I really need that permanent alliance set up pronto. The way forward with permanent alliances is (and I have had a fair amount of experience with this) to select a target future partner and be their bestest buddy (good trades, shared religion, shared wars, well choosen civics, no trading with worst enemy, give in to all demands, etc. Then get a defensive pact (Military Tradition) with your 'target' and move onto one of the two techs that gives a permanent alliance option (communism or facism). You need about 40 turns between the defensive pact and the permanent alliance. There are a few other spanners (for the american's in the audience ... wrenches) that can be thrown in the works, but that is about it. Thus I (sort of beelined my tech to Military Tradition and then onto Communism. The plan is that I will be auto-backfilling all the missing techs when I sign the permanent alliance (civs in a team share tech).
Well, a series of trades with my 'partners', both Alex and Catherine (haven't decided who will be my future partner yet), city expansion, some wonders (Stonehenge in 1600BC, The Hanging Gardens in 275AD), The Kashi Vishwanath (Hindu shrine) in 775BC, academy in Mecca in 475BC, etc resulted in this situation by 660AD...
I had also managed to get Catherine to convert to my religion (Hindu) but 
Alex had founded Christianity and I couldn't convert any of his
cities. I had also met one other team (Victoria, Mansu Musa and Huayna
Capac). By 1150, I had also met the other team (Gandhi, Roosevelt,
Napoleon and Bismarck) ... they were all Jewish!
Now the teams are very obvious ... 4 over on the right, 3 down the bottom and me with either Alex or Catherine. I think that, at this stage, I was heading to a partnership with Catherine. Its interesting that some of the team members have different relationships with me. Unfortunately, you have to control your relationship with each individual civ.
Here is the graphs of our little world ...
[I have a 1.7 second delay on the frames here, please let me know if this is too slow or too fast]
Comments on these graphs
- score, not to bad, trailing but mainly due to tech
- GNP, got to say that I am fairly happy with that, given my typical GNP graph
- food and production, in the pack
- power, oops
I was surprised that some wonders were open to me. I think this is a function of my very focused tech path ... I was beelining to the defensive pact while other civs were more, well ... how to say it, well rounded? Anyway, I had the space to complete ...
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I started to back fill my land to the north, picking up additional happiness and health resourses, score and production capability. Then in 1370AD, I was contacted by Catherine offering me a defensive pact!
Well, this is where I was heading and I had just enabled this arrangement with the discovery of Military Tradition but I haven't even had the tech splash screen yet. Obviously, Catherine was watching what I was doing. We also swapped maps ... but it didn't reveal that much. And here is where I probably made a mistake ... I should have tried to sign others to a defensive pact but I was thinking that the DP was just a stepping stone to a mutual alliance, thus I only signed with Catherine. I then went back and filled in some military techs like Iron Working.