First things first, though. I finished off Gandhi. He was refusing to trade with me, pointblank. (Yes, I'd taken 4 cities from him and had the troops to take more with the first peace treaty. I got 10 gold, I think, after he finally gave up the demands for Bombay back.) Madras and Calcutta weren't too major of problems. I then owned my starting island. And that island to the NE. Upkeep wasn't too huge of a killer, but it was significant.
I then entered a LONG building phase. Libraries, universities, harbors, caravels, missionaries. My few remaining praetorians and other troops were randomly distributed about the isles. Versailles was built up on the NE island to help with costs there (not sure how I won that race, to be honest). Found the other island. France, Egypt, and Aztecs. All happily at peace. And trading with each other. Hatty was the big fish in the pond. She'd founded a bunch of religions, garnered the most space, and had a ton of good resources.
But, against my will, I found myself trading with her. She'd give me deals nobody else would. And I needed to catch up in tech. Or at least get close. When I finally did, I was building destroyers, battleships, transports, marines, and artillery.
Those formed the backbone of my first assault on Egypt. Hatty had to be cut down a notch or five. She was teching too fast (two turn techs for me wasn't enough). She had lots of siege weapons of her own, but those don't work against ships! :) My big ships would protect the transports and bombard the defenses. One transport of suicide artillery would go in, and then the two transports of marines would kill the defenders and raze the city. Took 4 transports. 3 at each city. And one bringing the reinforcement artillery. I razed about four cities this way. And shrank another 3 by scaring fishermen off the waters. Dramatically hurt her research rate, too.
I lost a few marines, too, but it was a tremendously successful war. And Hatty founded her replacement cities one OFF the coast. LOL That's actually a pretty good tactic. Any troops on land were as good as dead for me. But I ruled the seas.
