A brief story and a challenge

I was considering playing, but then noticed it was a huge map. I love tough epic game scenarios, but hate huge maps unless it's late enough in the game that there will be no more settling. Oh well.

got a little bit unlucky here...

(although, looking at the odds, not that unusal)

edit:
part me, but how can I attach the pic w/o actually showing it?
(i.e. just link to the location)

edit2: never mind :zzz:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/grills001.JPG

You could probably beat this map 2 difficulty level higher than what you are comfortable at

@Grille: When you have two huts that will be popped by your border expansion, consider not building any military for the first ten turns; it will prevent barbs.

@citizen: Yes, it is a nice start, but from what I understand the KAI has much, much nicer land. I agree, though, I probably should have went for DG instead of Emperor, though not Sid.

Bit further along (1250BC). Aztecs are crowding me to the W and are building SoZ. I need to find some Horses quick so I can compete. Anyway, they are public enemy #1. I'm wondering if it's because there's so many Exp civs, or the way the map is designed, or everyone has a nice start, but I've never seen the AI research this quickly at Emperor. As I mentioned, I was only able to trade Writing to one civ, and now all the civs I know have 3 or 4 techs than I do. Perhaps the KAI is close enough to have a couple contacts which are making the techs go around? Anyway, still haven't had time to get that city 666 from Salamanca up; there's seems to be no one in that direction so it's hardly priority at this point.

@Grille: When you have two huts that will be popped by your border expansion, consider not building any military for the first ten turns; it will prevent barbs.

Click to expand...

Well, that's exactly what he did, but the first hut popped a warrior, so the seond popped barbs, since he just got a military unit.

oic. Should have looked more closely

Well, I've learned something today which I think explains the ridiculous tech rate, though I'm not sure how to confirm. Apparently, when you begin a scenario, the World Size for Corruption/tech rate formula goes by your most recent epic game or something. I just had this problem on a Standard map where I had Small map research rate. Seeing as I don't start many epic games, and when I do, they're Small, I suspect that I am playing with a Small World tech rate. I have been researching at 50 turns, so there has been no gain for me whatsoever, while the AI have likely been researching at half speed, approximately. Will try to look into this.

I think I read somewhere that the OCN might get messed up in some similar manner (?), which is of course influencing the corruption. Not sure about the details, though. Maybe someone snows in and clears this issue.

FWIW, I continued playing until turn 70 or so, playing with C3C default rules, all civs randomly chosen, deity level, got apparently the same start as punkbass (sorta cramped starting loc I'd say). I switched from the granny-pre-build (that whole lot of 6 shields anyways) to a warrior, but an approaching AI warrior stack eventually killed the barbs. Researched pottery from the start, then heading to philo since the RNG gave me Greek traits. I was not the first to writing, but won the philo gambit (>CoL). Some tech bazar here, some trading there and my civ is even more advanced than some AI. Research speed seems indeed over the top for a huge map. The map size played before was either large [epic, with randomly picked Greeks as well] or standard (a PBEM started on a handmade map).

The barb thing was like Tomoyo said. In fact, I hoped for a settler showing up...

Here's 1375bc. If you look closely, you can see my 'exploring gambit' didn't work out either...
Well, at least we rule the wide oceans!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/grills002.JPG

found it, watorry's thread about world size bug:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2130996#post2130996

I decided that the OCN/tech error generally works to AI's favour, so, much like the number of civs error I created, I'll go with this as well. Ten turns in today. Not a whole lot happened, discivered Lit. ~1200BC (everyone had it anyway). I looked around, and out of the seven techs I could research at that point, both the Mongols and Japanese had all but Currency, the English had all but that and CoL, and the Aztecs had all but those and Constr. So I dropped Sci to zero, bought CoL from the Mongols, traded it and some gold to the English for Constr. and then traded both and some gold to the Aztecs for MM, Phil and HBR. Now going at Republic with a single Scientist. Barbs uprising also occurred just before this, so clearly the Maya and someone I don't know have moved to the MA. The Maya already had the Pyramids and have no completed the GLib (10:1 says they won't gain a single tech from that ) Not much else, still expanding AFAP, military power is growing, etc.