do such a trade as soon as next turn. Unfortunately, if you decline, I have no choice but to believe you're bound to it by a deal with SutOxy.

Anyway, let's still keep communication open as long as possible. Whatever the case, do not tell SutOxy about our conversations. Remember, you two wanted to work together with us, and to keep our agreements confidential.

DMOC
EggHeads

I really wish that players would try to win rather than allow a neighbor to run away with the game unmolested. This is different from when India was ahead in score, since we knew their tech rate was slow and that we had time to catch up to them. I feel like the Locke/Cervantes team in Pitboss 4.

Anyway, this turn was realy more of the same. Most of our workers are farming, and I deleted around 2 or 3 more units. Some cities have no garrisions, but we've got axes coming back to them so we'll be okay in the long run.

More bad news.

I really wish we had started next to SutOxy. They never would have been able to get away with this.

Barteq is indeed moving his warrior over to our lands. We may want to consider shifting Aesthetics - Literature before Guilds to get Heroic Epic up and running before the war.

I'm putting all our points on Bisons for now, until we at least can see his research.

Here's our capital again. Once we get Metal Casting, I'll probably build Forge -> Colosseum -> Barracks -> Stable.

Tech (they got Guilds)

Demographics:

[DMOC]

Turn 137 - 540 AD

I'll divide up this report into the gameplay, followed by diplo.

Gameplay

Workers continued to farm, and I'm actually going to start a new work at Stanford (takes 5 turns) for our sixteenth worker, since I still feel like we're short on them. We also need a city to start on a settler for our seventeenth city; I'll get to work on that starting next turn. As for research, I cranked up the slider to 100%. We will just barely finish Metal Casting in one turn, as we now generate over 400 beakers at 100% research (break even now is over 60% with our current wealth builds). A lot of our cities are on wealth but will change their builds to forges next turn. Since the production picture will be clearer next turn, I'll also be posting a more detailed city build plan, as well as our generic plan for the rest of the game.

Here's what we're building right now, except I put Stanford on a worker:

Good news: SutOxy didn't finish a tech this turn. And they didn't get a Great Person. They did switch to Mercantilism, so we are losing out on their trade routes. Good move for them.

I didn't take a screenshot of the demograhpics, but right now they're probably the best they'll ever look for us, given how we're at 100%, SutOxy just finished a Golden Age (but they'll get the Taj Mahal soon) and they've also whipped a few of their core cities.

Diplomacy

First, Barteq indeed gifted us his Level 5 warrior (too bad it wasn't level 6 -- we'd get West Point if it mattered). I promptly gifted it back to him and gave him 30 gold. So now we'll be able to build Heroic Epic before any future wars.

Second, here's B4ndit's latest message.

Sorry, I also can not cancel this Incense deal with Suttree, as long as I want to honor all Asterix deals. And I indeed (regardless of my personal preferences) want to be fair with other players.

However If you are interested, I can have surplus fur or gold for trade.

If you have other propositions, I will consider them and I will try to work out best possible solution that will not violate my present obligations.

I don't know if you have a contacted with Orgynized Party. They are also worried about Suttree's growing power and they fear Suttree's aggression.

B4ndit

You know ... if you couldn't cancel the deal, why didn't you say so in my previous message? So it looks like I was right ... Asterix did indeed "vassal" himself to SutOxy as he mentioned in one of his last messages to me.

Anyway, because B4ndit doesn't seem eager for an alliance (if I were in his position, I'd be furiously contacting the other teams about this), I'm going to concede this game to SutOxy. The way I see it, any alliance is going to hurt us the most since we'll be the ones investing the most in a war while the other teams are just going with the flow as no one seems like they want to dogpile SutOxy (well, except Arki, who plays his turns in 5 minutes and won't have a hope of scratching them). So I'll propose an NAP to turn 200 to SutOxy. This way, we can guarantee ourselves a second place finish, which I'm not actually disappointed with, given our neighboring situation, lack of Financial, and other factors. We'll see how they respond.

Here's what I sent to suttree:

SutOxy,

Would you be interested in extending our current NAP? As a suggested ballpark date, how does turn 200 sound?

We can discuss a continuation of any current deals (e.g., open borders) if needed, though you'll probably want to end the 3gpt gift to us.

Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

[DMOC]

Turn 138 - 560 AD

We got a response from suttree.

Hey DMOC,

We would be interested, if you agree, in extending our NAP until t200. We're happy to continue the current silk+gpt/spice trade and open borders for the duration of the NAP. Please let us know if we can help in any way.

Regards,
Suttree
The OxySuttocratic Kingdom

So it looks like we've got the following NAPs:

• Aivoturoso/Bowsling: T150
  
• Yuufo/Bisons: T160
  
• Arkipeller: T170
  
• Yossarian/Caledorn: T170
  
• Barteq: T190
  
• Catwalk/B4ndit: T200
  
• Suttree/Oxyphenbutazone: T200
  

I'm okay with this. The extra NAP gives us some extra security in case SutOxy decide to attack Arki. Given how weak we suspect Arki is, SutOxy could have easily attacked us after mopping up Arki, thus destroying our prospects of even reaching second place in this game. This NAP also gives me a little flexibility to do some actions that they might dislike, such as calling an AP vote to stop their war with Arki (assuming that's where they're headed). Of course, if they claim his lands so easily, and move their military south before turn 200 ... ...

In more SutOxy-related news, they finished Nationalism last turn and chopped the forests in Sneezy. They will start another 12-turn Golden Age next turn. Meanwhile, Catwalk/B4andit finished Machinery. Oh, and so did we due to bulbing it with our Great Engineer. So now the only techs Catwalk/B4andit have over us are Feudalism, Alphabet, and Archery (huh?), while we are up Construction. It looks like we've pretty much caught up to them. Quite a far cry about how the situation looked like at the start of the game!

In the meantime, I performed my last set of deletions, getting rid of a warrior up north and the two galleys down in the lake by Rome. (I should have done that two turns ago.) And as a result, here are our much-improved military expenses. Just four turns ago, we were paying 10 more gold per turn.

I'm not sure why Bisons isn't getting rid of his obsolete units. I'm seeing warriors guarding his border cities, which have 3-4 soldiers in them. All they're doing is holding back his research rate due to maintenance. Oh well, he can do whatever he wants. For what it's worth, we now have no more warriors, and I might just delete our scouting scout unit, but he's probably worth keeping a few more turns just so we can see B4andit's southern border.

The current plan

With Metal Casting and Machinery all researched, we only have to get Horseback Riding and Feudalism in order to research Guilds. Since Barteq was generous to gift us a Great General unit for a turn, I'm going to divert research to Aesthetics - Literature first so we can get Heroic Epic set up in one of our cities. As a result, here is our current technology plan: Aesthetics -> Literature -> Archery -> Horseback Riding -> Feudalism -> Guilds. After Guilds, we'll probably backfill with either Alphabet (for tech visibility) or Drama (for unlocking our unique building). I don't think we need Alphabet before Guilds since we're pumping espionage points into Bisons (who hasn't countered ... yet) and will get research visibility soon. We also have open borders so we can scout him whenever we want. Spies might be useful during the war, though.

The reason why I have Archery there is so that we can pre-build horse archers in our cities and get then to finish at the same time we research Guilds, which will output cataphracts. I'll test this, but I'm pretty sure that's how the upgrading process works. It seems like the cheapest way to do things: take advantage of the low-cost horse archer and get cataphracts. Question to lurkers: if I'm 1-turn away from finishing a horse archer in a city and 1-turn away from finishing Guilds but have little to no overflow (so, for instance, if I had guilds now I wouldn't have been able to finish the cataphract, i.e. knight) that still will result in a cataphract the next turn, right?

By the way, I made a rough estimate as to how long it would take us to research those technologies. At our current break-even rate, which is now roughly 40% due to building forges, we should get Guilds in 20 turns. Factoring in the growth of our civilization and building wealth later, we can probably get guilds before turn 155, which gives us ample time to whip cataphracts and start a war right after our NAP with Bisons expires on turn 160.

Last war-related thing: turn 145 is probably a good reminder to me to start getting barracks set up in the cities that will produce cataphracts. We'll also want to get some 5XP, or even 7XP cataphracts right out of some of our cities. I see two realistic options: (1) build barracks and stables, (2) build barracks and use Vassalage. We could use Theocracy, but that would require another diversion to Theocracy, which I'm not sure we want to do. I'm leaning towards option (2), i.e. switching from Bureaucracy to Vassalage, as I think the extra military expenses saved will offset the loss of Bureaucracy. Ideally, that will be our last turn of anarchy for the game. Thoughts or non-spoiling advice are appreciated.

Anyway, here's what we're building now that we have Metal Casting. I've ordered these cities by production, so you can see we're building forges in most of our high production cities. It makes sense to me ... get the forges set up and use that +25% boost for future builds. Five of our cities are growing next turn, so these production builds are with respect to an empire working lots of food tiles.

The Hindu Missionary will probably go to Princeton, our largest city without Hinduism.

Here's Carnegie Mellon. It's giving the cottage to MIT so that MIT can also grow next turn, but Carnegie Mellon will reclaim that cottage with the 15th citizen. It's our best city due to Bureaucracy. I'm thinking this will go Forge -> Wealth -> National Epic -> Wealth/Barracks. I actually don't see myself finishing that colloseum anytime soon. The forge will already give it +2 happiness. With National Epic in the queue, we'll be using this city to generate a substantial number of Great People for Golden Ages.

In preparation for our future war, we need a Heroic Epic city. Here is Washington, my current choice for Heroic Epic. It can soon get 30 base hammers if we allow it to grow more. It's also relatively close to India.

Cornell, another high production city. This one has less long-term potential than Washington, but it's close to India and will be very useful for us.

Demographics. We'll be substantially improving our food situation in the next few turns.