General Strategy

[Beam]

A bit of thinking about the general direction of this game as we are in 1690 BC.

I get the feel we are on an island / continent with Cathy. Since the AI in the early game is very eager with Open Borders we should see a unit of another AI appearing soon if there is another one on this island. If not Cathy might be our only trading partner for quite a while.

There is enough terrain for 8 cities and the more cities in an empire the higher the maintenance costs. So there is not a lot of benefit short term in conquering Russian cities.

In other words it might be better to leave Cathy alive for a while. If she declares the choke point is the one to be defended and with a stack of Axes should not be much of an issue.

If indeed jsut Cathy is on our continent we should soon find out if other continents can be reached with Gallies or if we need to go all the way to Optics / Astronomy. In the latter case we are safe from the Inca for a long time. In the first case other AI can be encountered soon after Sailing. For this reason we might consider Fishing > Sailing soon unless we want to go for the Oracle which is an entirely different tech path.

If we want a good trading relationship with Cathy a consideration is to adopt Hinduism if it is spread, one of the best guarantees for trading with an AI. We share a trait which also helps iirc.

My 2 cents.

[grahamiam]

Egypt has a cheap and good UU, the War Chariot. At 5 strength, it's still 40% cheaper than Axes, and can ram thru Archers and warriors when built in mass quantities. imho, it really depends on how much land Cathy has as to whether or not we can co-exist.

However, expanding into Cathy before courthouses will be tough and will probably send our research to the toilet

[socralynnek]

I believe that there is another civ on the eastern part of our continent which we can't reach with units via land but there we could send a boat to make contact (or settle if no one is there)

With our UU, it might be a nice idea to conquer Russia.

The problem is that the AI doesn't trade a tech where it thinks it has a monopoly, so trading techs with Cathy might not be possible.

[grahamiam]

The VC's in this game are domination or diplomatic. Either way, Cathy has to go as we need the land for either land % or a larger voting block.

[Shabbaman]

If we capture Russia, we get hinduism. Could be nice in the end.

[Beam]

No doubt Cathy has to go. If we do it to early there will be a lot of corruption and hardly a benefit. Both Diplo and Domination will take quite a while so Cathies execution can be timed as we like.

@Shabba, I was hoping Cathy will spread Hinduism so we have an option to convert.

I checked the FP and it requires 6 courthouses and 8 cities. Without saying to wait that long those prereqs can be achieved with our current territory.

[grahamiam]

Well, the FP can be built down in Russia (or some other place). It does drive down maintence costs for cities nearby pretty substantially, especially when coupled with a courthouse.

However, waiting too long is no good. We can go after Cathy before we have 6 courts. In fact, all the new courts could be built in captured cities, while our core builds other things and only starts building courts when the empire size maintenance starts becoming too high.

[Shabbaman]

@beam: actually, I was referring that comes to the nice gpt bonus that comes from the holy city.