A funny (for me, probably not for my opponents) tale from my last immortal game (Large, Pangea, 9 civs). Chose Indians and went for Bronze, despite having Mysticism. In the first turn I entered a village with the warrior I had and I got a scout - that was a surprise, Indians don't start with hunting, so how could I get a scout, i.e. a unit from a tech I don't know?

I thought omens were quite good (with two units my "village huts" probability would be bigger) so I just moved the scout, and he saw another village within striking distance. In the next turn I entered it and it gave me BRONZE WORKING. That meant, BW from the second turn - I don't think you need more to win, even in Super Deity. Of course the game isn't over, but it is a huge boost - so huge that I find it almost unfair (of course, I don't know what my opps got from their huts).

Any histories from you, with other "extraordinary starts"?

EDIT: I forgot to ask my main question. What do you do now, try to get a religion, or continue like if nothing has happened?

Still have the original autosave sticking around?
I'd like to try it out.

I'd say take the good fortune and run with it. On immortal, even with this start I still would conquer holy cities to get religion.

If the map generator is being ironic, you'll probably find yourself alone on a small island.

I'd go for the religion, since you only needed the bronze for chopping right? If you had some other tech-path planned out you could always try that, but I assume you've gotten all you needed from it, and can now jump into the game.

Or you could research iron working and get a quick sword rush to kill off your nearest neighbor, or get an important resource.

I had a pretty ridiculous start in a recent game on Prince level - it was the first attempt so I'd like to think it's not always this easy. I was playing Bismarck, playing Huge Terra map, and started pretty much in the dead centre of the continent. I was concerned at first knowing I'd be surrounded on all sides in the Old World. It turned out that the first three villages I ran into gave me scouts. I then picked up both bronze working *and* archery (and I think agriculture) from other villages as the scouts ran out in all directions. Berlin was near a source of marble and I was able to get the Oracle. With the early tech padding, I actually took Germany into the religion techs and founded both hinduism and judaism (and eventually got prophets for both shrines). I built a Hindu religious block with both Egypt and Persia to the east (and eventally Arabia to the south east); Greece to the north would eventually covert too and were culturally inferior. I was never seriously challenged after about 500BC as I was able to just fight 1 front wars the entire time to the west. Everyone else actually caught up more or less in tech since I had to fight successive wars against Monty, Victoria, Asoka, Washington, and Catherine pretty much back to back, but after they were done with, my empire was so huge, it didn't matter. Eventually won diplo-victory actually after annihilating Victoria and Catherine, and with backing from Hat and Sal.

I have a screenshot at home I was once going to post under the title "I win," but never got around to it.

The screenshot is of my two-food source, two-gold mine, amply-forested capital in the second turn of the game, with the dialogue box showing discovering bronze working from a hut.

That was an Emporer, continents, large map, marathon game; I won domination by about 1000ad.

atreas, what did you end up doing, and how did it work out?

I don't know how well having BW and scout will help in a large immortal game. You can't afford that many cities at the beginning. Your opponents will be too far away for your chopped army to get to, plus AI has ridiculous production and research bonus. Could you play out the rest of the game, and let us know how it goes?

The other day I started a Monarch marathon game with Napolean. By 3580 bc I popped huts giving me Pottery, Mysticism, and Writing. Pretty cool, I felt like the Sumerians or something, being on a river and all.

First about the save file: I think I have it, but I don't think it will work correctly on any other PC except mine. The reason is that I have made some additions in the XML files for the leaders (I have added some new leaders that I wanted to try) and now whenever I try to open my save files in another PCs (specifically, in my son's PC) or to open a save file posted in the forum, it messes up the leaders (for example, you see the Romans with Kublai as leader). Maybe I must check the Mod forum.

Now to the game continuation: I had started this game specifically to see if I could succeed without the system "early war - Agg civ" (the game was in Marathon speed with no Barbarians - for reasons that I have already stated elsewhere I have stopped trying to play with Barbarians in Large Marathon Pangea; it isn't fun for me). But now the temptation was huge, since I saw Copper in a nearby place (2nd city), so I transformed the peaceful Indians to the ultimate warmonger machine.

So I turned my attention to Agriculture (I needed Animal Husbandry) and ... 2 huts later I got Masonry (Pyramids was now 100000% certainty)!!! But this could wait a bit (stone was on the 3rd planned city), so I just made sure to build the Stonehedge. My site was otherwise mediocre (only 1 flood plains around and just 1 small river), but it had LOTS of forests.

"Easily" enough I managed to kill Cyrus (on the north) before 2000 BC (now I had 6 cities already, God bless Organized) and also my surviving Axemen had City Raider 3. Still, this decision wasn't very succesful: Buddism was founded by Izzy (no surprise) and Hindu and Judaism were both founded by Hatty, that was close to me by now but at the far west edge of the map - that meant, it was 100% certain Budhism would be the dominant religion. Next to me were Washington, Caesar, and (a bit furthner) Mansa. Somewhere further away in the east there were Huyna and Alex. (Most probably I should have razed one more city from Cyrus, but that is post mortem analysis).

I proceeded to kill also Hatty, thinking that nobody would care (by the time she was the only one with Hinduism, and me and Washington had no religion), and I was correct. In the meantime I discovered alphabet, made an interval leaving 1 city to Hatty, got some techs for a temporary peace, and after 10 turns I razed her. 8 cities before 1000BC, things were beginning to become quite difficult - only option was to continue war (just to get some cash) with Washington as victim. Now my good Axemen had City Raider 3 and Cover, so he was no match for them (especially after razing his copper). Same procedure again (kept one city, raized all others but New York), took some techs, and then kill. At the end of the war my swords were giving significant help.

3 civs out of the game and I had found Iron Working (necessary, because of some jungles) and was on my way to Currency. But unexplicably Mansa and Ceasar were friendly with Washington, and also Mansa was (as usual) beginning to fly. The result of the battles was to have in my "command" (direct or indirect) a huge amound of land, but with very slow search pace. And the total disaster was that Budhism was everywhere except my cities.

So I decided to play the game with no religion at all (despite my holy city). Still, that wouldn't eventually avoid a total war - and the worse, against Caesar. But the great Suffler was again there, and Ceasar was missing something vitally important - IRON. So, despite his alliance with Izzy (she is so predictable) my axes were again victorious (1 Roman city and 2 razed to the ashes). In the meantime my cities were developing and I managed to have some pleased guys around (Alex and Incas). Mansa was annoyed but quiet.

At the age of Macemen it was Mansa time - not much of a resistance (as usual). Still, he got Caesar and Izzy as allies, and I called Alex against Izzy (giving him some copper and Music, to teach some phalanx lessons to the Spanish war elephants). Mansa gave me the only thing I needed for a sure victory - A CITY WITH BUDHISM. I switched immediately to establish peace and began to fly - now I am enough techs ahead and I plan to proceed to the kill with Cavalries. I have double score, double land, double everything than all the others.

Was it necessary to play that way? I would say yes, because (but that is post-mortem) Cyrus builds his 3rd city in a place very close to your second city, and due to creative you would be "suffocated" unless you reacted immediately. So I think it was good decision to switch to complete "war-monger" - but probably I should have razed 1 more Persian city and 1 more Egyptian one.