[SPOILERS] Shoot Plays Another Restricted Diplo Game

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Update?

[Shoot the Moon]

Sorry, I've been really busy. I'll try to throw together an update when I next see the save, but long story short is skirmishers with road access >> chariots in my culture. I took back my city and am now putting some skirms in Sian's land to scout out any future attacks and generally harass him. Also starting to build some settlers as expansion is now overdue seeing as I had to build something like 5 skirms and 3 chariots unnecessarily.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Hopefully things will slow down for you soon. As you were!

[Shoot the Moon]

Just signed a peace treaty with Sian (right after snagging two of his workers). Time to go and crash my economy by settling three new cities.

Sorry for lack of screenshots, hopefully this weekend.

[Shoot the Moon]

Quick update: I researched sailing to get intercontinental trade routes (an exploring WB has contacted both thestick and Nakor now) and immediately boosted my research from 30% breakeven to 50%. I am now going to go to currency, and then monarchy. In essence, I am focusing on increasing my tech rate because that is what is currently limiting my expansion rate, which I want to keep high.

Also, just founded my eighth city. First to that mark I believe (unless it is Mackoti--I have contact with everyone else). I am now #1 in land and tied for top pop except for Mackoti (who I can't see yet on the victory screen). Basically the plan from here out is to keep boosting the tech rate to allow for further expansion. Also going to produce a GS for my capital.

[BRickAstley]

How's it going? Empire spreading wide and doing well?

[Shoot the Moon]

How's it going? Empire spreading wide and doing well?

Sorry, was just waiting for the mixup in the tech thread to get sorted out. That being said, I think it's been a little more exciting than you might have expected:



I also apparently forgot to take a screenshot of it, but I also captured Sian's island city that was near me as well (that one was razed). I'm also set up with this stack to attack Franks next turn:



That's what Sian gets for leaving his border cities defended literally by a lone chariot. Revenge is a dish best served cold I must say. Also nice because the former city of Saxonnes is a lot better of a defensive front for me (previously Sian had a very easy fork on my two front cities).

Anyhow, I didn't take any empire wide screenshots, but here's some demographics:





I've had a lead in crop yield for a long while now which has hovered around 125% of second place pretty consistently. This comes from the fact that I was far and away the first into monarchy (everyone else favoring calendar on this map) which I have pushed into vertical growth and a large pop lead (I've been above 20% to second places ~15% of pop for a while now). With most of those pop working cottages, I hope soon that pays off. Obviously need to wait for a lot of those cottages to improve past 2/0/1, but once they do I should be in a nice position.

I am now currently debating tech path. As you can see I picked up machinery, mostly to open up macemen to ward off any Sian counterattacks. I am now considering whether to head to guilds for knights (only fuedalism and guilds itself away) for use either against Sian or musicman (who is behind), or to head for music to great artist bomb one of the big central islands and control it. The latter option seems a bit more appealing at this point honestly, but that's not set in stone. The other obvious option is to head for liberalism, but I think I may go with one of the other two. I should remind myself to check if anyone can trade maps though to see if they've gotten paper yet.

Oh, finally, forgot to mention it, but I also got the circumnavigation bonus, which was very helpful in razing Sian's island city.

[Shoot the Moon]

God damn this game moves ridiculously slowly. I've seen only one turn since I posted that summary a week ago!

[BRickAstley]

Goodness. I just saw that post now though, so thanks for it.

[Shoot the Moon]

Oh yeah, should mention I captured Franks. He moved everything out of it except a spear (which somehow my axe died against...)

He's now throwing stuff into Teutones (I'll get pictures up next turn). Probably too much for me to attack the city, but I'm planning to instead fork Teutones and his capital to split his defenders. Sian is 2t from Feud though (I put EP spending at 10% to get his research visibility) so pretty soon this war is going to stalemate. Hopefully I'll have gotten rid of Teutones and its culture by that point.