That took care of the war front and my improving relationships with Monty (shared religion) took away that threat for the rest of the game. Victoria settled a city in my FloodPlains, so I had to go and tell her what for. Razed that city and set some axes on a forested hill between some mountains, thus, effectively stoping her from actually attacking me. In 450AD (turn 133), I signed peace with Saladin (he gave me 50 gold) and Victoria (she gave me 40 gold) and that was the end of all wars until my domination push many many years later. I had actually forgotten that Saladin declared on me and felt bad that I had to declare on him for a few tiles of land. I don't feel so bad now!
I had finished the Pyramids ages ago, along with the Great Library and started to chase some wonders: Hanging Gardens and Parthenon. I pulled off a few trades (eg Code of Laws plus compass to Monty for Currency, Monarch and 100 gold) and headed to Astronomy (hello New World). My empire was growing slowly and employing a bunch of representation fueled scientists. Nearly every Great Person I got was settled in the capital. Looking back on this, a little bit of smoke with later Great Scientists as I probably had a few cities that could have yielded more beakers via an academy ... oh well.
In 1220AD (turn 182), the first Galleon rolled off the chocks and was ready to take passangers to the New World. Sure, we didn't actually know where this New World was, but we are Chinese - we explore. The shipyards at Xian were in almost constant galleon production for the remainder of the game. The first galleon carried an explorer (hut popping), a mace (protection) and a settler (new city). The rest of China started to pump archers for holding these new cities against the expected barbarians and maces / cats for taking their cities.
After firing the obviously drunk captain, it sailed around the top of Japan and diagonally South-East (and hoped to hit land soon). A few map trades and we learnt about the Western sure of the New Land but not the Eastern. I hadn't even put out any Cavarals, just went straight to Galleons. In 1300AD (turn 190), I had my +1 ship movement circumnavigation bonus. I also had a city in the New World, future site of the Forbidden Palace. My economy was +4 at 20% but able to research Education in about 7 or 8 turns. Oh yes, Monty had declared on America. My scouting explorer (New World) had found a few goodie huts (one day I will pop a future tech from these) and managed to geet a few gold and a few maps. Unfortunately, there were barbarian warriors / archers protecting some huts and the explorer couldn't pop these. The chicken-shit warriors / archers would not take on the explorer so he just mapped out the New World. Later troops moved those barbarians on and popped the huts for ... HOSTILE VILLAGES ... actually, HOSTILE WARRIORS.
I founded my second city in The New World (TNW) and this proved to be a mistake. Running a specialist economy means using great people for tech, farms and very little or no cottages. That means that dialing up or down your tech rate has very little impact on your tech rate (ie no speeding up tech to rush a tech like liberalism). It also means that it has very little impact on your balance of payments (little scope to move coin from beakers to gold. Thus my economy was at 0 gold in the bank at -32 per turn (0% science). Fortunately, I had seen this coming and had headed towards economics for the free Great Merchant. I sold a few techs to get a few more turns of moneyand then sent the Great Merchant on a mission to Huayna. With 1 gold in the back and still at -28 (0% science) I was able to complete the mission for 1500 gold. A few turns later, both of my TNW cities completed courthouses to slow the bleeding.
This also enabled me to dial up my tech rate (racing with Victoria) to get Liberalism. Selected Nationalism as the free tech. While this was going on, my TOW cities were churning cats, maces and the killer chinese unit Cho-Ko-Nu. These actually proved pretty devistating. It really helped when I won attack after attack against Barb longbows at 32%. Kill the long bow AND do collateral damage - beautiful. After I saw a few of those, I stopped sending maces, just Cho-Ko-Nu.
In 1565 (turn 223), Monty finally killed off America. That single city war took 33 turns. Ok, 10 turns go get there and ... He just did not send enough cats. And he razed the city. Also, around that time, I had mapped out the Southern part of TNW. I've also got about half of my TOW <==> TNW Berlin style cargo shuttle going. Its 7 turns from TOW to the TNW, so with 14 galleons, I can run a continuous circuit. I finally ship all the workers, settlers and battle units to TNW using only 11 Galleons. It would have been nice having the full 14 galleons and then to get the shuttle going full flight. I would have had them cycling back and forth even if they were empty. It would just have looked wonderful.
