Yes it was 600AD MT.
The way to go here would be ignore completely our awesome (not, at least not here) UU and go for monster bureaucracy capital ASAP. Lib MT
and win with Cuirassiers/Cavalry.
Quite frustrating, I feel cheating employing same tactic again and again, but early chocking/rushing is not recommended here
even with early Machinery IMHO. After all we can get nice chunk of land peacefully.
So I oracled CoL instead of MC this time (1520BC) and revolted into Cast immediately to make Academy in our awesome capital.
Usually I ignore Oxford, when going for MT rush, but we got very hammer rich land here. I haven't revolt from Cast for long
long time to avoid anarchy (enough happy without HR and I had Buddhism in only one city, so OR was not needed) and got all infra from chopping without slavery.
Rexed to 9 cities and captured one from barbs. Rexing plus oracle made me be short on workers for quite long,
therefore tech rate was not that good. Tons of forests really helped to catch up. I even saving forests in tundra
silver/deer city for future National Park (I know immediate benefit is much better, but otherwise city will be completely useless
and I wanted to make something unusual
).
8 forests - 8 free specialists and I hope for more forests to grow there (none grow from beginning of game though
).
Tech path after oracle was
BW
-
Aest (trade for many techs, notably Monarchy and Currency)
-
Lit (Got GLib+NE in capital, no units of lvl4, so no HE though)
-
Music (Bulb Philo and start golden age with free artist. Finally revolting into HR+Pacifism and got 2 more great scientists in capital)
-
Civil Service (just in time to revolt into Buro+Slavery+OR before golden age end and finally whip last pieces of necessary infra)
-
Paper (trade for Compass so I can bulb Liberalism)
-
Education (1 bulb)
-
Nationalism
-
Liberalism (1 bulb then trade for Machinery and other staff)
-
MT
-
Gunpowder
Saved 3 forests for Taj, but not sure if I need it ASAP - I am going to whip bunch of cuirassiers in a few turns, so golden age will be a waste...
Plus I haven't capture MoM yet (and I will!)
With Mids, Hanging Gardens and MoM Moscow is a juicy target.
The plan is go and cap Stalin ASAP then go for Willem (He vassaled poor Ramses) and SB.
Btw I avoided trading with Willem so he is not tech monster in my game (his long war with Ramsy helped too). Teach situation is rather good.
If I mange to capitulate Stalin quick enough Willem will be not hard to deal with. SB is going to be a pain though.
As always Aest-Lit-Music-CS---Lib MT strategy works like a charm, but feels cheap. I'd love to see some different solid way to play the game. (I tried and failed
)