Now, getting back to founding a few cities. Here is an earlier screenshot before Rostov is founded.
Rostov ends up being on Orange Dot which means that I cannot place a city on my indicated spot. However, I can place a city on Blue Dot and seals the other lands off from me (no open borders). So, I need open borders with Peter to get my settler there - run him along the Blue line and settle Blue Dot. (Aside: Well, I could ship him there on a galley but I just thought of that ... didn't think of it during the game.) For the first time, I sign an Open Border agreement with a civ and gain access to that city location. I wait until I have a settler hard against the Russian borders, sign OB and then rush him onto that spot and found the city (Marseilles). I cancel OBs 10 turns later (minimum agreement length) but Peter fails to take advantage and get a settler through to the unsettled NorthWest. In 400AD, I finish researching Philosophy and Taoism is founded in Marseilles - thus putting pressure on Rostov, St Petersburg (and a Monty city that I only realized was under pressure much later in the game). In 560AD, I burn my first Great Person Artist by merging him with Marseilles ...
As you can see, Rostov is under considerable cultural pressure ... it is only a matter of time before this city flips to me. Lets follow this city and see what happens.
Rostov is getting hammered from one side by Tours and from the other by Marselles (holy city plus a merged Artist) - both minimum distance from Rostov (3 tiles). In 1010AD, things just get tougher in that little city when I merge my second Artist into Tours ...
And then finally in 1320AD ...
It is amazing the number of units I picked up when cities flipped in this game ... I even ended the game with some muskets. I think the strongest unit I actually build was an archer.
The 'attack' on Rostov was the game plan that I utilized for the majority of the game ... squeeze cities near the front, get all my religions into them, build wonders in them and grow them. My tech path was heading all the way to Radio (radio towers for culture multiplier), Biology (extra food for quick growing and extra big cities) and the other modern wonder enabling techs. I inched the culture slider up to 20% after Biology and then pushed it to 60% while researching Medicine and other techs. The tech rate finally got pushed all the way down around 1950 when I got a Great Priest and could build another one of my shrines ... I was running 100% culture at +23 gold per turn (even better near then end when back room cities were building cash - see some screen shots below).
Anyway, that is getting ahead of myself. Here is the game situation in 1725AD. The French barrier has been up for 1000s of years and I have started to fill in the Northern hinterlands. I needed extra cities to claim the tiles (naturally) but also to build religious temples to open up the cultural religion building multipliers. These, naturally, go in the border cities to put maximum pressure on the AIs cities. Here is the situation as it stands ...
