Civ 6 Adventure 1: The moose of industry - (complete: T216 domination)

[Ruined Everything]

Edit: This was my first full game of civ 6, and a lot of my reasoning was based off ideas about game mechanics that were just wrong. I've corrected the egregious bits, but a lot of stuff here is cringe worthy. Read at your own peril. 

Welcome to my RB Civ 6 Adventure 1 report. This will be coming in in dribs and drabs as I play the game.

Part 1: Moose Corner
Here's the starting location:

First big decision: whether to settle on the coast. From the one civ 6 game I've played, I've found that coastal cities are handy since they keep the bonus ball rolling.

That being said, here I'm not gonna because the limiting factor in that game was production (and worker labor, which I'll come to in a moment. I have no idea how to generate anything like decent production in civ 6 - if there's a slavery trick I haven't found it. Maybe there's something to be done with the whole cash buy thing? Stone + jade + hill = some semblance of production. At least until i-zones.

Early game wise, my plan is to rush to craftsmanship. At that point, I can convert forests to workers at a 1-1 rate + 2 turns of production. Boosting craftsmanship requires 3 improves (i.e. spending a starting worker.) I'm gonna go quarry - mine - farm, for an irri/masonary/wheel boost. Init. research: mining for chop (see: production). Mid term goal: get to pyramids - worker labor is the bottle neck in my game so far. Having one extra worker turn helps.


T6
A coastal city - nice. Bit of a risk moving away from the river (as far as I can tell, settling on fresh water is mandatory) but I really wanted one. Sadly, my only river seems to go south into the polar ice caps. :/

Need to be careful not to get too far away from the cap. Barbs spawn early.

T9 
Idea. Buy jade (if my city doesn't grab it), mine jade, faster craftsmanship, profit. Annoyingly, irri boost = farm a resource. That means I'll have to plant a second city before irri. Definitely settler next. On the plus side, I spy rice next to a second river (yay!)

T10
Good news: dope second city spot. Bad news: I have two rivers. One runs into a city state (note the borders), the other goes into the southern tundra. Escaping this corner of the map might be unpleasant.

I would nuke that rice for the growth speedup, but I need it for irri. On the domestic front, I finish mining. Will  max food now when worker appears.

T11
Worker built. Plan: mine jade (craftsmanship!), quarry hammers (production!), farm floodplains (food!). Then worker self-destructs. Very sad.

Since that farm *won't* boost irri, I'm actually gonna make another worker to do tree shenangians first. (Actually, I'll put production -> settler until craftsmanship, and then go worker.) Second city slated for pyramids (better workers!) ASAP.


T14  
Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Really hoping there's a second river north of here.

T 17
Le river, hooray! (please be north bound.) Worker completes last resource, boosts craftsmanship, self destructs. Exploring warrior (dubbed Wilson) goes around mountains (science!) to find third city site. 

T19
Settler finishes in 1 turn, craftmanship will take two = one turn of unboosted worker progress. This is meaningless, but oddly annoying. Kabul looks like it's trying to make a move on barb camp. Wilson instructed to hang around and try and poach.

T20
Wilson wouldn't have finished camp off, so I waited one more turn, and Kabul took it. Craftsmanship comes in! Next operation: Early empire (settlers!). Oddly, I received the foreign trade boost (discover second continent) despite this being a Pangaea. Odd. Presumably there's some sort of tectonic simulation and the boundaries of two continents stuck together happens to be near me?


T24 
New York founded. Desert + trees => pyramids => culture city. Will install a theater at some point. Tech path: AH (sheep!), masonry (pyramids!) City numero trois is going to go up by river. Need to expand past that bottleneck.

T26
Worker in position: operation chop til you drop commencing. If a forest is 2 tiles away from a worker, it takes 3 turns (move to forest, move into forest, chop) to chop it. This is again almost meaningless (worker turns are probably a lot less valuable here) but kinda bugs me. Operation only chop contiguous forests is a go.


T27
Chop -> worker, cap starts on new worker. (If you chop an unit to completion, you get it that turn! Cool.) Workers getting more expensive already. Does the price go up every time you make one?


T29
Chop -> worker, farm NY, irri discovered. I have a nice 3 turn worker production cycle set up, which will be good for 5 workers, at which point Early Empire (EE) will come in and we'll switch attention to settlers. The boost for EE is mercifully simple (6 pop total in empire.) 

In other news, marble brings culture. Tea + jade + marble should help us acquire feudalism quickly.

T30
We meet the Chinese (writing boost yay!) Am starting to see a lot of barb scouts sniffing around, so Wilson is recalled for inevitable barb onslaught. I spent 25 gold on a relations boost that appeared to do not that much, then immediately regretted it.


T31
I'm pretty sure that the mid game strat for civ 6 is grow big cities and then abuse industrial zones and campuses. Washington has jade!, tea!, even more tea!, mines!, etc and I'd like to work all of them. Need more housing. Also need to work out how amenities work. No time for granary though - despite pumping out 5 workers in the first 30 turns, there's probably going to be a worker labor shortage soon. Need Pyramids. (Maybe I should have waited for Pyramids before pumping out a billion workers.)

In the long term, feudalism (6 build workers! madness!) should be my next tech goal. I guess I need a campus before 'mids for a Eurkea. This might actually be a better play.


T35
Barb horseman onslaught! On no! Happily, Kabul seems to be lightning rodding for me, but not good. Also, two plantations = 1 free housing. Neat.

T37
2x horseman + 1x horse archer barb incursion beaten off at the cost of Wilson (WILSON COME BACK) but no improvements (the important bit.) Slinger scored a kill, boosting archery. Washington will pause to churn out a warrior, slinger and scout before settler spamming.


T49
Barb shenanigans. Every time I kill a horseman another one spawns in the camp. Insufferable. Keeping the boost train rolling + barb militarization may have delayed my settling glut, but I am not to be denied. We'll have the northern river location (scout's position) settled in a couple of turns, and the lake (northwest) and the silver (by the barb camp) settled by T70.

Chopping workers sucks. Since the chop takes a turn, effectively you're trading 3 turns of capital production for 2 worker improvements. 'Mids would help this ratio considerably. In retrospect, it was a mistake going campus -> 'mids at NY. Should got off the boost train for just that one stop (state workforce). RIP the dream.


T50
In one last burst of hilarity, a final horseman spawns just as I kill the barb camp. Incredible. We find our 3rd city state, which is... blocking us from the north. Who do I have to kill to get some land around here?  Finding Nan Madol boosts Political Philosophy which is infinitely more useful than games and also on the path to feudalism. We divert culture to PP, which means that we can divert from our tech path to construction.

T60
Classical Republic comes in. In retrospect, maybe I should have prioritized it a little more - classical republic gives us boosted settler, worker and wonder production and +2 influence points a turn.

What does the state of the empire look like on T60?

City plans:
Washington: Commerce, neighborhoods, industrial zone. The industrial zone gets a +3 from the mines and quarries. 
NY: I can get a +3 industrial zone (IDK if this is any good. I should probably have planned this better) in addition to the eureka campus. I'll build wonders and install a culture thing too.
Cincinnati: Science: Ludicrous peaks. There's a legitimate +5 science tile. +3 industrial zone. Probably a commerce thing somewhere in here for the trade routes.
LA: +3 industrial zone, encampment, campus using those peaks.
Southern city: +4 industrial zone, positioned to hit NY and Washington. Probably commerce?

The good: We're doing a nice job filling in our little corner of the continent. By T70 we should have 5 cities + 'mids. Granted LA and Cincinnati need a little work, but 4 x 4 worker turns (I'll have 4 workers out + 'mids T65) should clean things up.

The bad: Expansion is going to be annoying. There's 0 fresh water going anywhere I want to go. To the north, we're cut off by mountains and Nan Madol. To the East, there's the sea and Kabul. The Western peninsula is blocked by Jakarta. The south has a lot of fresh water, but it's also a frozen wasteland. Need to find a way past the NW peaks+jungle+hills bottleneck.

Thoughts: In retrospect, I do wonder if a better approach would have been: 1. spam settlers, 2. build industrial zones while culturing to feudalism, 3. 6 turn workers boost i-zones, 4. spam campuses/commerce zones. A +3 i-zone with 6 citizens is 15 production. That's triple most of my cities. 4 +2 campus on 6 citizen cities would triple my tech rate. 

I guess next step is to kinda do that while planting cities past bottleneck (note to self: kill Jakarta, get paid?)

[Ruined Everything]

(EDIT: Ignore deleted wild spec. Misunderstood game mechanics.)

T67
*Looks at previously set goals* Get feudalism. Roger. After that, I'ma rush industrialism for the +2 to mines, and then work like 6 grassland mines each of my city to get 24 bpt. Add a +9 upgraded i-zone to that and I'm looking at 35-40 bpt in NY, Cincinnati, LA, and New Orleans, which is very nice. 40 bpt seems to be the sweet spot for building districts painlessly (< 10 turns.) I've heard that you can share i-zone factory output between cities within 6 tiles. I have no idea to what extent that that's true, but if it is even for factories I can probably get overlap 4 per city, which should punch me up into the mid-50s bpt.

We found a river to the north. Excitement. The settler in the picture will plant on it, and then the trader that Washington is producing will create a route across the mountains for the settler/worker wagon train.

New Orleans founded. It'll chop out a water mill for construction, build an encampment, and then spam military til the end of time.

The 'mids worker boost affects all current workers! I'm keeping the workers in the picture alive until it completes for two extra worker actions. I should have probably have saved more workers.

T80
Only 6 cities, although that's largely because I took 10 turns to create some defence. I'll have 3 more out by T100. I'm also going to try and cram out 3x i-zones, 1xcampus, 1xcommercial zone, walls and another archer by T110, which should boost production and mostly clear the way to industrialism.

Feudalism should be in by now, but I sandbagged on it for 15 turns because I thought Cleopatra would declare war on me (she marched her wariors around my territory for ages) and boost defensive tactics. That didn't happen, and now it's due T102.

Note my research into mysticism. Stupidly, I forgot to check the GP available at the start of the game - there was a stupid cheap great scientist that would have been a free boost for education. Hopefully they will be a medevial scientist which 2x libraries + inspiration + classical governance should secure.

I have at least 5 sites for +4 campuses, which will double my BPT (and then triple after unis.) I can lay down some +6 commercial hubs to balance things out.

Cleopatra is about to claim a +8 (!) commerce hub site. I might backtrack to iron working T100ish, grab a few swords, and claim it for myself. I doubt she has anything that 4-5 swords and a 3-4 crossbowman can't run over.

I have no clue why anyone would build a harbor (+1 per coastal resource? At best that's +3 vs a +4 commercial hub at any bend in the river) or an culture site (+1 per wonder (!) - maybe you can find 2 +4-5 sites (given wonder pre-reqs) on the entire map) apart from the boost train. And even then, instead of spending 600 hammers on 2 culture districts for a measly +8, why not spend 600 beakers on 10 monuments for a +20? Maybe for CVs? 

On aspect of this game I haven't considered a lot are trade routes. A trade route to a city state with a couple districts is worth 3 gpt and 3 bpt (although unless you tactically position the city state, you lose the 'advantage' of roads (mostly useless, unless you have a bunch of mountains.)

Many of these boosts feel pretty minor. I guess that's intensional? Assuming that you boost each tech, no tech apart from future tech is more than 1000 beakers. Generating ~200 beakers/turn (12 cities, +3 campuses average, +12 campus building boost) is probably enough to fly through the tech tree.

[Ruined Everything]

T110

Played a sloppy few turns. Didn't really optimize city production, occasionally wasted research turns (through researching past 50%), in general didn't really think through what I was doing. Chief example: when I got my great scientist, I immediately burned him rather than waiting for a rough patch in the tree, and was rewarded with Mercenaries, Feudalism, and Siege tactics - 2 of which I was posed to get over the next couple turns - argh! 

The state of the empire:

I-zones made a huge difference to my bpt. NY and Cincinnatti got +4 i-zones, and became capable of 4 turn workers and 7 turn settlers respectively. I-zones really do seem to be the key to getting anything built on time. 4 apprenticeship mines, a +4 i-zone and a workshop are the difference between a productive city and a city which takes 15+ turns to build a district. Industrialization (for another +1 to every mine and factories) is only a short distance past apprenticeship down the tech tree. Without making any particular effort I'm pretty sure I'll have it before T150, at which point I can really begin to wield some production.

Natural philosophy (at Recorded History) was huge. I had no idea that this civic existed, but a 100% adjacency boost to science, acting on my +5, +4 and +1 campuses increased my research speed by 50%. Compounding this with five year plan means that a couple well placed +5 campuses produce 20 bpt each from their adjacency bonus, before adding on the effects of their buildings. Most atomic era techs cost less than 1000 beakers each (assuming that you stay on the boost train.) A reasonable strategy for the early game might be trying to rush recorded history while playing 3-4 +4/5 campuses - 40ish beakers per turn on top of your empire is more than enough to rush through the first third of the tech tree.

Gold is pretty plentiful, and I haven't found c-zones as transformational as i-zones or campuses. I've mostly been laying down c-zones on land that's too trashy to support industrial zones or campuses (since basically every city has a river.) I find it pretty hard to do anything interesting with c-zones - they get +2 gold per river (and not per river tile, as I previously thought) and +2 gold per harbor, which means that it's very hard to get anything more than +4 gold out of them. Trade routes are a huge deal in civ6, apparently - I got +1 hpt, +9 gpt (!) from a single trade route to Kabul.

I'm sure I could have gotten more cities out if I'd paid attention over the last 30 turns, but I've been on autopilot for most of them.  I have 9 out right now and 2 more inbound over the next few turns. I-zone infused cities are pretty good at spamming settlers, and there's still (somehow) land available (wonder why? is there a reason that the AI isn't expanding? do they know something I don't?) so I should be able to make up for my lack of adroitness over the next 30 turns.

I haven't seen many wonders that I really want - Pyramids seems to be the only must have. Forbidden city seems pretty good though (more civics!) so I'll probably head to printing after getting industrialization (weird tech order, I guess.)

A close up of the +5 spot by Cincinnati. People looking out for this will have presumably settled here with there second city and then rushed recorded history. I think it's perfectly possible to get the +10 to science very early on (perhaps T50 or so?) A city here and a city near NY in a more beaker oriented position (there was definitely a +4 there had I thought about it) would probably be enough to leave me in the dust tech wise. 

[Ruined Everything]

My old computer crashed, and I didn't back up my Civ6 save.    RIP the dream. Oh well.

If I have the time over the next few days, I might try and play out the game on my new computer. I know it won't count since the map has already been spoiled, but I want to try a true city spam, just to see what happens.

[Ruined Everything]

Dug out save from hard drive. The game can continue.

[BRickAstley]

hooray

[Ruined Everything]

T129
T129, and here's mine glorious empire.

After a bunch of smart campus builds, I can hit any tech I want in about 5 turns. That’s probably not great, but it is enough to put me at double the next best AI, which is good.

Commerce zones + Jakarta are worth 8-10 gold without building markets and the like. A small investment has me making ~50 gold per turn - not good enough to really use the gold buy economy, but good enough to buy a tile once every two to three turns - useful for all my cities.

I’ve hit 10 cities with 2 more on the way. It looks like the map is roughly divided into two halves, separated by two two tile choke points - myself and Egypt on one half of the map, and the remaining 5 civs on the other half. That may have choked the AIs expansion quite a bit - they’ve all been warring among each other over there while I’ve been quietly (and mostly inefficiently) expanding. Japan actually got a kill. Don’t know who on.

Japan and Kongo both declared war on me. This seems like an eminently good idea on their part - if left to develop unchecked I’ll probably tech away with the game (thanks to my great starting location) so it makes perfect tactical sense to try and reel me in and stop my campus/i-zone/commerce zone spam. As you can see, I’ve had to belatedly churn out a bunch of horsemen and crossbowmen to stop their advance.

Provided that I do manage to save my civ, I’m going to try and conquer Egypt with musketmen, and then sweep my army over the remaining civs. I’m going to aim to finish T220 or so. (Note: I think that a very quick finish - maybe T170 or so, is totally possible by overrunning the AI with medieval era units.)


T132
I finally get a pantheon. Not sure how it happened - I somehow seem to be accumulating faith. Curious. Of the pantheons that remain, divine spark would be +5 great scientist points per turn, which is useful, but IDK how much I value great scientists. I’ll be getting a buttload of points from all the libraries I’m building anyway. Production is always nice, but I have no fishing boats (god of the sea), I’m not really working marshes, passes and floodplains (lady of the reeds and marshes), and in my empire I have one (!) mine-able strategic resource - iron. 

Faith might be useful for great people, but I’m winning the races to great scientists/engineers/merchants, and the great artist (which I want for humanism) is in the Renaissance era and costs 2550 faith, which isn’t happening.

That leaves culture. As it happens I have loads of pastures (God of the open sky) and luxury resources (God of oral tradition). A quick count suggests that I have more luxury resources, and oral tradition is optimal.


T133
I have 8 build builders (see picture below.) I have no idea how this happened (maybe hitting the Renaissance era added 2 more builds) but this is the best thing ever.

T136
Rome backstabs Kongo. Rome and Kongo panic and asks for peace. I extort 170 gold and 1 gpt. Very nice. The brief peace, of course, means the demise of Cleopatra. I have double Cleo’s military strength, 4 times her research, and double her researched techs. She’s going down.

T138
At this point I’m powerful enough that the rest of the world probably has to kill me if they want to win. The good news is that thanks to the two map chokepoints I can leave a small force by Japan and be pretty safe from any military sneak attacks. That means that I can eliminate Hong Kong without worrying about diplomatic repercussions - there all gonna die anyway. I wish I didn’t have to, but Egypt is Hong Kong’s suzerain and I don’t want Hong Kong marauding around my defenseless flank. If I wipe out Hong Kong (and probably Jerusalem) I should be able to prosecute my war with Egypt in peace.

I screwed up the boost train for once in my game - both exploration and industrialization are important enough that it wasn’t worth delaying on them. I did manage to synchronize them - the moment I get both I’ll swap into the 100% boost for Renaissance units and churn out a bunch of crossbowmen. I wish I had a second iron for knights. Hmm.

T145
There’s so much good land on this continent, IDK if I’ll be able to settle it all. I just realized that Hong Kong, is not, in fact, under Egypt’s control. Argh. It’s gonna take me another 10 turns to reposition all of my forces against Egypt. After that, Egypt is dead. 

I’ve discovered there’s a 100% commercial hub and 100% i-zone adjacency bonus at guilds! Another 4 hammers across my best production cities sounds very nice. NY can pump out settlers once every 7 turns, so I’m going to have Washington and NY alternate between settlers and workers for the next dozen turns. With Egypt and Jerusalem, I want to see if I can hit 20 cities by T200.

With industrialism mines, and (soon) +100% i-zone adjacency bonus, NY will hit 30 hpt. A workshop and a factory will get it up to 40 hpt. With 4 overlapping factories, NY could be looking at 60-70 hpt before the game ends. (Incidentally, I hit the industrial era 6-7 turns ago, and I just received word that Rome is entering the Medevial era. If I can take out Japan I think the rest of the AIs will fall quite quickly.)

I notice there's saltpeter over by Cleopatra. That plus the Saltpeter at the chokepoint by Japan should allow every city to spam Rough Riders. Cav rampage ftw. State of the empire:

[Ruined Everything]

T175
I invaded Egypt. I wish I had pictures, but I don’t. Everyone immediately did the sensible thing and denounced me for warmongering. Too late guys. Should have tried to stop me 50 turns ago. Now you’re dead.

I sacked everything in sight with a wave of horsemen and a single musketman - the crossbows couldn’t keep up. I lost a couple horsemen, but such is the price we pay. The only city that I had trouble with was Egypt’s last city, which had a defense of 40, and butchered any calvary that got close. Unfortunately for Cleopatra, I’d already wiped out most of her army at that point, so I was able to shuffle my army around 3 tiles away from the city (i.e. out of the city’s range), move everything in at once, and overwhelm it.   

When it was clear that Cleopatra wasn’t going to put up a fight, I started a brush war with Japan to try and burn off his army. My field cannons one shot all of Japan’s ancient era units. It was very satisfying. Unfortunately, most of his army (like 10 units) was off chasing one of my scouts, and I didn’t get to kill them. This is what the front line looks like.

My siege towers are still up in Egypt and will take almost 20 turns to get down, sadly, so I’m probably going to see if I can blast Kyoto with my cannons.

How quickly am I going to be able to win? Japan has just two cities - Japan’s capital and China’s capital (Japan wiped out China very early on (bad historical implications), which I should certainly be able to capture before T200. If I can fight the last four civs two at a time after that, I should be able to beat each of them in 25 turns, and finish around T250 or so. Not a great finish date, but certainly quicker than waiting around for space or culture.

[Ruined Everything]

T208
So. Uh. I may have underestimated the tactical implications of having 5 move strength 62 units when the other guy has 2 move strength 30 units.

Japan had a legit mini ancient age carpet of doom. It didn't matter - I spent 4-5 turns killing units moving from Japan's capital to China's (old) capital, and then took that. I wasted a good ten turns playing cautiously before I realized that they couldn't actually do anything to me, and then I just started moving from city to city. 

5 turn units are a glorious thing. If you see a big clump of enemy units ahead, your army can skip 10 hexes over two turns and take the city behind them before they can catch up. Tactical positioning is a non-issue - your units can skip from city to city without any great finesse or skill. After I got into the swing of things, Japan, Kongo and Rome evaporated.

This isn't to suggest any skill on my part. It's hard to lose with 5 turn kill-everything units.

Of special note: in the modern era any unit becomes a 5 move boat. Even field cannons can blitzkrieg in civ6! I used my cavs to take the lightly defended cities, while ferrying my artillery up the cost to crack enemy 'strong holds' (Rome had a lot of legions.) I liked the gameplay here a lot - if you only have 10-12 units, civ 6 warfare can be very satisfying.

After another 30-odd turns of derping around, I got myself into this situation:

(I've made it a little bigger than usual so you can make everything out.)

First - tech rate. I've hit over 322 bpt. Future tech is 2050 beakers. I can research any atomic era tech I want in under 7 turns. Ignore the radio research - I'm beeling to Synthetic Materials to upgrade my cavs into helis. 

In general, my economic strategy this game has been spamming small cities and purposely limiting size to size 7 or so. IDK if my logic makes any sense, but I'm going to lay it out anyway.

Apart from mines, the vast majority of hammers, beakers and gold will come from i-zones/campuses/c-zones/harbors. These four districts (and trade routes) vastly outweigh the effects of working map tiles in the late game (although not the early game, which is why the map is relevant.) Assuming a limited number of amenities, I think its more efficient to support a new city which can build another campus for more bpt than to grow an existing city another 7-10 sizes and work more tiles. The more cities you have (and the closer you pack them), the more you can benefit from factories/power plant stacking bonuses.

The exception to this might be in the late game, where new cities won't have time to build districts or their late game upgrades - wasting hammers put into settlers/fresh districts.

Given the value of districts, conquest is extremely good in civ6. In civ4, even on low difficulty, I always noted a lag between when I conquered territory and when it became a net positive for my empire. Since late game districts are *so* good, capturing one intact makes this city an immediate (certainly once you've been ceded it) net positive to your economy. Being ceded a university is an instant 16bpt or so (assuming you have both campus civics) - a nice boost to research when you only need ~300 bpt to 7-turn future tech. 

The limiting factor is, of course, amenities, but I think keeping your city sizes small helps you manage them. I have 29 cities currently, I've built exactly 2 entertainment districts (and, granted, the Colosseum), and only one or two cities actually have a -1.

This all is probably non-optimal. Would love to hear reasons why this doesn't really work!

Edit: One reason that this is non-optimal: you can generate stacking bonuses from amenity districts as well as production districts, blowing open your amenities cap.

[Ruined Everything]

T208 cont
On the gold front, I never quite made enough gold for the rush buy economy to work, but I made enough gold to upgrade my army pretty efficiently. I never worked out how to hand build modern units efficiently. There was a period of time around T80 before I had cavs/crossbows where I could 2-3 turn horsemen and archers, though. I spammed a ton of horsemen, and the bulk of my army is just that spam upgraded into field cannons and cavs. 

I do need to end this game. I have two last AIs to kill - Elizabeth on the Western coast of the continent, and Saladin up in the arctic ice. Saladin only has two cities, relatively close together, which should be good for a cav romp after I finally get my army up there. Elizabeth, on the other hand, threw out a few crappy size 2-3 cities on the western shore that I have no real desire to conquer. 

Unfortunately, of course, conquering a capital isn't good enough - I have to get Elizabeth to cede it, or I have to obliterate her. My plan is to take Elizabeth's only two good cities and see if she'll cede her capital to me. If she does everything is great - I'll throw all of my troops in boats and go attack Saladin. If she doesn't, I'll send my cavs off to kill Saladin, and then sail my infantry and cannons down the coast bombarding everything in sight. As a mini-challenge, I'm going to try and wrap things up by T225.

Edit: Scooter very kindly corrected me on this game mechanic. All I need to do is take London and Cario. The new plan is just to boat Elizabeth and Saladin's capitals.