Monarch Student^ XXXIII Victoria

Things have been peaceful so far, despite the proximity of our favourite game-wrecker. The psychotic Zulu founded Buddhism, Augustus and I joined his club, and Hammurabi has recently gone Confucian. I don't have any shared borders with Shaka and he's at pleased, so we'll see what happens.

Settled in place, and made a bit of a misread at first - I thought I was going to axe-rush Augustus so I made a few axemen. Then I got a look at the jungle and realised that if I didn't start settling up there fast, Hammurabi was going to grow absolutely mammoth with fifteen grassland cities or so. So I cancelled the *axemen and started making settlers instead. The axemen turned out useful later, when I used them to capture two barb cities (with some help from Augustus).

Map and techs:

Hilariously I missed fish, thats a trap I guess.. Anyway saw rome and saw red. Nicked his horsies and backed em up with axes, he had 9 archers in rome so it dragged a bit until every tree was chopped in fact. Hes dead now. Shaka is close so I guess just keep on keepin on. Only took 2 cities but rome is nice and has stonehenge.

After Rome was dead I expanded to 12 cities and then went wonder mental. I knew Shaka was going to attack, as sure as eggs is eggs. I just kept thinking oh 1more wonder wont hurt I even thought about going feudal to make sure I was safe but I just went tech and wonder mad. It was those gems that tipped me over the edge. So now Im swamped with all kinds of yellow Zulu madness sweeping thru my beautiful lands

If you're talking about Hammy, he has 11 cities in my game (Emperor/Normal). I have 10. That's without fighting him. So he's eminently blockable. I didn't make any special effort to do it - I just went "Ooh, riverside Gems and Ivory!" and prioritised the shiny, shiny sites.

All civs in my game have between 7 and 13 cities.

Unfortunately for two of the guys on 7, they are on my borders, and I have redcoats

Shaka = war mode for all off, 1-2 turns. Then boom, stack of 6-7 units, followed by another. I thought he'd pick peacemonger and border target AC, but no he'd rather walk THROUGH his borders to get to me. Oh well, had a pretty good REX and tech going, but I will probably replay since it was an early DoW loss.

What level are you playing at? On immortal I was able to get enough land to stop Hammurabi getting too huge (held him to twelve cities). You have the Imp trait, which helps. My scouting nearly didn't reveal just how much land Hammurabi has in time and I was about to axe rush Augustus. When I saw the situation up there I knew I had to abort the axe rush and stop Hammurabi fast or he'd be out of control. It's a matter of reading the map situation and adapting accordingly, but I think it's doable here.

Opened with the obvious choice, agriculture and a worker. Next went for BW, hoping to find copper in one of London's unforested hills.

Met Augustus early, and found Rome about 10 tiles south of London. Scouted around his borders and saw no sign of metal, and considered rushing him. But a few turns later I met Shaka and discarded that idea.

BW reveals copper 4 west of London. I research wheel next to connect it, and settle York on top of it in 2440BC. Unfortunately this city needs a border pop to reach its 2 fish tiles, so I research mysticism next.

With Shaka to my west, I figured this would not be a peaceful early game. He's a bit too far away for my taste to attack with 1-move units, and I don't want a melee-vs-melee brawl with an aggressive leader. I go for AH next hoping to find horses. Settled Nottingham on the river south of London, planning to make it my main cottage city. Luckily, horses turned up in Nottingham. I decided to horse archer rush Shaka, and hopefully remove my most obnoxious neighbor from the game ASAP.

I settle my fourth city, Hastings, 1NW of the gold. Pottery is next to get cottages going, followed by HBR, hunting, archery, then writing and alphabet while chopping horse archers. Trade around HBR to get IW, masonry, and sailing, then head for currency.

Shaka goes war mode and starts stacking iron units near my border. Yeah, well I have enough on my hands right now too, Shaka . In 325BC I declare on him with 9 horse archers. I lure his stack into my territory and crush it on the open field, then start sweeping his cities.

It was a fairly easy war, all things considered. He had metal and 7 cities, but 6 of those were settled on flat land. He had few garrison units after throwing away his offensive stack. In total, I built 24 horse archers, lost 10 of them, killed 33 of Shaka's units, and captured 7 cities. He was wiped off the map by 225AD, after 21 turns of war.

Best of all, my reward for capturing his capitol was the pyramids . I switch to Representation and OR. Now everyone on my continent is Hindu, and pleased with me, so they can't attack me. Looks like a good time to tech up and develop all that new land, and maybe take the rest of my continent with cuirassiers later.

My core cities:


Former Zululand:


Notice the slight hint of blue borders off the southwest coast. Looks like Khmer from the color, I'll meet him when Ondini gets a border pop. I'm not that excited to meet Sury, since he'll probably be running a different religion and hate me.

Tech:


Not a very impressive showing from the Romans and Babylonians. I'm still leading in tech despite my conquests.

Settled in place. I only planted 1 city south and 1 west of london...the rest were settled in the general direction of hammurabi. Despite this, he got a long reach blocker city on me and wound up contesting the gems (I'd have the 3 gems almost the entire game however).

The good:

- Shaka hated AC and because I let AC settle between us (on a hill no less!), I didn't have to worry about shaka until i was already in the middle of spamming cavalry
- I settled about 14% of the world's land, a fair share that is about right if everyone has even spawns
- I founded confuc. very late on self research CoL en route to bureaucracy, which spread like wildfire on a continent that otherwise had no religion at all!

The bad:

- Just one major thing. This map feeds hammurabi (or forces you to happen to scout NE and settle into the jungle belt in a deliberate effort to block him). THIS ONE IMBALANCE ALLOWED HAMMURABI TO GET 24% OF THE WORLD'S LAND WITHOUT FIGHTING A SINGLE WAR. Yes, closing in on double the land area of an average civ, despite that I a)settled towards him and b) managed to be #2 in land!

Before I hear any blathering about how I should have scouted this and adjusted: That only works if you scout it. Scouting the land # over there ONLY WORKS IF YOUR SCOUT DOESN'T GET RUINED BY BEAR CAVALRY GODS OR NINJA PANTHERS, the latter which picked off my early scouting efforts there.

So hammurabi ran away with the game, except for the fact that the jungle land took him some time. I won lib, took democracy with it, rush bought kremlin, rush bought cavalry, later rush bought cavalry and fighters. Hammurabi kept way ahead in tech after I blasted shaka w/ cavs for declaring on me, and I was wondering how I could win.

Then I remembered that the other 5 civs not named babylon got similarly shafted. Shaka died, AC got kicked off the continent with cav/fighter vs infantry, then I landed on sury (quickly cutting his oil w/ fighters so he couldn't get any metal ships), using him as a vassal as a springboard to cap toku, who was also fully industrialized and even had tanks vs my cavalry. Doesn't matter when there's like 50 fighters on carriers to strip 1/2 tank health.

Asoka didn't have enough units to manage the 200 cavalry and 100 fighters in carriers from $$$ buy that landed on his shore. I capped him and sat there. I got a little nervous since hammurabi had all the space techs, but I managed to win UN a couple turns before he'd have probably launched. It was around the mid 1930's .

The sheer irony here is if I'd used the coastline sound glitch + didn't have my scouting warrior die, the nearby horse would have prompted a chariot rush on hammurabi that would have effectively won the game instantly.

Would you really chariot rush Ham at such an extreme distance? It would take forever to get there, he might have longbows by the time you arrived.

Chariots are not to be underestimated. Using a combo of wheel (needed for them anyway) and their 2 move, you could cut through that terrain with whatever flatland is available and get there in time...easily before ham would have IW. The only thing that would beat you is if his first 2-3 cities had copper AND he spammed out some AGG spears in time. Barring that, you could just burn everything and call it a day...maybe keep the cap since we're FIN and all.