America decides to plant the city of Boston right in the middle of my gathering troops.
So I wait until I collect a half-dozen archers; that's about how many you need to be sure of beating two fortified spears in a city.
Or maybe I don't wait.
The turn after Abe does that, Iroquois braves leap out of the brush and completely SURROUND Boston:
(One pauses to wonder how different our planet might currently be if that had happened at Plymouth.)
Boston falls easily, of course. Score my first 2 points.
So the war advances, pretty straightforwardly. By careful management of my catapults, I make every effort to minimize exposure of my troops to any risky situations. The bulk of America's army has already been expended at England, which makes my job plenty easy. They did get iron hooked up and build a few swords, but I apparently disconnected it pretty quickly. (I never even found out where the iron was, as I didn't get Iron Working all game.)
Careful care of units, of course, often leads to this:
Too early for a Forbidden Palace, and it wouldn't really help me anyway. So the obvious Pyramids it is.
After a brief stop in New York, the Iroquois archers reach Washington, and capture it, although rather later than I would have liked.
It definitely now looks like I'll be able to eliminate America and score that whoppin' 20-point bonus. And yup, America is eliminated in 1400 AD.
Total score at this point: 8 from American cities, 1 Great Leader, 20 points for eliminating America = 29.
I've also decided to take the 10 point bonus for playing the game without using any whipping. I hadn't set out to do that from the beginning, but there was no good situation to do so. Salamanca's population was needed to produce workers and settlers; and the other cities would have lost far more production capability to a whip than the 20 shields would be worth, with every pop point being worth 2 shields/turn among all that bonus grassland. So the Iroquois tribal chiefs will remain ever benevolent - to their own people at least.
