[SPOILERS] Seven Isabellas of India

[SevenSpirits]

Captured Nicomedia and Nicaea with the loss of 3 cannons. (Garrisons were as pictured before, plus 2 rifles each and maybe a couple extra muskets.) Cannons are just really strong. I didn't bombard at all, just attacked. Got a great general, unfortunately in the capital. He's started walking over since I would like to have a super-medic. Next push probably goes southwest of Nicaea, to Gaul, which is Nakor's best non-island city.

Oh, and my next GP was a scientist. (I already have one, waiting for a golden age consort.) Steam Power is in, and I decided to go for scientific method next. It's absurd how bad it is for me, obsoleting great library, temple of artemis, and a bunch of monasteries. But all the techs beyond it look really good, especially with the free great people...

[SevenSpirits]

So I researched Science, then double-bulbed Physics with the scientists and finished it the following turn. So now I have only one scientist, but he can fly around in a zeppelin. Which seems like a good trade to me. Next I'm resesarching Communism which gives me a spy for a golden age in combination with the scientist. No big news on the war front. My army has finally moved up next to Gaul, so I assume the slaughter will commence next turn. Nakor has also been harassing a bit with some cataphracts. I lost a mace and a rifle, but killed three phracts. Not the delightful kill ratio I get with cannons vs city garrisons but perfectly fine given that I have much more power than Nakor and half his units are trapped uselessly on islands.

[SevenSpirits]

t200!

It's been about 20 turns since the last picture (and 13ish since the last post - I just came out of the scientist-spy golden age). In that timespan I've more than doubled my number of cities and finally overcome my historically terrible land area. Things basically look unloseable at this point. Politically speaking, I have a NAP with Lewwyn for another 50 turns, Nakor will be eliminated in about 5 turns, and Ruff-AI a few after that, as soon as I can spare the galleons in Nakor's territory.

My core (for most of the game, my only cities):


Southern conquests:


Northern conquests:


Overview:


About 10 of the new cities were settled, not conquered. Jowy/Ruff had some poor city placement and infrastructure, so I razed a couple there just to make better use of the resources. And Nakor spaced his cities way far apart, with room to squeeze in more between them. Delightfully, new cities are all immediately profitable as distance maintenance is moot via Communism, number-of-cities maintenance is capped at 6, and trade routes immediately add 7-13 commerce (more for coastal cities, of course). Then on top of that they get to work amazing tiles - even non-resource tiles are immediately great now with +1/+2/+2 watermills and biology farms.

Here's an example of a city that languished forever under Jowy/Ruff, as it has no food resources and was never given a single farm, now extremely productive:


I kinda like the industrial era now, actually.

Some info screens:




50-turn demos:







The only thing I'm actually behind in is population. (Not just the silly demographic, but also the real total.) This is partly because I drafted and whipped the living daylights out of my empire not too long ago. But I'm catching up really quickly due to biology, and once the severe war weariness (~10 in big cities) with Nakor is gone in a few turns, things will be even better.

Oh, I also got Sankore a bit ago, just finished the Kremlin, and am now working on the Spiral Minaret. I can't use Monasteries any more, but a temple in every city makes for a lot of gold.

[spacemanmf]

Impressive empire and great update.