Uneventful set of turns here. Versailles was completed by someone else, so we lost all that time in Damascus. Not cool. I'm basically building culture buildings of all sorts in Damascus and Medina. I've been able to swing some trades with Hatty to get more health resources, so there's room for growth in Medina once again. I've got two workers building a lumbermill on the forested hill there. Make sure when Medina grows again that we're working that tile to get an extra 4 production. It'll really help us get the temples and monastaries going there. I've got a Christian missionary headed toward Mecca right now. I sent one earlier, but he failed to spread the religion due to the fact that there already four religions there. If this second missionary fails, try to build another one in Damascus. I took the chance and switched our religion to Confusianism and I think it paid off. Victoria is still cool with us and the rest of the people on our continent are back in the safe diplomacy zone. Buddhist Hatty isn't much of a warmonger and is ok with us as well. The other two Buddhists are pretty weak, and we should be able to fend off an attack from them with the help of our allies. I'd like to get Mao to open his borders to us again, which might take giving him a free technology.
We are almost at Rifling, which will seriously help our military. The next step from there is a straight shot to Democracy. Once we get that, we're going to have to discuss how we want to approach the rest of the game. We have the option of jacking up our culture slider and putting all of our ecomomy into creating culture. If we go that route, we will pretty much be stalled out on technology the rest of the game (no more new techs). Or we could continue to play a traditional game and focus on buildings to give us culture. This will be a key decision point, but we have a few turns before we have to make it.
But yeah, in the meantime, it's all about getting culture buildins, mostly temples and monastaries of all sorts built in Damascus and Medina.
