After moving the scout and getting another one form the hut, I see this:
So I decided to play a little differently than usual and go for Great Wall and then start spamming settlers to utilize imperialistic trait. I settled 1NE to get stone in the BFC, which turned extra well as it turned out that by doing so, i also had gold in the BFC.
What I did not know at this point was that I'm on a very crowded Pangea type of map, and in that scenario barbs are not going to be a problem, beating the AIs to the good spots will be.
So the research went Agriculture first, then Masonry -> The wheel. I also popped Archery from the hut in the meantime.
Capital built Worker->Archer->Great Wall. Archer for military police mostly, because stone was not yet connected.
And so, on turn 38 in 2480 BC:
I succesfully built the GW, but at this point I've met all the AIs and was not so sure building the Wall was a good idea.
I quickly went Mining->BW for chopping and slavery, and rushed 2 settlers to grab as much land as I can ASAP.
First pair of cities went here:
Both great sites, but not in the short run. Before IW they'll just drain money from me. I've put them there mostly to block Mansa and because by this point in the game almost all the good city spots were taken either by barbarian or the AIs.
I wanted to settle Northern Pigs + FloodPlains only to find a barb city there. It was captured by the Babilonians btw, before I had any military units, and also it was impossible for me to capture barb cities without either horses nor metal.
So at that point I decided to go for the Mids chopping settlers in the mean-time. Thus on turn 70, 1200BC I've finished the Mids, immedately revolting to representation.
I wanted to grab Bronze/Marble spot in the north, although it would not have any food, only to find another barb city there.
That was pretty frustrating, but my settler with careful manouvering managed to settle this spot.
It grabs fur and more importantly - horses. It turned out to be a mistake though, as this barb city to the west was quickly captured by Hammurabi, and the Corn was lost to me. Later I also lost Horses due to cultural pressure from eastern babylonian cities. I should have settled this city either 1S for food, or more likely 1E for Horses.
Around that time I've got my 1st great person, a spy at ~80% odds. I settled him for 6 beakers, and 12 EPs which I directed all towards Hammurabi as my most likely future war target.
At 475BC I Finally got Aesthetics, onl yto find out that 3 civs already have it. I fear that these trades might not be available next turn, so I decided against partially researching Alphabet and not to waste any time...
I also got IW for it, from Brennus I think.
Tech pace was incredible and I was falling hopelessly behind. I've put all my efforts into generating a GS to bulb philosophy and catch up in tech, but my second great person turned out to be a spy as well.
Argh! I hate that. It seems every time i build the GW I always get low odds great spies. The odds this time were ~55% for GS, 23% for GE and 23% for GSpy. With GE I could have rushed the Great Library, Scientist would bulb philo, but I had no use of another spy, so I saved him for Golden Age.
In act of desperation, after growing capital to size 12 and building NE there, I've fired my Golden Age, adopted Hinduism (for future pacifism), Caste System, and hired a lot of scientists. I've created 3 GS in short time, fisrt one bulbed Philosophy (sadly, most of the AIs had it by this time, so it was mainly for adopting pacifism). The other 2 bulbed Education.
I was finally catching up technologically, researching Liberalism, at 580 AD when Brennus declared war on me.
I guess he didn't like me being Hindu after all. Having no defences at all and loosing 1 city in the first turn of war, made me throw in the towel. Adopting Hinduism/Pacifism was a desperate gambit that didn't work. If I could only survive until Liberalism->Nationalism shot, i'd have some chances with drafting muskets, but I needed 6 turns more.
Only Asoka had Education when I bulbed it, and I was 6 turns away from another GS at about ~90% odds which would bulb the rest of liberalism. The question is would Asoka research Liberalism in those 6 turns. If not, I would have been in a playable position.
Plan would be to build muskets (I have no iron, no metal, no horses) wait for Rifling, mass upgrade and attack Hammurabi with the use of spies. The bad thing is that Mansa voluntarily vassalised to Babylon, so I might have to choose a different target.
Saladin is at war with Elisabeth right now, which is good as it draws his attention away from me. Diplomacy was extremly difficult in this game.
In the end, building great wall is a gambit. Here it didn't pay off because of the crowded map and bad luck with the great people. That's the biggest danger I think, loosing the predictability of getting the right great people at the right time. At this level of play there simply is no room for aditional great spy.
Fun game nevertheless.
I want that barbarian city to the south, though. The northern barb city I will raze/resettle to get the corn that's up there.
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