But before I get into that, I need to put a cork in the Isabella to stop her wine from spoiling my expansion plan. Thus my 5th city was placed to limit her expansion. My 4th was put on my main land in the North and slowly, oh so slowly, built the Moa Statues - this city really came into its own when these were complete - about to knock out vital Carracks in a few turns.
When this city's borders expand, Isabella will be contained. I don't ever open borders with her, so she is stuck. Unfortunately, this cork was a little bit leaky, mainly on the South side but it did limit her expansion into my arena. It had some impact on Suleiman but there turned out to be a Northern route so he settled some cities on the icey island in the far North.
My tech selection flipped between those required for Optics and those designed to help me get to Optics (alphabet, code of laws, civil service). I met Williem van Oranje in turn 163 (155BC) who proved to be a good tech trader.
My cities were focused on Settler and galley spamming - with a heavy concentration on Settlers. This was one game where I never build accompaning defenders for the settler (see later). However, I did build missionaries to accompany these settlers. What was I doing with these settlers? See below. This is my first colony and it wasn't really optimal. I had to support Braga for a few turns while the other city was settled.
I also spun off the following:
One of the things that I learnt during this process was to trade techs before you end the turn after spinning off a colony. The new colony starts with the techs that you have and if you finish the term, you run the chance of the new colony trading (your) techs to the other AIs.
My settlers did not have defensive support as an earlier test game showed that new cities were automatically given two defensive units - sweet. The best example of this is ...
Not only did my colony obtain auto-defenders, but they turned out to be Quechua which are +100% v archers.
So, here is a summary of the region with my vassals ...
