11 turns (1240 AD - 1350 AD)
I ended up taking 11 turns because I got the save game back in 1240 AD and I wanted to even things back to counting by 50. Anyway, we're in pretty good shape right now. I was scared when you told me Ragnar declared war on us, but it was actually Hannibal. I think this is actually a good thing. Military wise, he's pretty weak, and he gives us a common foe that we can tag team with Genghis against (traded Paper to Genghis so he'd declare on Hannibal). Also made peace with Stalin at the start of my turns. He wasn't being unreasonable anymore, and we were able to establish peace without any concessions. Of course, being the ass that he is, he promptly declared war on Genghis after making peace with us. Sigh.
So the big news is we captured Thapsus from Hannibal. I'd like to scout his territory to the south and see how well defended Utica is. That would be a really nice city to have with all the flood plains and gold, but it could be difficult depending on how much he has left in the tank military wise. I'm hoping his military power is diluted because of Genghis. If he defenses aren't too unreasonable, I'd like to try to take over Utica mainly through war elephants, with some macemen and catapults sprinkled in. The only way this can work is if he doens't have too many pikemen hanging out there. Just make sure when you scout his territory, you guard the elephants with macemen, as our little tusked friends are extremely vulnerable to the pike. If Hannibal's military strength is too high, I'd recommend trying to make peace with him soon so we can concentrate on securing the borders with Ramses and Ragnar.
Speaking of those two...I'm pretty concerned with where their military is at. They just hit Guilds, so they now have access to knights. While our elephants should be a good defense against those, this won't be reflected in the power ratings, and Ramses and Ragnar may eventually develop delusions of grandeur. I think the current setup we have is fine, with all the elephants down near Hannibal, but if we're going to take another city from Hannibal, we have to strike fast. We may really need those elephants for defense eventually.
Tech wise, this was an exciting set of turns for us. We were the first to learn Liberalism, which allowed us to get Printing Press for free (very helpful with all the cottages we have everywhere). Also changed our civics to Free Speech and Free Religion, which we gained access to after acquiring Liberalism. For the future, our two priority techs are Democracy (Universal Suffrage and Emancipation are amazing with a cottage based economy) and Rifling. If possible, I would recommend against trading key techs like Education and Printing Press to the computer unless we really need to. We've built a nice little tech lead and if we can just survive until we get to Rifling, we'll be in really good shape. None of the techs we've skipped over are particularly important at this point in time.
We're in good economic shape, so I had our workers build a handful of farms in food starved cities. Also built some mines near Nottingham to ramp up production there, with the goal of making this another military center. We did get another Great General, though I've yet to use him. I'd recommend stationing him as another military instructor in either York or Nottingham.
There's a hell of a lot going on right now. I'd try to focus on moving the right kinds of units to the right kinds of areas and continuing to improve infrastructure. We currently have the slight problem of not having any iron, as Stalin's borders just expanded and stole our only source to the north. I'm hoping we can quickly recover that, as the recent civic change to Free Speech will give us an enormous culture boost everywhere and should allow us to push the border back. Hopefully we don't get entwined in yet another military conflict, as we're really teetering a fine edge between running away with this game and failing miserably.
