10 turns (1450 AD - 1525 AD)
Started off my turns by making peace with Hannibal. Genghis was no longer involved, which meant we didn't have Hannibal spread as thin anymore. I didn't think it was worth it to try to take his next city in line, which was his capital. First, the defenses would have been high, we were running out of military resources, and strategically, it was in a bad place to send future reinforcements to. Hannibal ended up giving us a good deal in the peace treaty, giving us his map, a load of gold, and 5 additional gold per turn. Afterwards, I tried to patch things up with him by gifting him some obsolete techs. Eventually got him in + relations with us.
As for that city we lost, I think that was actually a blessing in disguise. I seem to recall taking that city early in the game from barbs. I ended up placing the new city a few squares to the east, giving us more riverside grassland tiles and allowing us us the room to squeeze in an additional city somewhere in that mass of jungles to the west.
The rest of my turns were spent building improvements and managing city tiles. The two cities we won from Hannibal are pretty food poor, so I'm planning on making these production centers (hence all the farms I'm throwing up). Without the farms, those cities are going to stagnate easily. We could actually use more production, mostly for military right now, but also to build spaceship parts in the future if it comes down to that. Also focused on making Hastings a production city, so we should end up having 4 production dedicated cities when it's all said and done. We didn't get much variety in terrain this game, and it seems to have split our cities into being all commerce focused or all production focused. Normally you'll have some cities that are more of a mix, but I guess those are the breaks for us this game. By the way, you may notice I'm working an artist in Utica (the last city we stole from Hannibal). The reason for this is to try to expand the border there so we can work those flood plains.
Did a bunch of trading with the AI. You'll notice we've now gotten to the point where most of the computer civs won't trade with us because of how advanced we are. This is fine. What I'm trying to do now is trade only for key techs (mostly important military techs) as the computer allows. Now, when a computer civ learns a tech that we already have, I'm trying to gift those to other civs before they can start trading amongst each other. This helps our relations with everyone and keeps them from advancing as quickly. I've got the feeling we're now learning techs at a rate that's allowing us to outdistance everyone else. Try not to trade techs to the computer that nobody but us has learned yet (especially key ones like Printing Press, Constitution, Democracy and the like).
Towards the end of my turns, I had the dilemma of researching either Military Tradition or Democracy. Military Tradition gives us the ability to build cavalry, which would be a huge unit upgrade for us, especially because we can upgrade our elephants to these. Ragnar has already learned this and if you look at the power graph, you can see he really ramped up his power level in the past few turns (often a sign the computer is gearing up for war). We currently don't have anything that can deal with his cavalry particularly well, but in browsing the diplomatic relations screen, I'm counting on Ragnar going after someone else if he declares war. He likes Ramses and Hannibal less than he likes us, plus, Hannibal is very weak compared to him military wise. Nonetheless, I tried to move a lot of our units over to Newcastle just in case. The best units we have available to us right now for cavalry are the elephants and pikemen. Just remember, we have a TON of cash in the coffers, so if you get attacked, be sure to do some instant unit upgrades (axemen -> macemen, spearmen -> pikemen) in key strategic points.
So if you haven't guessed yet, I chose to go after Democracy. I can't emphasize enough how good Democracy is for our civ. It gives us access to the Universal Suffrage civic, which is amazing. Notice how all our cottage based cities are so slow to build things? It's because all the cottages leave little room for mines. With Universal Suffrage on, all our fully grown cottages will give us a hammer as well, allowing all those cities to actually build something at a semi decent pace. Best of all, it allows us to hurry buildings by spending money. As you can see, we've got some cash burning a hole in our pocket. Democracy also gives us access to the Emancipation civic, which drastically increases growth of our cottages, both giving us more money and helping to get those tiles to the point where they get the hammer bonus as well. If we learn Democracy during your set of turns, remember to change our civics immediately.
Oh, and just for fun, you should check out the diplomacy screen with Genghis. I love being friends with that guy. We have four quality techs that he doesn't have, plus, he's willing to go to war with anyone in the game. That guy is always willing to sell out. Let's just say Genghis is now our military lap dog, and we can sick this guy on whoever we want if need be.
So unless war breaks out, I think your next few turns will probably be a lot like mine...just trying to improve efficiency. We're making progress toward Rifling, which sets us up to possibly go on the offensive again. Redcoats are our unique unit of course.
