Had some free time this morning, so I played my turnset now.
Overview at t200
We have seven cities, all with reasonably good development. We have a low power rating compared with the AIs, but that is normal.
We are at war with Shaka and I plan to capture the southeasternmost city then offer peace.
Other goals - finish courthouses and markets where possible, finish construction after civil service, and start working on irrigating a few of our food resources once CS comes in. Oh yeah, and turn on research so CS comes in at some point.
I whipped some cities for their production - Shakuras for a courthouse, a market in Aiur, plus a few others
Busy workers developing our newly renamed new cities of Antioch and Zerus (formerly Amsterdam and Utrecht)
Ready for the attack on Shaka's city. I brought two chariots and three axes.
Success! Two axes each win, no losses. I set my two chariots to chase off after some retreating workers and capture them both using the neutral roads a couple of turns later.
It's worth a try....but he does accept a white peace. Not for long...
I send some axes down to check out the barb city that spawned in one of our backfill city locations. It turns out to only be size one, so I post up the axes in the forest nearby and wait for it to hit size two so we can capture it without razing it. It's right where we want our city, may as well save ourselves the cost of a settler.
Ragnar comes asking us to fight Saladin of the Arabs. I decline.
Saladin comes asking for us to fight the Vikings with him. Our relationship with the vikings sucks, they are the only civ with less power than us, and they are way behind us in development, not to mention being on the other side of the continent, so I agree to keep Saladin happy. We won't send any forces off of course.
Founded Char in one of the northwestern locations.
Shaka declares war on us again shortly after this. His stack isn't impressive, only a few swords, impis, and catapults.
I whip a few units on some of our border cities to help us survive, and clean up an impi that was prowling around the barbarian city in the south. That gives us a great general, who I fortify in Shakuras for the next player to decide whether to settle him or get a GG unit.
Turn 220 overview
We founded an extra city, Char, we captured another one, Chau Sara (formerly one of Shaka's cities), and we will be able to capture the barb city of Illinois soon. I think it will be only 5-10 turns before it grows to size 2 IIRC. If the next player wants to raze and replace, our three axes can do so easily, but I would suggest waiting - we are only at 30% science sustainably, a third new city will be too much.
We are still at war with Shaka thanks to him being a pissy little jerk, but he shouldn't be able to take any cities from us. We have Civil Service, Construction, and Iron Working now, and are on the way to Metal Casting.
There's a barbarian galley about to pillage Aiur's food resource. We don't have sailing yet, so we can't even make a galley to stop it, let alone a trireme. That might be a goal for the next player - get a navy in the water.