Well I got the game yesterday and put a good 6-7 hours into it (before friends intervened, gotta get locks on the doors)

I started on chieftain mode, standard size map with 8 opponents, and random settings for weather (but I chose the several continent option for land mass), as the Indian culture (I am culture oriented, so the religion bonus is nice). I also liked them because I'd heard resources were important, and their special unit comes with no requirement, and early enough that I might get it at a crucial time.

I started out in a fertile valley, but it only had about 3 city sites, before running into several nearly impassible mountain ranges (think Himilayas here, 3 thick mountains) and beyond that were the enemy and swamps, so expansion wasn't really much of an option.

The map ended up being fairly similar to the world map. It was two large continents (with no islands that I've seen), one was bigger than the other (eur-asia) and the other ran N-S. 4 civs on each chunk.

I ran into the Zulu enemy very quickly, and so I sprung my second city right up against the range that they were on teh other side of; I wanted to make sure to save my precious space. Their capital was nestled up in the mountains, so they grew pretty slowly, which I think saved me, because at the start of the game things went pretty slow.

I was able to squeeze a warrior out and explore the continent before national borders started constrainging me, and I soundly beat all the barbarians that I ran across (chieftain mode, what can I say?). I mostly just got money, but they did give me the wheel.

I was having trouble maintaining enough units, so I plopped down another city, and that pretty much did it for 'ideal' building sites for me. I was working through my standard city improvements, got the Pyramids built so I sold off all my graneries.

At this point I was keeping up with the enemy, but they had about 5-10 times the amount of fertile plains to make into cities, so I knew that I needed to expand. I saw some spices to the north that I wanted, so I built a city up there (on a hill surrounded by jungle tiles). The zulus got influence over that square, but once my city expanded (that's took awhile) the city borders took over their colony.

By this time I had researched iron, and there were two deposits near me. I had control over one, but I built a city to the south (surrounded by mountains and jungle this time) to control the other source.

By this time I had a good number of wonders, plus my cities had had other cultural items for some time. The Japanese built a city near the edge of my country (fairly far from my 'big' cities) and I got control of it! The unit that I got was the war elephant, which was also very nice. I quickly got some roads placed to that city, and while in the process the Chinese (the dominant civ, other then my all powerful culture) lost a size 1-2 city to me, just south of the japanese city. These cities were on the other side of an inland sea from me, but close enough that I built roads fairly quickly. The best part is that the computer doesn't stop workers that are working those squares, it just moves them out once they are done.

Both of these cities were in tough locations, so I fortified them up, and put workers on the task of making them viable. Shortly after this, I got my third city, a chinese level NINE city came over to me. With my war elephants I started to bulk up for war with the zulu (I could attack their capitol from the mountains, figured it was worth the effort), but the Japanese were pushing me, and the Chinese on the other side scared me (I had the strongest units, but didn't want to start a world war). I started cranking out the units, but decided to use them to make sure all my cities were well defended. My science came along quickly enough that I was spending all my time updatin to the newest unit (none of them were able to be 'upgraded', since they weren't obsolete). I decided that I would let war come to me (if at all) and work on a culture/UN victory.

The one slight downside is that the enemy seems smart enough to not attack me. I'm used to getting a good lead, then having everyone gang up on me and playing a waiting game (then crush the first that attacks me). The zulus and chinese seem pretty cautious, and I think this world similar to the world ala 1913; there have not been many (any) wars between other civs, and the largest ones are starting to look outward.

We'll see.

great and good luck

by any chance can you (and others) add some screens in your (their) stories ;)


Thanks

I'll give it a shot. Print Screen, or something else?

The world war that I expected broke out, although not how I thought it would go.

Japan attacked China, and every other civ was allied with china (since China was the most powerful) and declared war on Japan. Japan came to me for help, and in the interest of holding back China I delcared war. I was just finishing studying for rubber/infarntry and pretty far ahead in tech, so I was sitting pretty.

Finished refining and found only one spot of rubber on my continent, in my ally's territory. I didn't want to go to war with Japan, so I saw that Germany had some oil in its territory. I built a couple of galleons, and landed a nice invasion force (2 Calvery, 3 riflemen, 3 artillery). The relevant town was just size 3, and had only one puny garrison, so I steamrolled it. That got me rubber, and I cranked out the infantry.

I started mobilizing for war, but still fairly slowly. I had 3 wonders being built, and a lot of improvement, so I wasn't too concerned. The Zulus and Chinese were not really attacking me, so I didn't have any immediate concerns (and a garrison of 2 riflemen and 1 calvery in each city was holding strong).

I got refining and discovered I had no oil either (now the small starting position started hurting). I pushed a bunch of artillery and infantry over into the chinese area and took two of their towns that secured me an oil deposit.

I arranged peace with all my neighbors excepting the Zulus and English (they wouldn't talk to me ), and started heading into Zululand. Their capitol was right next to me, so that is the first city I took. A few rounds of bombardment and it fell like a paper house. I struck north and took two more cities, splitting their civ in two.

That's where I'm at now, I think I may just start a new game. It's obvious that I have the game well in hand, so I want to crank it up in difficulty.

Two strange things, I got saltpeter when I found gunpowder, but I have never been able to find any saltpeter deposits, and I'm not trading anything??? Same thing happened with rubber; it was near my city, but out of the radius (since it hadn't expanded yet), but I still had the rubber resource.

Oh, and I had none of the combat problems that others were experiencing. I was always ahead in the fighting game, so calvery vs calvery (my attack) was 6-3 and I won most of those pretty handily. I did well in combat all around, hopefully it'll be more interesting at a different difficulty level.