Alright dude...that was pretty close. I actually had to reload once to figure out a way to keep us from losing Damascus. When we get attacked, try not to let them get up in your business with guys all over your tiles. It's ok when their army is all bunched up together in one tile, but when they get all spread out, they can really start decimating you with pillaging. You'll notice that almost all of our riflemen are now in Damascus. We almost lost the game because of how our armies were situated before. Just remember this...all we really MUST defend are Mecca, Medina, and Damascus. It would suck to lose the other cities, but if we lose one of our big three, we lose the game. It took some real close calls to get all our riflemen down to Damascus before Victoria overwhelmed us. I think we've stabilized now and Victoria is a bit on the defensive from the attack from the south by our ally. Just make sure the border between London and Damascus remains sealed and that you keep any stragglers that start wandering around in our territory off our property. We could probably take one of her satellite cities, but it wouldn't be worth the effort and resources since we'd want to destroy them instead of installing a new governor anyway. Military wise, keep building riflemen in all of our non culture cities. Make sure we have adequate (~2 units) in our northern towns and send everyone else to Damascus.
Other things to take care of during your turns... Keep building culture related buildings in Medina and Damascus when possible. I noticed that Mycenian still does not have Hinduism yet, so I'm building a Hindu missionary in Mecca. If he fails to spread the religion, keep building others to send over there until they learn it. After Mycenian gains Hinduism, build a Hindu temple there immediately, so we can start on a the Hindu +50% culture building in Medina. We also need to fix our resources a little bit after Victoria blitzed us. Also, I sent a worker down south to hook up the bananas that we stole from Victoria. Just make sure there's a road there to connect everything once he's done building the plantation. Once that's done, try to rebuild the cottages that Victoria pillaged in Damascus. We should also work on getting a better road network up north so we can send troops south faster if need be. Tech wise, we're almost done learning Medicine, so that means we'll being going in to the No Learning Zone soon. Once we hit Medicine, you should change our economic civic from mercantilism to environmentalism. This will give us a giant boost in health, meaning more growth in Medina to make more great artists. Then, adjust our slider so we are putting 0% into science. Turn our culture slider up as far as it will go so as we're still bringing in net gold. Also, try to immediately bribe Mao into declaring war on Victoria with Medicine. We'll be nice and safe if we can pull that off. Of course, keep in contact with Victoria to see if she'll accept peace at all.
So yeah, remember. Military, military, military, excepf for the exceptions listed above. The world leaders are way ahead of us in tech now and our other rivals will soon be far ahead as well. We just have to hang on and survive. Race to hit triple 50000 culture before the cpu decides we're easy prey.
