Settled 1S on the wine settler start, and were racing for buddhism
but huts are good for a bit of gold and Agriculture - how useful is that with irrigated corn! And we are successfully Buddhist on turn 13. Hindsight not sure why I didnt do poly, because I always forget I need poly for aesthetics, and GLib is a no-brainer with marble. Oh well. Meet napoleon he must be close. Since I got AG from a hut, I figure I can go masonry to speed through oracle. Then meet this guy:
Ok, so I wont delay long on military! Nasty neighbors! Unfortunately, because I got a little sidetracked after spotting one of the huts from a hill, I hadnt finished scouting by the time I got my settler out, so I was terrified a barb animal would eat it as I raced it down to block some land and claim gold. I think this is near napoleon too. Heres Prague:
I figured with 160 hut gold, I can afford it to be a bit far from the capital. Meet Hannibal too. Clearly Prague is close to France:
That message got annoying the 10th time it popped up. Oh, and my scout found one last hut XP which got me to 9, and I let a barb warrior attack me in the forest and lose, so this:
HE unlocked thanks to a hut ridiculously unbalanced. In my favor I know, but still unbalanced.
First time in ages I built Oracle:
Wow what to do?? Monarchy or COL. Monarchy sure is tempting for early HR happiness. But I chose COL, figure I can self tech monarchy pretty easily and access to the rathaus will be nice. Plus I can get a missionary and make Nappy Confucian too, which I did. Now just need the Oracle prophet to help pay for the empire. Vienna here blocking some more land and locking up the ivory.
Teched AH finally in 1300 BC way late! And horses are in Pragues BFC, so thats nice. Just need to block a bit more land to the east, and should be easy to fill in a bunch of cities.
An all important trade:
This opens up a few more trades as well, including IW, which I needed with the jungle around Vienna
And heres my first ever attempt at the walls trick
before 10 gold:
After a whip and 4 chops:
246 gold. Not bad - I know this would have been better after math, but hey, the gold came in handy to fix the economy. My workers can then get back to improving the other cities. And shrine time this helps the economy immensely.
And state of the world at 5 BC:
My only fear is diplomacy right now
I had Nappy in Confucianism, but he converted to hindu. And Shaka is nearby, and I saw a few impis a turn or two ago near my borders. Impis arent hurting pro archers though. I dont have many archers is the problem(8 total) . But as you can see, I just hit the point where Im getting HE built in Prague (which happens to be my Confucian holy city. I know its not optimal to have a shrined holy city also be your unit pump, but its also my best production city with all those hills). Aachen is going to be a ok bureau city with those cottages. My city specialization has been mediocre this game, and I havent even really developed my GP farm yet. Might be the first game ever that I build HE and Wall Street in the same city - wouldn't that be something?
Next steps are to survive the next 15 turns without a war, so my unit pump can start doing just that, switch to caste and start getting the benefits of some specialists. Thanks to more aggressive chopping around Aachen, great library is coming in a turn or two. Have lined up more settlers and workers to fill in the gaps Ive blocked some good land, and can easily fit a few more cities in. I havent scouted all that well, but it appears as if were all on one landmass, and were all pretty tightly boxed in, because tech is slow case in point:
Tech board should be a lot worse at 5 BC on emperor, so I assume this map doesnt have a lot of land for the AI to settle. Once someone is willing to trade construction, I'll be churning out elephants, which will probably mean I have to start warring, probably with the short french guy first. Currency and CS are key techs now to get bureau and start chain farming - a couple sites need some extra farms.