Started my turns by starting the U.N. build in York. Sometime shortly after, Louis declared war on Ramses and promptly took control of two of his cities. This basically means Ramses is not going to be a contender for the rest of the game. Not to miss out on the land grab, I declared war on Ramses when Louis asked. I tried to assemble our forces to the southeast as quickly as possible and rush built a bunch of trebuchets to try to take over Pi-Ramsses. Unfortunately, one turn before I conquered the city, Ramses capitulated with Louis and is now his vassal! That automatically ends war with us. Now, we're in somewhat of a predicament. The good news is, we are researching at a very fast clip and I think we'll be able to maintain the tech lead from here on out. But with all the war and chaos, the diplomacy goal is now out the window. I guess it's time to gear up for the space race. In order to best do this, here are some things we should probably think about. I think it would be highly beneficial for us to build the Three Gorges Dam to power the continent. The space race is a battle of tech and production, so this wonder would help with the latter greatly. The more immediate concern however is getting hold of some oil. We can't build the best military and naval units without it and living with obsolete units is basically an invitation to get stomped by someone. There are two paths we could take to accomplish this. First, we could try to capture the heart of Stalin's civ, though I think this would be a pain in the ass, considering we'd have to march our army up north through Ragnar's territory to be able to do this (because we have no iron, our navy is inferior to everyone's so we can't ship our ground units by sea). The better option is to declare war on Ramses again, capture Pi-Ramsses, and hope we can expand the borders enough to take that off-shore oil well. The problem with this is Louis will automatically declare war on us in retaliation since Ramses is now his vassal. I think the best option would be to group gangbang Ramses with Genghis. After all the stupid vassal connections take effect, it would essentially be us, Genghis, and Hannibal against Louis and Ramses. Louis has a very strong military right now, so it might be best to sick Genghis on them first to provide a distraction, then sneak in and capture the city, hopefully making peace again ASAP. If you have a different plan in mind, feel free to go ahead. Things might get a little sticky from here.
