10 turns (1170 AD - 1280 AD)
Ok, here are some things that I did to start. The computer is stupid and likes to work specialists in places where they shouldn't be worked, so I changed all the specialists in Narjan, Mycenian, and Mecca to work tiles instead. Remember, Mecca already is generating a lot of GPP (which we don't want). When it works more specialists, that's not good for us, as we get more random Great People that we don't necessarily want from there. A few other things. You started the Hindu Mandir, which is the +50% culture building in Mecca. I suppose this is fine. But just remember, if we remain at six cities for the rest of the game, we will only be able to build two Hindu Mandirs total. The same goes for the other +50% culture buildings of the other religions. Because we have three cities that need to get to 50000 culture, we have to make sure to stagger the building of these things so that they're evenly distributed amongst the three cities. We don't want to get into the situation where two of our ciites have lots of these +50% buildings, while one doesn't have any. Just be careful when you build these. I like the call on Versailles in Damascus. Could use more culture bonuses there and it isn't a danger to overtake Medina with GPP like Mecca is right now. The trade for sugar was also key, as we could really use health right now. I also traded our horses (useless to us) for Victoria's bananas. I made a few tech trades with the computer civs...I noticed that Victoria had macemen. It was of the utmost importance for us to trade for Machinery so we could start building macemen as well. Learning Philosophy right now is probably fine. It really doesn't do anything for us, since Taoism was already founded, but it is a requirement for Liberalism down the line, which I think is the tech we should aim for right now. As for what we're building right now, I switched around one thing. I started Baghdad on a temple instead of the monastery. Remember, temples in the random cities help us because they are requirements for the +50% buildings. Monasteries don't do a whole lot for us. If you built it because you wanted to build Islamic missionaries, just remember that we are using the Organized Religion civic and we can build missionaries without monasteries. Also thought it was weird that we have two farms near Mecca, but oh well, no biggie. (Were you thinking of chain linking farms to Baghdad? May not be a bad idea.) Oh, and here's another random note. I saw that we have lots of cottages on plains in Baghdad and some other places. Baghdad doesn't have a lot of food, and plains are a food deficient tile. We probably won't be able to work all those tiles due to food shortage, so the workers should be focusing on building cottages on grasslands and flood plains in food rich cities like Mecca and Damascus. Plains aren't very useful to us in most places. The only place they're going to be used right now is Mycenian because we have so much damn food there. Just remember, it takes two food to feed one tile. If a tile produces two food, it is food neutral. If it produces more than two food, it creates a food surplus which allows for growth. If it produces one or zero food, it takes away surplus food and hurts growth. That's why plains are generally bad for cottages unless you have lots and lots of food from other sources or it is late in the game and you have learned Biology. We also have some cottages on some tiles that aren't in range to be worked from anywhere. We can only work tiles within a city's fat cross (basically two squares away including diagonals).
Here's what happened on my turns... Just focused on building mostly. Started making macemen in Baghdad. For now, Mecca is going to be focused on building missionarries so every city has all of our religions. This is so they can get started on temples. Great Artist was born in Medina (yay). Sent it to Damascus since it's still low on culture growth rate. Traded for Feudalism and Compass from Kublai Khan. Also got Optics and Construction (as a throw in) from Victoria. I've got our tech tree set to beeline to Liberalism, so we can get the free tech, most likely either Printing Press or Nationalism. I'm pretty sure we'll be the first one to get it. We're nearing the point where we have to decide whether to continue in a traditional game mode or to go into a "culture cocoon". I'll talk about this later.
These are some of the things I think we should focus on in the next few turns. Right now, Mecca is just about tapped out on culture buildings. It's built pretty much all it can. We don't want it building more wonders there because we don't want any more GPP there. So what we need to do is get Confusianism and Christianity in Mecca. Then, it can build a couple more temples and monasteries. When not building those, Mecca should be building just missionaries to spread our religions to all of our cities. We want all of our ciites to have all five religions that we know right now. Buddhism and Taoism were founded elsewhere, and since we don't have any religionless cities, the only way we can learn those is if the computer sends a missionary to us. Baghdad is of course our military city and it should be building just macemen right now, unless it takes a break to build temples. Our two seaside cities should be focusing on growth and commerce. I did have Mycenian start on a caravel so we can meet civs we haven't been in contact with yet. There is a Confucian missionary headed toward Mecca right now. If it fails to spread Confucianism there, Mycenian should build another Confucian missionary. Right now, it's all about spreading religion. When Medina finishes the Globe Theatre, it should start up on temples and monasteries. As for our workers, they should continue to build cottages on grasslands and flood plains. I also have one worker hooking up the gold resources that we stole from Victoria through border expansion. It looks like we might be getting to the point where some of Victoria's cities rebel and join our civ. Canterbury is the only one worth keeping because of the clam resource. The other two should just be destroyed, as they'd just be a drain on our economy with little to offer us in the way of useful resources.
