OK, turnset finished. Sorry for the time required, but these turns took a while with constant barb whack-a-mole and then fun with Rome. I will try to summarize rather than do a wall-o-text stream of consciousness
Main event was shifting our forces west to block Julius' stack. He continued west and I decided to block him on the hills southwest of Flimbo's Quest:
Our stack is just east of the old 'Filler' sign. I did not want to let Julius get into the hills, in case he then tried to go west towards Can't Get Ye or Jungle Strike where we would have a harder time using our roads to block him.
Rome decided to throw the stack at us on the hill, opening with cats.
We lost: 1 samurai, 1 axe, 1 spear, 1 crossbow
Julius lost: 5 cats, 3 elephants, 3 crossbows
He had a bunch of injured units left on the forested hill, but only the badly wounded praetorian got any defensive bonus. With more Roman troops coming along behind, I decided to counter-attack immediately to try to clean up the wounded units before he could cover them or retreat. We got a couple lucky rolls, but mostly we had good odds. We killed:
5 knights
2 elephants
1 praetorian
4 cats
Without losing any units during the counter attack.
Overall we killed 23 Roman units while losing 4.
We now have a ton of wounded units, but our super medic should fix that quickly. Julius has three or four units following along, but this particular attack has been smashed.
Julius is still ahead of us in power:
This is not yet including the counter-attack, so that drop is from his losses attacking us; it will fall further next turn. Here are the demos for the current values:
Rome is still ahead of us, 690K to 571K. So he may have yet another stack to send our way. But we have hurt him pretty badly, crushing one stack earlier in my turnset and now this stack. He has lost more than 30 units in the last 10 turns, including a lot of expensive knights and elephants.
Other items of note:
- Mansa Musa built the Statue of Zeus. I am just glad Julius does not have it.
- Our explorers in the west have revealed a fair bit of Willem's and Shaka's lands, including this interesting bit:
I don't know if Shaka conquered Nijmegan or flipped it by culture, but Willem lost it somehow.
And here is Shaka's commerce center:
Double gold mines.
How are you in last place with land like that, Shaka?
Current diplomatic situation:
We are not very popular, although Gilgamesh is pleased with us. And poor Mansa, hating the entire world.
Known techs:
Note that Julius has Engineering; watch out for faster road movement if he gets back onto his road network. Aesthetics and Philosophy are pretty widely known.
For our own tech, breakeven research is between 10-20%, closer to 10%.
Guilds would take about 20 turns currently if we burned through our cash, more like 25 at a sustainable rate. Engineering would be pretty similar if we prefer that instead; nothing has been invested in either tech.
I have a bunch of infrastructure projects going at the moment: courthouses, forges, a couple Hindu buildings for the AP bonus hammers. A couple cities (Goldeneye, Streets of Rage) need worker attention, but most have been focusing on getting more commerce with cottages. Also windmills have replaced mines at cities where we do not have enough food to work the hammers and grow.
Hinduism has been spread to more of our cities, and we could control the AP if we made it our state religion for double votes. Our influence still trails Mansa's since he is Hindu, but we are getting close to being able to block proposals we do not like.
And here is a look at the border regions. First the northeast near Wolfenstein and Cholo:
I marked a potential spot for deer and the other two furs. Not a priority as we have hooked up the one fur tile in our culture. There is another deer to the northeast, but not much else. Note the line of mountains plus lake that cuts off access to the northeast without going through Mansa. That may have caused more barbs to head south and hit him, which might explain some of his troubles.
And here is the central north:
Some potential here, particularly the silver and the wheat. (Sonic the Hog has grown large enough to have unhealthiness.) Lot of open space to guard against barbs, though. Maybe some day.
Here is the western northern region near former Inca territory:
I am not sure who built that road, including the bit in the forest to the west. There are some resources in this area, and the former Inca city ruins look pretty good: iron, sheep, and a flood plain that somehow snuck into this highlands map.
Maybe a corn/sheep city north of Golden Axe as well. It would cost us some money, but cutting down the barb spawns would be useful. They continued to hit us with multiple units spawning and moving in every turn.
- There are still some units un-moved, but others have moved as I killed barbs and counter-attacked Julius' stack. You may want to cover the horse archer there with other units, or maybe not.
- We spawned another great general from fighting Julius, so we now have 2 available to use somehow, somewhere.
- Also, Gilgamesh is willing to trade stone if we want it. Not sure what we might use it for, and he may want a lot for it, but it is available if we want to make a try at a wonder or build super-super-cheap walls.
Roster is a mass of confusion right now.
Good luck to whomever is next!