Positives: It's only Emperor, and you get to be the Incas.

Negatives: You'll see :)

I do love a challenge.

Ok, Gufnork, I must say, I've enjoyed your posts and your understanding of the game.

If you can do well from this start, I'd love to hear how!

Thanks. The game is in Epic speed and I'm a bit busy with school now before christmas, so I'm not sure when I'll have time to complete it.

mmmmm :)

I'll try.
BTW I hit yes :D, so don't consider it :)

Well, I've just played up to about 1000AD, and I don't want to give away any spoilers if other people want to play it first, but I will say that if I can manage to pull a win out of this I will be very impressed with myself:blush: . Especially considering I haven't actually finished an Emperor level game yet (this is only the second, I've got one going with the Romans that is winnable, but not easily).

Now, if I'd known what I know about the map now at the start the result might have been different (probably not by much though, with my skill:rolleyes: )

Edit: This could just be me not being very good at Civ4 yet, or just having a very small selection of games, but has anyone else found Emperor a lot tougher to really dominate on than in C3C?

Played it... lost, fairly badly. Cyrus got a space race victory in 1878, and I had only completed about half the parts, though I had all the nessecary techs.

Its not a ungodly terrible start.. I believe it can be won. However, I made several really stupid errors, the biggest of which being that I had the opportunity to insta-build the Collossus with a Great Engineer, but decided to build it normally so I could have the opportunity to pop-build the Hanging Gardens as well.

As you can imagine, I lost the Collusus race without copper, and had to settle for the Gardens alone. Kicked myself for that one all game. Also, I wasn't able to start any really good, devisive wars between the AIs. Sure, I could get Peter and Hasheput to fight every once in awhile, but it was Cyrus and Ghandi that were the real threats.

I'd play it again, but my foreknowledge of the map would give me an unfair advantage.

Two firsts for me were playing as the Incans and playing Epic. I'm not used to either, and that probably had some impact on things.

Lost it. I thought I could win a space race after getting a tech lead shortly after discovering Astronomy (which I did fairly early). At some point Mansa just started getting techs like crazy, not long after Cyrus followed. I built up an army to try and get their minds off of things, but Cyrus, Mansa and one more civ I can't recall had a defensive pact and noone wanted to join me in the war. I was crushed, slowly but certainly.

I made one mistake, I didn't go offensive when I should have. I could've taken Peter and Hapshepsut entire continent without too much effort, but I didn't to save time. Oh well.

I got bored and assumed I was behind at 630 AD, so I opened up the world builder. Turns out I wasn't really all that far behind, and was even ahead, techwise, of some of the opponents! (In fact, I think only one person other than myself had metal casing and compass when I quit)

I figured we were on an island early. (While I was still making a run for Judaism, and also before my second city) I also got masonry from a hut, which prompted me to run for judaism. I also managed to swipe the oracle, at which point I discovered you need pottery to get metal casing! :(

Yeah, I posted it because it is an "interesting" start.

It isn't a horrible start, but it has lots of very "challenging" aspects.

Yeah, I posted it because it is an "interesting" start.

It isn't a horrible start, but it has lots of very "challenging" aspects.
Thanks, that's an interesting start. Though, I had a bit of extra information. The fact that you've posted it here helps to guess what's the matter with this start. Otherwise, I'd probably spend few more turns before realizing the situation.

I've started separate thread with spoilers:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3467515#post3467515