There are a number of immediate and very short term items that I need to put into place quickly. These are:
- grow my cities to size 6 so that I can build workers - I put the city manager in control and tell him to maximize food in each city. This actually helps my commerce as cities start to work two food (2F) tiles and not work 2 hammer (2H) tiles - 2F tiles usually have commerce while 2H tiles don't
- I disband all my warriors - each city has at least 2 archers and that will just have to be enough for now
- I build scouts (5 of them) to scout out the land that I currently don't know - I need to know the relative size of each civilization's holding so that I can judge who will have the most population, who will have border tension, etc. It also helps if you know all the civilizations for tech research (assuming that I am way behind in tech)
- I change the tech to Code of Laws for courthouses and their reduced city maintenance
With all of these changes, I can actually run at 30% science with a -3 gold per turn (gpt).
On the religious front - three of my 7 cities have the Jewish religion while I don't currently have a state religion. In 150AD, Buddhism spreads to one of my cities.
This is very welcome news as Saladin is Jewish and Hatty is Buddha and means that I can spread both of these religions to all my cities. The major benefits of this are happiness (I don't have many happiness resources - a major theme of this game) and being able to align myself with the right religion for civilization relations and voting blocks. Shortly after that, Hinduism is founded in a distant land and Julius Ceasar converts to Hindu. Surely JC didn't research that tech - he is usually after totally different tech than that - is there another civilization out there that I haven't met yet? There are certainly places on the map that aren't revealed - judging by the 'Wonder X has been built in a far away land' messages that I am getting. This usually (or is it always?) means that it was built in a city that you don't know about yet. Thus my scouting parties. The down side of the scouts is that they are a drain on my economy and bring it back to -1 gpt @0% (ie deficit).
In 250AD, I met Mansa Musa to my West, west of Elizabeth and North of JC. Saladin is to my SW, Hatty to my South and Qin to my East. Saladin also has one city to my North (ex barb city?) and one city to my East (taken from Barbs during my play). The current religion spread is ...
- Saladin - Jewish
- Hatty - Buddha
- Mansa - Hindu
- Me - nothing
- Qin - Buddha
- Elizabeth - Jewish
- Julius Ceasar - Hindu
I don't want to swap to a religion until I am fairly sure who will be my voting buddy and who will be my opponent.
From the above placements and religious relationships it is fairly obvious that JC is going to hate Elizabeth but not necessarily the other way around - she is fairly religion tollerant. Mansa can get on well with most people while Saladin and Hatty will place a high value on religion. Qin will just go with the flow. In fact, JC comes calling and demands that I cancel trading with the English - decession time! From what I currently know of the map, JC is in a horrid starting location - not much room to expand and what room there is to expand is mainly desert. As such, his population will never be very high and thus he will not have many votes. Elizabeth, on the other hand has the same religion as one of my possible voting buddies, has some fertile land and will accumulate some votes. With that review, it is fairly easy to say NO to JC, and assign him to the 'NOT VOTING FOR ME' camp. This means that I will never do what he says, I will never trade with him, never talk to him, help others against him - basically, he is a pariah as far as I am concerned.
Back on the home front, the worker-less home front that is ... Saladin has obviously got sick of me not building workers and connecting his town to my North with his main holdings. Thus he sends in a swarm of road building workers ...
You can also see from this picture that I am breaking even @ 0%, CoL is 410 turns away and I have build my own workers. In fact, I now have 8 of the little wonders! I have also mapped the entire continent and deleted my money draining scouts - they did their job!
The workers go cottage crazy and cottages start springing up on all flood plains and grass plains - any square that can support its own (ie 2F). They also improve all the resources that I have (pastures, farms, etc) and start the process of roading the country. I convert Toledo (located in the South West of my lands) to a Great Person farm by farming all of the grass tiles (at its height, I can run 6 scientists here). These GP scientists were a big part of my research for some techs. I send a worker to mind gold for the extra commerce and find that I don't even know how to mine (duh). He builds a road instead.
760AD is crunch time in the Grand Scheme ...
Hmmn ... convert and have minuses from Hattie or not convert and have an 'almost' permanent minus from Saladin. In the end, I convert to Judaism and become fast friends with Saladin and Elizabeth. Well, I am such fast friends, then I should be able to get something out of this friendship (isn't that the normal practice - what can I get out of this friendship, not what do I bring to this friendship). I know that this doesn't work very often but, nothing ventured, nothing gained ... I dial Saladin back up and ask him for Monotheism - and he gives it to me - Woohoo! Lets try that again, I dial Lizzie up and ask for Mining ... and ... she gives it too me. This game is too easy! This is great - that gold hill can now be mined.
My economy is currently break even @ 40% (760AD) but I will be running the rest of the game using the Binary Science method. I do this for two reasons - I want to think about the tech to research next and I want to have gold handy for quick upgrades (if required). My city build order is military, building, military, building, etc. There are a few cities that will never grow to much, not have much commerce and so they are almost on a permanent military build.
In 900AD, I complete Code of Laws, courthouses start going up in all cities and my economy is -6 at 40%.
End of Part 1 ... UN Tech Check - 2 down, 17 to go.