It seems that I am ending up falling behind with technology even though my cities aren't so far from my capital (and my first 2 cities were cottaged too.) Any help or tips for this game or for future ones?

Here is a screenshot of my cities:
http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd487/TheBackStabber/Civ4ScreenShot0002.jpg?t=1296363158

And the save:
280896

Alright, here's what I think:

1. Prague should have been settled 2E of where it is right now. At the moment, it's way to close to Vienna

2. Your research bar is at 30%. I think you expanded too fast. Try and beeline technologies so you can build Courthouse and Market fast.

Hope that helps :D

Alright, here's what I think:

1. Prague should have been settled 2E of where it is right now. At the moment, it's way to close to Vienna

2. Your research bar is at 30%. I think you expanded too fast. Try and beeline technologies so you can build Courthouse and Market fast.

Hope that helps :D

What I don't get is that I've seen someone play on immortal with 6 cities (1 far from the capital) while having the tech slider at 50% with Mathematics and calendar researched around 500 BC. It was from TMIT's Elizabeth let's play video. I'm assuming it could be because he is playing as a financial leader but i don't think it has that big of an effect. So how can I achieve all of that by 500 BC?

Actually you have expanded to slow backstabber IMO. The proximity of Vienna and Prague are also fine - they can help work cottages. However, Vienna is poorly placed. It should be coastal and I probably would have settled on the Iron, since I would not have tech IW by the time I settled there. You have wasted a good fish resource and potential GP farm.

I'm almost at a loss at your situation, backstabber. Tech is poor and some questionable city placement. Wonders and SE Economy work well in isolation and you have the land for it.

Archery and IW is a complete waste. You need to focus on more of a beeline and definitely get up libraries much earlier. I'm really confused at how you have little basic infra up like grans and libraries in long established cities. Seems like you are not using the whip and focused to much on expensive units. Warriors work fine on Emperor and even IMM especially in isolation.

You also have not run any scientists or popped a GS. Great People are really important in isolation game to keep up. Get and Academy and work your way up to CoL for some caste action. Then go for TGL. If not building the Mids, which might be good here. You need HR to grow - you have few happy resources here. Growth is such an important thing

I guarantee you a Caravel will pop up not too far in the future and you will find yourself in a huge whole.

Is Emperor a level you are comfortable with?

So how can I achieve all of that by 500 BC?

Libraries and specialists

Actually you have expanded to slow backstabber IMO. The proximity of Vienna and Prague are also fine - they can help work cottages. However, Vienna is poorly placed. It should be coastal and I probably would have settled on the Iron, since I would not have tech IW by the time I settled there. You have wasted a good fish resource and potential GP farm.

I'm almost at a loss at your situation, backstabber. Tech is poor and some questionable city placement. Wonders and SE Economy work well in isolation and you have the land for it.

Archery and IW is a complete waste. You need to focus on more of a beeline and definitely get up libraries much earlier. I'm really confused at how you have little basic infra up like grans and libraries in long established cities. Seems like you are not using the whip and focused to much on expensive units. Warriors work fine on Emperor and even IMM especially in isolation.

You also have not run any scientists or popped a GS. Great People are really important in isolation game to keep up. Get and Academy and work your way up to CoL for some caste action. Then go for TGL. If not building the Mids, which might be good here. You need HR to grow - you have few happy resources here. Growth is such an important thing

I guarantee you a Caravel will pop up not too far in the future and you will find yourself in a huge whole.

Is Emperor a level you are comfortable with?

This is my first game on emperor.

Isolation is pretty hard as you move up levels. You need to expand conservatively but expand. The slider is not the issue. I run it at 0% at times. In Iso you don't have to expand as aggressively but I still want at least 6 cities by 1AD when I start shooting for Education or Astro in this case. GSs can help with that.

You are making a lot of basic mistakes that I would think would give you some issues on lower levels as well.

You teched AG>Archery>Mining>BW>IW

Archery is a waste that is not needed unless absolutely necessary - no strat resources. However, I've played many iso games building warriors for thousands of years. Iron Working takes an awful long time to tech and basically does nothing for you. You've geared up for a war that does not exist :)

BW could possibly be delayed if you have low food or not a lot of forest. Don't know about forest, but you do have food. I usually try to go for the wonders though if I know I'm isolated. Oracle> CoL is a good call. Plus it's on the path to HR. Some of your cites should be size 8 to 10 by now.

Try to focus on a couple key worker techs and then beeline things to improve your economy. Build wonders for fail gold also helps

Wow this game is such a crying shame. You have so not played the map!!

First major issues for me! Tech order. You have 2 pigs not even worked by 500bc. Worse still you have not even tech Animal Husbandary! Same for fishing and work boats.

The crabs, wheat and pigs city looks good but should be size 4-5+ by now. No Ah or workboat has killed this city for now. I might of built a wheat/crabs city east of it. Sharing food between 2 cities is not a bad idea.

For me I would of gone Ag/ah at start. As you have stone I might of gone for mids for happiness or tried oracle for monarchy. (or both) Representation gives +3 happiness to top 5 cities.

I might of made vienna coastal between pigs and rice. I am torn as you could place a city on the iron and build Moia S there. Lots of food to whip buildings.

Perhaps I might of built Prague to include stone and copper. This is not ideal but would get the stone earlier. The trouble is Prague has no real food resource. This is why most players 2nd city has lots of food resources or a key resource like copper/ horse to start a war.

As lymond said you should be using great people too. Build a library and run 2 scientist in your capital. Great scientists really propel you up the tech ladder by bulbing Philosophy, edu and liberalism.

Again monarchy/mids would of helped with your city sizes. Your capital at size 5 is not helping your empire.

Ag to farm food. AH to work pigs and show up horse. Fishing to allow workboats. Masonry to try for mids.

Oh cottages! You may have 1-2 cottages but they need to be worked to grow to towns. Your capital is merely set on food and production. This won't help your economy unless you have alphabet and build science.

As for units maybe 1-2 to fogbust down south but only warriors.

Overall play map again and really focus on what you should be doing and what your empire needs.

It seems that I am ending up falling behind with technology even though my cities aren't so far from my capital Theres a lot going wrong here, and the distance of your cities from the capital has nothing to do with it. Instead their placement, your tech and build priorities and the low :) cap are whats crippling you.

Do you have a 4000BC save you can post?

Edit - Oh and stop using avoid growth, it will do nothing but damage to your empire!

Hello, new to the forum ;)
Iam an immortal/deity player, and you prolly don't want to hear that but...iam at a complete loss at what you did there, lol.

This map is very good (if you like isolated starts), but you did about everything wrong :)
You should have settled the stone with your 3rd or maybe even 2nd city (settling on the stone is the best option here, or place Prague so it has both stone/copper but that would not be a great city overall), and started workind on the pyramids. Maybe stonehenge too but that is not so important.
The pyramids are the best thing you can get on isolated, while techs like iron working or archery are really unimportant.

The placement of Vienna is not so great either, basically a complete waste of time when you should have connected the stone first. Dry Rice is a bad field, and the pigs are not worked ;)

I see you move a settler down there in the jungle...so still not interested in the stone?
You really need to read up a bit more on things like specialists and how the pyramids make them so great if you have time, early city placement and....uuuh you need to read up on *everything* sorry my friend :)

I'm not a big fan of Specialists because I am focusing on a domination victory in most games and scientists can't fund a large empire later in the game. I can switch some cities to merchants after liberalism however, I'll try that and see.

Also, I've found people cottaging in a lot of higher level games and their tech pace is reasonable. And it seems to pay off when they all grow especially with the bonuses later in the game. That seems like a good idea since this game is going to end after the renaissance since I am isolated.

I also went to iron working early because I have a dense amount of jungles to the south that would hurt my growth.

Also, what if I am in a situation where I have a lot of neutral land and barbs are coming from everywhere? warriors obviously cannot take on barb spears and axes.

I'm not a big fan of Specialists because I am focusing on a domination victory in most games and scientists can't fund a large empire later in the game. I can switch some cities to merchants after liberalism however, I'll try that and see.

Also, I've found people cottaging in a lot of higher level games and their tech pace is reasonable. And it seems to pay off when they all grow especially with the bonuses later in the game. That seems like a good idea since this game is going to end after the renaissance since I am isolated.

I also went to iron working early because I have a dense amount of jungles to the south that would hurt my growth. I think you've fallen into the trap of thinking that a cottage economy means no specialists at all, this is absolutely false.
Without some kind of Great Person farm your just shooting yourself in the foot at high levels and in almost every case the GP farm uses specialists.

Perhaps you should check those high level cottage games again, and check around for the Great Person farms.
I also went to iron working early because I have a dense amount of jungles to the south that would hurt my growth. Jungle cities take massive amounts of investment in worker turns and :science: to become productive, and even then are quite slow to get going. Instead you could have settled the non jungle sites and delayed IW till you had the ability to take on those jungle cities.
Also, what if I am in a situation where I have a lot of neutral land and barbs are coming from everywhere? warriors obviously cannot take on barb spears and axes. True against Axes, but on forested hills they do well enough against Spears. Your spawnbusting could use a lot of improvement, barbs cannot spawn within 2 tiles of a unit regardless of fog so you don't need that many units commited to it. For dealing with barbs theres no point in getting Archery in any case where Horses or Copper is available.

I think you've fallen into the trap of thinking that a cottage economy means no specialists at all, this is absolutely false.
Without some kind of Great Person farm your just shooting yourself in the foot at high levels and in almost every case the GP farm uses specialists.

Perhaps you should check thse high level cottage games again, and check around for the Great Person farms.

I forgot to note that I was going to make a city down south with the 2 food resources and hills to make it a gp farm. I should have made my 3rd city a gp farm though.

I'll try restarting the game and take some advice from you guys.

Also, what if I am in a situation where I have a lot of neutral land and barbs are coming from everywhere? warriors obviously cannot take on barb spears and axes.

On this map you don't get any barbs at all with a bit fog busting, and on other maps you want to look for horses and copper rather than iron for barb defense (another reason why you should have teched AH instead by the way) ;)

Welcome to the forum Mylene!

@ Backstabber. You are isolated and you are avoiding the use of great people because you want to go for a domination victory? I know you generalised but your actions speak louder than your words.

Mylene is right about the stone and mids. Getting pyramids early would of propelled this game. A city running a scientist in representation civic gives you 6 science early on before multipliers. A cottage long term may match that but you will be waiting 30-40+ turns. 4-5 cities with a scientist gives 30+ science beakers a turn.

Many higher level players will grow their cities first to size 10+ and then cottage. A larger city will make better use of cottages than a size 4-5 city. This is especially true when you have a city with no food resource that is slow on growth. In many instances the additional food allows you to whip buildings. A slow growth capital with just cottages may struggle to build stuff like court houses, markets, forges etc.

Overall cottages have their place long term but specialists short term give you a bigger boost.

You will find the difference between a monarch/ emperor player is often great people and better micro management and placement of cities.

Ok, this time, I have skipped archery and iron working And went most of the ancient techs first. I am close to finishing the pyramids and Vienna is now closer to the stone. Now I am researching iron working so I can clear the jungle to the south and then run specialists. How am I currently doing?

http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd487/TheBackStabber/Civ4ScreenShot0003.jpg?t=1296408424

And here's the save:

I'm agreeing with what pretty much everybody else has said. Prioritize worker techs, definitely get the pyramids since you have stone, etc.

I'm going to add that you should be whipping more. Prague and Vienna still don't have their granaries and they're at size 4! Prague is working a forested plains tiles. If you find yourself working a forested plains tile whip. Also what were those city's builds before the granary? Monument I can see, but what else? Both of these cities should have granaries already as the capital is more than capable of making enough workers and settlers. So get your new cities up and running quickly by whipping in monuments, granaries, and libraries. This is why you need to settle near food early on.

I think I might disagree with lymond about the settling speed. It's kind of a matter of taste I think. But I would have been more inclined to stay small, with about three cities. The capital, one on the stone, and another two south of the capital's wet rice. Grow them to their happy caps and run specialists while the capital builds a lot of workers. Then when you get IW explode to the rest of the continent and use your massive worker force to clear the jungle.

But yeah, posting a 4000 BC save and getting some shadows might do you good.


EDIT: Oh, you started a new game. That's much better. I still think you're putting too much emphasis on IW. There's no good resources down there and only one river. There's no AIs gonna take your land. Why are you so eager to get down there?

It is better, but

While people did mention the lack of important food techs like Fishing and AH, researching them when you have absolutely no use for them (as you haven't/aren't going to settled the right cities for a while) is a waste.

Again, avoid growth is a truly awful button that does nothing but damage your empire (outside of a ferw micro tricks that simply aren't needed here!). Working an unimproved plains tile over farmed corn is truly a :confused: moment.

While I can see you want to get IW to settle the jungle, your still not really in a position do so so without seriously hurting yourself. There are at least 3 more sites (all very good for specs) worth settling before going into the jungle, which would give you time to get a Worker force large enough to stop jungle cities crippling you.

Attach a 4000BC save!

Nice improvement on the 2nd save :)
2 suggestions: use the stone city to build settlers instead of a granary (should have probably started at size 2), it does have the production. And move your southern anti-barb units a bit, so they cover the whole map (2 squares around a unit no barbs can pop).

Okay the new save has some improvements. Great that you hooked up the stone so early.

What I might of done differently was have city 2 produce the mids. City 1 could of built workers/ settlers. With 3-4 workers you could of chopped the forest and built mids quickly. Overall I would of like to have seen a third city now. I might of built it in preference of the mids. You probably had time. If you are building settlers/workers you don't need avoid growth!

You really need to turn off avoid growth. There is nothing wrong with having unhappy faces on a city. Especially if you are about to resolve the issue with mids. Seeing your capital use a 1f1h tile seems wasteful.

The main thing holding you back now is lack of workers and cities. Once you have 3 cities and IW expand to 5-6 cities as and when you can afford it. Make sure you have writing for libraries. Don't be afraid of 0% science rate. With scientists and cottages you will soon move the economy along.

In terms of fogbusting 4 squares between the 2 units. Wxxxxwxxxxw. No barb will appear in the area between those warriors unless spawned in the fog outside it.

A couple early great scientists go a long way to keeping up in tech.

There is one good spot without jungle that I can have for a city north of my capital, but I cannot think of any other good sites that aren't full of jungles.

There is one good spot without jungle that I can have for a city north of my capital, but I cannot think of any other good sites that aren't full of jungles. I'm assuming your thinking the pig+crab+wheat site, right?

you don't really have the :) (or spec slots) to make full use of all that food, so split it in 2, a pig+crab and wheat+clam cities, and maybe grab the whales with the wheat+clam city as you want Optics early anyway. If you go for the whale then make sure you expand the pig+crab sites borders to allow your whale city to work wheat when settled. Both of these will have food for several specs.

Theres a pig west of your captial near some hills that could either be used for specs or better yet, some production, if theres nothing in the fog I think 1N of the pig is fine.

All 3 of these will be decent quite quickly and will be improved later with CS chain irrigation. Specialist cities do not need large numbers of good tiles to make good cities, after all you won't be working that many, all they need is some decent food output.

Ok, and which should I go for instead of iron working right now? CoL (for caste system and rathauses) or Literature (for the Great Library.)
Also, should I cottage or run specialists in my capital? Or just use it to spam settlers and workers For now and then do either one later?
Edit: Here's the 4000 BC save:

Don't be disheartened by this game, the map is a freak of the RNG. Seriously, this is way, way harder than the vast majority of Emperor games, harder than some Immortal ones perhaps...

A nasty shock for a first Emperor game :p

Nuremberg was just eating maintenance. Get happiness and get more riverside cottages at the cost of mines.

A lot of isolation is about saving enough gold to get your first classical tech

I think I might disagree with lymond about the settling speed.

Yeah, I made that first point a little hasty - and without fully taking in the isolation aspect which I corrected in my next post - and it was really in response to Yosheigg regarding the whole slider percentage/expansion deal, which I do disgree with. However, in isolation, land grabbing is not as much of a priority and slower expansion may allow you to focus more on important wonders. Still though, it can depend on how good the surrounding land is, especially food, and your overall strategy. Expanding fast to marginal sites or, in this case, jungle sites that will take a long time to contribute is not good. But good sites allow more specialists to run, wealth buidling, what have you, and getting a good tech like CoL from Oracle will further help matters. It reall all depends.

It seems that I am doing a poor job right now. I am currently around 600 ad and I am still in the classical age trying to research Civil Service. I am assuming it's because I am not running any specialists at this time, since I am trying to grow my cities to their happy caps and then running caste scientists. I will have to abandon this game. Any tips for future emperor games? BTW I do not have very much experience with the SE.

Here is the current save:

As for the first game, press F2 to check your economic adviser. You were losing 8 gold per turn in unit cost and 2 gold per turn in away costs.
Also you turned on the governor and it was doing some questionable things. After microing the tiles and deleting some units I was up to a more reasonable 20 gold per turn.

Do not spam settlers. In isolation, you mostly want commerce cities or high food sites for great people, since your tech options are limited, so you may not be able to get alphabet to turn hammers into beakers.

It seems that I am doing a poor job right now. I am currently around 600 ad and I am still in the classical age trying to research Civil Service. I am assuming it's because I am not running any specialists at this time, since I am trying to grow my cities to their happy caps and then running caste scientists. I will have to abandon this game. Any tips for future emperor games? BTW I do not have very much experience with the SE.

Here is the current save:

Yep, your tech situation is not good. In iso you need to be pretty focused. I may still not have teched IW before other things, although you will need it eventually since optics and astro is important.

I can't figure out what you did with your first GS. I would create an academy in your cap or settle it. Seems you may have bulbed something minor, not sure.

Aachen should have stopped growth by running specialists as opposed to going into unhappiness, which you are unable to whip off in caste. You should manage that closely.

My tip right now is to run a game on Monarch or even Prince and work on some of the basics with the help of the forum members. Granted, iso is harder as you move up.

I may try this game out and show you what I did.

Hmmm at 600ad you are seriously lagging techwise. The Ai will have 6-7+ more techs than you. They may be up to feudalism, currency, music, civil service or more. Normally this would not matter if you had a good lead on path to edu. Hmmm.

You popped a GE but you have no wonders to use him on. Shame really.

It seems that I am doing a poor job right now. I am currently around 600 ad and I am still in the classical age trying to research Civil Service. I am assuming it's because I am not running any specialists at this time, since I am trying to grow my cities to their happy caps and then running caste scientists. I will have to abandon this game. Any tips for future emperor games? BTW I do not have very much experience with the SE.

Here is the current save:

Whipping to avoid useless unhappy population is crucial. Slavery is a civic you can use for a long time. Granaries make whipping twice as efficient. There are very detailed explanations of how to time it, but generally you want to whip away at least 2 population when your city is about to grow above your happy cap. If your city is going to grow back above the happy cap before the unhappiness goes away, you need to whip away more population each time (in a food-rich city with a granary, you could probably grow back 4 population in the time it takes the unhappiness to disappear if you time it right before growth), or take that time to build a worker or settler. You of course also have to manage the tiles you're working to increase production and slow down growth to avoid non-working population. The hammer overflow will often be the difference between completing a wonder on-time or just missing out by a turn or two. Im not sure how well you use the slavery civic, maybe you already know this.

Also not sure how well you know the tech-trade angle. AIs will never give you a fair 1:1 tech trade but you make up for this and then some by trading the same tech multiple times. For this reason at higher difficulties it's better to research techs that the AIs themselves dont have, rather than trying to research everything yourself. You will also receive a tech much more cheaply in a trade after you have researched it for one turn compared to trying to acquire it having put zero beakers into it. Super important at emperor and above when you will never have a tech lead trying to research everything yourself.

It's also marginally (but more so near the beginning of the game when gold and beaker numbers are low) more efficient to alternate between 100% science slider and 0%, because the game rounds your modifiers from things like markets, libraries, banks etc to the nearest whole number. Losing a bit of gold to this every turn at the beginning of the game can actually mak ea differencew.

Okay things I would suggest for this save if you restart.

1. I do think stone is good for the second city.
2. You can spam great wall/ Stone Henge/ Mids quite easily. Abuse these wonders as much as you can.
3. Once stone city is up expand slowly and keep your tech rate up.
4. oracle! Grabbing COl with this would push you along techwise and help you towards CS.
5. Avoid aesthetic route. Unless you get a GE it will take you an age to build great lib. Concentrate on CS and lib route for a classic era tech you can trade.
6. Abuse rep and run lots of scientists to keep up your science. Whip lib in capital.
7. Failed gold on wonders! A must with all that forest and stone. Build GW in one city then complete in another. £££!
8. Irrigate all cities outside your capital and run specialists.
9. Don't forget to run binary research. 100% science vs 100% tax. The game rounds up and down the percentages so you lose science/gold by not running at 100% either way.

Overall I think if you are starting out on emperor you will struggle on this game as it requires a very designed strategy to keep up with the AI. Your starting leader is hardly great for the job either.

I can't figure out what you did with your first GS. I would create an academy in your cap or settle it. Seems you may have bulbed something minor, not sure.



It's epic speed, so 61/300 GPP means there has only been one Great Person so far,
a great engineer that has been resting for 31 turns.

I shadowed this until 355 BC.

I settled in place, built worker, warrior, settler at size 3. (seems obvious)
Tech was: Agriculture, Mining, BW, wheel, masonry

I settled Prague 1 sw of the copper and 1 nw of the stone (and one tile of the coast as well)
to get the copper and the stone connected asap.
Prague started on Stonehenge (mainly for failure cash, while the capital built worker, warrior, worker, warrior, settler and then the Pyramids (with stone now connected)

Prague actually completed Stonehenge in 1950 BC and then started on the great wall, wich I narrowly
missed in 1800 BC (with a very nice cash bonus). After failing the great wall, a chopped axe in Prague was just in time to save the quarry, and that was the entire barb problem.

Vienna was settled in 1875 BC on the pig-crab-wheat spot in the north, and will eventually be the GP farm.

Further teching was Animal Husbandry, Fishing, pottery, writing, Sailing, Iron working.

The pyramids were completed in 1325 BC. The capital now builds a granary and a library, and
some farms are worked to grow the pop quickly to the max. The capital starts running 2
scientists ASAP. A great Engineer pops out in 455 BC and is settled (3 hammers and 6 beakers with rep)

The capital and prague start on a lot of settlers and workers.

Vienna starts on another failure cash project, but fails to get the cash and produces the
great lighthouse in 355BC.

At this Point, I have 6 cities, and will build 4 more rather quickly.

I've rejected going for aesthetics-literature, and I'm teching towards code of laws, rathouses and failure cash on chizen itza. After that I will try to bulb towards astronomy quickly.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=281100&stc=1&d=1296488825

@ barbertje - I really am not fond of the GLH on this map. You have no offshore islands to make it pay off. Once you meet the Ai it might be of value. You would of been better to go for the Oracle and beeline towards CS and lib. COL would of provided a religion for happiness too.

You have gained +2 trade routes in each city but they are only worth 1 commerce each. You are still a long way off COl/currency. I think the Ai will be a long way ahead on techs by the time you reach them.

Lets see how you do come the time you reach liberalism.

Again this is a tough map to play and you really do have to have a strict plan i think.
an immortal player will show you all how it is done. ;)

@ barbertje - I really am not fond of the GLH on this map. You have no offshore islands to make it pay off. Once you meet the Ai it might be of value. You would of been better to go for the Oracle and beeline towards CS and lib. COL would of provided a religion for happiness too.

You have gained +2 trade routes in each city but they are only worth 1 commerce each. You are still a long way off COl/currency. I think the Ai will be a long way ahead on techs by the time you reach them.

Lets see how you do come the time you reach liberalism.

Again this is a tough map to play and you really do have to have a strict plan i think.
an immortal player will show you all how it is done. ;)

It appears you were right. I still overexpanded, even with the GLH.

I did a second try, the start was the same, except I delayed ironworking and settling
the jungle even more, and teched math, currency, COL, and Civil service,
wich i teched in 145 AD, before starting on iron working and settling the jungle. After
that I teched directly to astronomy, getting it in 1020 AD.
I got about 1000 gold from failing Chizen itza twice.

In 1030 I met everyone, and Astronomy was the only tech I had on everyone. I got 15 techs from astronomy, up to printing press, engineering, feodalism, all the religious stuff, philosophy, drama. The 2 best techers were at the bottom of the leaderboard along with me, so no WFYABTA.

Several resource trades fixed the happiness problem for a long time.
The dominant religion als spread quickly so I could join it.
I lost the lib race while teching education, continued to liberalism and could trade for
nationalism and guilds.
A scientist bulbed half of scientific method and I could exchange that for banking, guilds and constitution. (nice to get that early if you have only 2 monasteries)

After Oxford was built, I slowly outteched them, The AI's started to war, and no one started early on the spaceship, so I could launch in 1891 and win in 1918.
Production was lousy, except in the capitol so I had only 1 engine and 2 thrusters, and
had to wait 27 turns.

Well done getting the victory. Failed gold on that map was huge. Teching directly to Col, currency and edu is huge. You really only needed 4-5 cities come 500bc.

I think if you had gone oracle you would of got lib too. On my game up to lib I let it slip too early. Back filling techs is a dangerous game. I could of got Lib by about 800ad if I skipped the lit path.

Overall when you are on your own you skip the top and bottom of tech tree.

A space win on this map is a job well done. I could replay the start but I think I am done with this map. Thebackstabber should note how you played this out.

The first save is very difficult. Tried HR riverside cottages, but the astronomy date was poor. I think something a bit less standard might be necessary, like lots of city splitting/no granary/library techs.