Ok so I recently decided to actually play a game through and stop screwing around. My problem, I actually carried out an effective Axe rush for once, but I am left with a capital a bit far from my mainlands with a whole lot of AI rushable space in between. To top it off, I'm surrounded by a schizophrenia support group and wiped out one of the only peaceful civs.

Destroyed: Augustus. (I really wasn't in the mood for Prats)
To my west: Napoleon
To my south-west: Catherine (With amazing land once all of the jungles are chopped. Should slow her down)
To my south: Montezuma.
Unknown location: Churchill.

Settings:
Civilization: Vikings
Map: Large Fractal
Custom Conditions: None
Difficulty: Prince
Version: Warlords

Screenshots: Spoilered in case of massive size.

My Core
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y187/Starkow/Picture4.png

Land between me and Caesar
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y187/Starkow/Picture5.png

Rome and the land between me and Monty
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y187/Starkow/Picture6.png

Land between me and Napoleon
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y187/Starkow/Picture7.png

Catherine's Land
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y187/Starkow/Picture9.png


Edit: If you play any and have things to point out regarding the future of this game, spoiler them please.


Thoughts:

Capital to be production city.
Convert to Judaism if it spreads.
Befriend Monty and use him as an attack dog.
Napoleon first
Catherine second
Monty last
Churchill (God knows where he is) to be left alone unless he's in a position of possible conquest.

And the Save for those who still run warlords:

When I see land like that, I try to settle the rivers as fast as I can, get IW, and crank out an army of workers. Unfortunately, Cathy is hard to culture-battle with and gets cities out pretty quick, so you would likely end up with a very jagged line of cities.

I should think a standard REX into the open area would be more than enough to get a nice land advantage. One negative to a distance rush at higher levels is the amount of land you leave for the AIs. At Prince, though, you can get a good many settlers out at least as fast as them, faster if you concentrate on efficient whipping and chopping. This is the time to make that initial grab that you will work with and improve through the next phase until you are ready to go kill more AIs.

With these neighbors, though, dont be skimping on your garrisons. Try as hard as you can to make religious friends. Thats what I do when I want to focus on my settlers. If I can get into a common religion for a while, I can be a bit more lax about my military.

I have to agree with Bleys here. There is some premium land that you must acquire. If you can do it peacefully, that's nice, but if Cathy's culture is proving to be too much, you may need to go in with catapults and clear her out. Unfortunately, Monty and/or Napoleon may force your hand. You simply must convert someone to an ally. Diplo will be important here. If you end up dogpiled, it could be difficult. I would try and settle the good land that you can, but while beelining IW/construction. IW also allows you to clear the jungle, which is good. Prepare for a classical war once IW/construction is in. Pick a target. Befriend someone doing everything you can.

You've got winnable land. The key is to claim and defend it. Diplo + military ftw here. Use diplo to allow you to focus on one target at a time. Your strategy of befriending Monty and then going after Nappy/Cathy while leaving Churchill alone seems perfectly fine. But if Monty forces your hand sooner then befriending Nappy is certainly possible. The key with Nappy is to give in to his inevitable demands and ensure your power rating is high. Also make sure he is fighting someone else other than you come the Renaissance era--when he prefers to launch his attacks.

2:1 workers:settlers until you hit IW/construction. Then gear up for war with swords/axes/cats. Have an ally hopefully at that point. Focus on one target at a time using diplo to fend off other opponents.

Sorta played through until 1200 a.d but I'm not sure if I like where it stands. My production wasn't up to par until swords were becoming obsolete, I rexed most of the available land and had three great commerce cities pop out bring me from 30% research with a loss to 70% with a gain.

Somehow managed to grab taoism as my research shot up and converted to judaism to befriend monty. Cathy and Napoleon go christian and monty DOW's churchy (his only jewish buddy at the time). Cathy DOWs on me the turn churchy capitulates to monty. Get monty into the war with Cathy for free, upgrade my CRIII axes to berserkers and add 6 more to the stack of 4. Coupled with 10 or so cats I invade France while monty's fighting Russia. Take a french city and then watch all of my berserkers die to a horseman counter attack.

I once created a game with almost nothing but madmen. I had Monty, Brennus, Nap, Shaka, Tokugawa, Genghis, Isabella, Ragnar, and Shaka. Needless to say, there was a little action.

In my book Monty is the first one that has to go. Sooner or later he will always show up with an incredible large outdated army with tons of catapults. In one game I had my SoD waiting for him but somehow even though I had knights, riflemen, musketmen, he obliterated me with about 20 trebuchets and 30 horse archers. Grmblll, I always hate Monty.

In my book Monty is the first one that has to go. Sooner or later he will always show up with an incredible large outdated army with tons of catapults. In one game I had my SoD waiting for him but somehow even though I had knights, riflemen, musketmen, he obliterated me with about 20 trebuchets and 30 horse archers. Grmblll, I always hate Monty.

I disagree, provided you can get Monty's religion early. He has a pretty high shared religion bonus, so it's not that hard to get him to friendly, especially if you get in a couple of shared wars. You'll have to get rid of him eventually, but because of this, I'd say people like Napoleon and Cathy are more immediate targets. Keep Monty happy for now, then kill him when you've got a good tech lead.

Indeed if you can adopt his religion and that is where it mostly goes wrong. If nobody spreads his religion to you, you are screwed. Without the religious bonus you cannot get enough friendly points with him and he will backstab you even if you cave in to every request he makes.

Indeed if you can adopt his religion and that is where it mostly goes wrong. If nobody spreads his religion to you, you are screwed. Without the religious bonus you cannot get enough friendly points with him and he will backstab you even if you cave in to every request he makes.

Hence why I said "provided you can get his religion early" :p

If you don't get the religion pretty soon, certainly then go after him ASAP. But if you do get the religion, there are other targets of higher priority. Cathy for example. If you let her get going, she's a monster. A monster who's even less trustworthy than Monty.

PYL Backstabbers was like this, worse actually, I think everyone was in a constant state of war and backstab-peace.

He has a pretty high shared religion bonus,
+3/+4 isn't that much.