on can build chariots w/o AH - gah why am I so dumb sometimes. Yes please offer someone such a trade, and in that case I'm okay with delaying AH a little longer.Thanks for the answer re: GG; nothing to worry about in that regard yet then.
Fintourist, regarding your point about military vs. economy - I don't know, the way I look at that balance sheet is basically we have a safety net of two bowmen, that's it. At the same time you're right that we can't cripple our snowball for the sake of peace of mind. Two not-immediately-helpful comments from this: I kinda do wish whoever it is to the south of suttree would take this opportunity to attack him, so we could get some heat off of us and security till we reach medieval units, and perhaps we need to start thinking about how soon we can get the HE for constant unit production in one city without impairing the rest. What's our highest-XP unit, and what's a realistic timeframe on teching Literature and building the thing? Is this a reasonable goal given our other priorities?
Finally, I wouldn't attack plako's workboat - 100 turns into the game, I don't think the relatively insubstantial damage to his snowball would be worth the distrust down the road.