10 turns (700AD - 900 AD)
Hectic set of turns. Of all the people to attack us, Stalin was one of the most unexpected. I thought I remembered being on ok terms with him, so he must have some aggressive AI tendencies. Anyway, there was a lot of blood spilled in the past few turns, some of it ours, some of it his. He faked me out big time at first and it almost cost us a city. I saw the injured chariot near London and thought that most of his attacks would originate from there by way of boat, but I was much surprised to find a bunch of axemen, chariots, and horse archers approach from the northwest. This was not a good situation, as we only had two axemen up there. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the strengths and weaknesses of individual units (if you want a rundown, just let me know), but our axemen are only even in strength to his axemen, somewhat weak to his horse archers, and incredibly weak against the war chariots. There was basically nothing I could do except play it as safe and watch as he pillaged everything around Newcastle while I kept the center tile fortified. First thing I did was slavery rush a spearman in Newcastle to try to fend off all the mounted units, which seem to be the main unit of his army. Also slavery rushed another spearman in a nearby city. I was eventually able to fortify in strategic areas (hills and forested hills), which he stupidly attacked into, and we were able to fend off the first wave. Everything seems to be stabilized now, but be careful, as I have no idea how big his next wave is. I'd try to keep most of the units floating around Newcastle and the capital. And make sure you guard the copper mine with your life, as this is our only metal source. Fortunately, I think we have him trumped unit wise now. We finished learning Construction, which gives us access to war elephants. While we werent able to get them in combat during his first strike, there are now plenty of reinforcements. I'd focus mainly on these now. War elephants completely annihilate horse based units and axemen, which seem to be the bulk of his army. They are weak against long weaponed units like spearmen, for which they're about a dead even match. Because Stalin is so far away from us and has to rely on mobile units to attack, he's basically screwed now. I'm not sure how advanced he is tech wise, but all we have to really worry about from him in the near future is pikemen (if he's learned Construction). So just to be safe, keep building the occasional axemen as well, since they eat up pikemen pretty good.
Other than the fighting, I'm still trying to work on tile improvements where it's safe. (Dude, no more cottages on plains (the flat brown tiles), it hurts me to the very core to see that.) Also, attempting to rebuild the tiles and roads around Newcastle after the onslaught. Tech wise, we are pretty far behind, but I think we're starting to catch up. I'd try not to trade Code Of Laws to anyone, as that keeps us a slight step ahead in teching up our military. Other than that, I'll leave the future game plan up to you. Just keep in mind Ramses is going nuts with the literary techs, so I'm not sure how feasible it is for us to land the Great Library at this point. Actually, because of our poor production due to the map layout, it might be hard to secure any great wonders for the forseeable future.
