Ok, so I'm in an epic game as Julius Caesar, continents, noble. I've reached the middle game and need advice on what exactly to pursue.

It's a continual problem I have that I simply don't know what to do with myself in the mid-game. What sort of victory should I be aiming for? Is my military as built up as it should be? Have I been focusing too much on buildings? (I'm a builder-type, if you haven't noticed:) )

I tried Caesar to see if he would help me get out of my "build absolutely everything you can" stupor. And it worked, in the beginning. I wiped out Mao as soon as I got praetorians, which was pretty early on. Then I found out I was on a continent by myself, (with Mao gone) and I went straight back to the building.

In the game, Alex is the standout civ. He killed off the Persians and another civ I think (even though I didn't get a message about it) early on. He's also founded Judaism and Islam. Tokugawa is last, having being crippled by an early war with Alex. He's got Hinduism. The other two civs alive are Mansa and Washington, who are best buddies, sharing Buddhism and nearly everything else. They have a tiny military compared to Alex, though.

Just before this save, Alex declared on Mansa Musa. He's already taken 2 of his cities, including his capital. So what do I do? Huge military build-up, then wage long and protracted war with Alex? Murder Tokugawa? Or just get a spaceship or cultural victory on my nice little continent?

P.S. I should also note that this is my first time playing an epic game. The tech rate seems abominably slow, even the leaders are only a few techs in front of me. Is this normal for epic?

When I see that I have only one other Civ on my continent, it's time to beeline to optics, especially with Caesar.
I usually don't kill off more than two enemies with Caesar's pretorians, that should give you enough of a tech advantage already.

Washington is the only one who has survived the wrath of Alex so far, and has managed to gain quite a tech lead. He is your only serious competitor to the space race, and you should be able to beat him on Noble - it is quite likely he will not have all necessary resources for spaceship parts, and he doesn't have a large enough civ to make dedicating one city to the space ladder worthwhile either. He does have a tremendous tech lead on you though, so it might be worth it to wage war with him.

I also think washington should be able to keep alex at bay because of his tech lead, if war between the two erupts. Those macemen alex is attacking with are no match for the riflemen washington is sporting. However, a war between the two of them probably would slow down washington's tech acquisition and space race component production.

The easy solution might be to nuke washington's prodcutive cities. His civ is small, and yours is large and can deal with a city or two being nuked, especially if you make sure to ramp up production for the space race.

In any case, alone on an island pretty much means a space race victory IMO. Diplomatic hardly ever works because of religious issues, and cultural hardly ever works because of wonders being built elsewhere due to being behind in tech (the AI has a chance to trade tech before optics, you do not). Also, I find it hard to go for cultural if I didn't go for it from the beginning. Military options are made more difficult because of logistics. If you do pursue a military option, I'd go for conquest, and cripple washington first.

Rav

Wow loadsa forest left to chop down. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I think a change of strategy towards commerce. I cant tell what your cities are dedicated to at mo. ie commerce, production or great people farms. I think Chinas ex capital would make a great commerce city if you take away the 4 priests and put them on the land. Perhaps Artists or scientists would of helped more. A site with just grassland is ideal for this. Forests on grassland for me do nothing but use up 1 food so cut them down for the hammers and build cottages.

I might of even used Rome as a great person farm early on due to surplus food if you irrigated all the land. Might work better than China. Although i didnt check what wonders you had in China.

As a general note I think a lot of the irrigated land could be changed to cottages to help swell your science. Irrigated land only helps growth. Although you do lack good food resources proving 6 food like wheat/ fish. Keep the worked resources.

End of day your low on commerce and thats probably why your behind on science. I think space race could be the best bet as you are behind.

Then again if you chop down all your forests this could make 7-10 units for a sea assault or help finish city buildings. At end of day you need to improve your science or dominate the board albeit with a tech or 2 behind. With more cottages im sure you would catch up.

Yes...I'm always reluctant to chop forests because I lose the hammers....but then I suppose you get extra food and then you can have more citizens for hammers? Well anyway thanks you guys for your advice

You can't build commerce on forest tiles. It's great if you have forests at this stage since you can chop much of what you need and switch cities to commerce.

At this stage I've found commerce is essential - by 1600s if you don't have a good number of cities working towns, you're in great danger of falling behind in tech and money. If you focus on commerce at this stage, you can tech to Democracy, switch to Universal Suffrage, and either build the commerce/science buildings you need in those cities (w/the +1 hammer per town) or set research close to 0% for 1-2 turns and buy all of them (at half cost w/Kremlin).