One of the downsides about waring with Mansa was the following ... my 3rd Great Merchant was sitting in Delhi waiting until next turn to give me 1300 gold. During the 'in between times', I was informed that he had lost a battle with a Caravel ... WTF! He wasn't on the water ... what is going on here ...
Hmmn - that is two things that I will learn from this game ... resources have to be on the same land mass as your city and you can lose Great People / units if they are 'hiding' in another civ's city ... well, these lessons cost me a monster commerce city and 1300 gold ... do you think I will learn these lessons. As an aside, what do people think about learning lessons via being told something v experiencing them? You know, the classic ... "Don't touch that, it is hot" v Touch it and get a burn! I had, and still do, think that learning by experience certainly means that the lesson sticks while being told something is good but doesn't stick as much. This experience certainly supports this view.
My scouting workboats found nearly everyone ... it took me a while to actually meet Mao ... I know where he was, I just couldn't get close enough or his borders wouldn't pop enough for me to meet him ... speaking of scouting workboats, one of their downside is that they don't stand a chance against barbarians ... I lost one via from that development.
These early wars needed units and I had build a stack of, a very large stack of, maces and cats. Just look at this power graph ... and I must say that this is extremely unusual for me ... normally, I am towards the bottom on this graph ...
The big advantage of having a power graph like this is that you can throw your weight around ... this was another source of revenue you for me ... taking the AIs gold ... "I demand that you give me 600 gold!".
Time passes, my score slowly increases and I monitor the AIs score ... both Mansa and Catherine haven't really recovered from the mauling I gave them, however, the other AIs are growing fairly consistantly. I check their number of cities and find that most of them have exceeded their 6 city limit ... thus breaking the game rules and turning me from the mild Alex into the Enforcer Alex ... game rules must be followed by everyone!
Just to show you that I am following the rules ...
But before I can bring out the yellow card (infringement / warning) and red card (penalty / dismissal), I find that Catherine is bothering one of my cities ... this will not do!
I think I mentioned previously that I might have forgotten something ... indeed I did ... OIL. This was to be my tech leverage and I had founded all of my cities, leaving none spare to found when I discovered Oil. Luckily for me ...
Yippee ... distroyers and transports here I come. This enabled me to put into play a Modified Sirian Doctrine - removal of all cities on the AIs first island. This is aimed at reducing their power, population and hence score ... here you can see that I have applied this to Spain and China and that America and India were still to be 'visited' ... Unluckily for Catherine, the MSD wasn't going to cut it ... she got eliminated.
