Epic 2: Part 3
While I was finishing off the Chinese Gem War Toku asked me to convert to Buddhism, as one of my *coff* valued *coff* customers naturally I agreed:
But I converted back to no state religion pretty promptly - no-one else was happy that I was Buddhist.
At the start of my third session I looked around at the resources I could see. The only Gems source I knew of that I'd not got control of is the one at Turfan. So that needs to be next on the agenda. And now that I've got Caravels exploring I should be finished with the exploration of the equator soon, and should know if I've seen all the gems. Gold and Silver resources are likely to be more of an issue. I can see 4 Gold resources I don't control, and 1 Silver. Gaining control of one of the Golds would involve capturing Rome - which I think is beyond me, whilst I'm currently doing OK with score I don't think I'm likely to be powerful enough to take on the Romans. And it would spoil the gems dealings, anyway. But that is for later. Gems are most important. And getting the 1500AD scoring points as well.
Whilst I'm building up some military and thinking about what to do about Turfan I keep on founding cities, firstly Karachi in 1262AD:
And then Kolhapur in 1340AD:
And the last religion is founded somewhere else 
which completes that part of the variant rules:
One thing this game is teaching me is to use the whip more - although I wasn't very efficient with it I did have turns where I went round all the cities seeing what I could finish off. If I'd been paying a bit more attention I'd've got more out of it, but even with the slightly haphazard way I was doing it I could see the power of it. And quite possibly that helped with how well I was doing on this game :)
I was quite keen to get Turfan dealt with before the 1502AD scoring point - it would be nice to have all the gem sources under control by then. A bit of reconnaisance showed this:
And I rather optimistically hoped that a couple of crossbows & a couple of macemen would be sufficient. So in the early 1300s I packed them into some galleys and sent them off to battle the Khan for control of Turfan & its all important gems!
Alas! It was not to be. The Longbowmen finished me off rather nicely. So nicely, infact, that I promptly decided to make 2 per city to defend my own lands. I'd previously tended towards Crossbowmen, but Longbowmen seem rather tough :) Lesson 2 from this Epic it seems.
Once the Khan was back on speaking terms with me I bought peace from him (gave him Guilds) and concentrated on getting some more military built up to take him out later. It was round about this time (in 1436AD) that I bought a map off Cyrus and it convinced me that I had spotted all the Gem sources back in 335AD when I found the sixth one.
Making up for my disasterous battle for Turfan I did succeed in building the Globe Theatre in Delhi, gaining myself 8 points due to placing it in my capital:
And then it was 1502AD and time to count up the Gem sources I controlled (5) and the Seafood resources I had connected up (11):
And as I still thought I would finish the game I also made a note of the cities that were founded by this date which are therefore eligible for points if they reach size 25:
