timerover51
Deity
I was playing my Naval Mod as England yesterday, and hit some interesting things, along with an observation on controlling AI expansion. The map was my Naval Mod, set to 320 X 160, so sort of skinny, with a map seed of 12071941, so it is labeled as the Pearl Harbor Day Map. The Map was set for 80% water, and Archipelago.
First thing interesting that happened was I researched Bronze Working as the first Tech, got the notification that I had researched Bronze Working and then, Viola, Isaac Newton was standing on my capital. I have managed to get the Scientific Leader to work so as to appear and speed production, but I have never had one appear with the first Tech researched.
Second, I normally manually put in the starting location for the civilizations I plan on competing against, in this case, the Aztecs, my favorite punching bag, the Mayas, and the Incas. This game I did not, and I had England located on a smallish island located close to a more continent-sized land mass. Once I got a curragh over there to check it, quite early in the game, I discovered that the Aztecs were right next to me. I figured to try to get along for a while, but also checked my master to see if there was something close that I wanted, and found Oil right by both me and the Aztecs. I headed a Settler and Pikeman over there to get control of it a bit early, and found an Aztec Settler about to take the same spot that I wanted. That started the war. I had Knights and my boosted Crusaders by then, so kept plugging away until no more Aztecs. All the Aztecs had were Spearman, Archers, Jaguar Knights, and Warriors. It did not dawn on me until after I wiped them out what that implied. There was no Iron anywhere near the Aztec area. Went back to my Master map, and except where I put Iron next to the Starting Location of the civilizations that I am planning to test, no Starting Location was close to Iron. My Iron-25 bonus resource is all over the place, so I do not know it that was a factor in reducing the amount of Iron on the map. I will have to do some checking on that.
The third thing is that when you set Barbarians to raging, and the Barbarian Camps have a lot of turns without being disturbed, you get some massive stacks of Barbarians coming at you. I need to decide if being "hoist by mine own petard" is a good idea or not. I did lose a fair number of ships to my boosted Barbarian Privateers.
Last thing, and I have seen this before, but it may be of use to the community at large, is that setting the Settler to require 4 population to be built definitely slows down the AI expansion. Up to the time the war with the Aztecs broke out, I was keeping up with the AI on building Settlers, and still being able to develop my cities.
Overall, using England with the later Unique Unit, and that a naval one, does make the game a bit more challenging when fighting a land war.
Edit Note: Forgot one other thing. I am playing England as Expansionist, Commercial, and Sea-Faring and I have reached the Explorer unit. Still a lot of the map to explore. However, with the Explorers out, I proceeded to pop 4 Goodie Huts into new villages in a row. One of them was in a lousy location, right in the middle of the Tundra, but the others were not too bad. Just had never had that happen before, so again, I do not know if it is a quirk in the mod, or just a coincidence.
First thing interesting that happened was I researched Bronze Working as the first Tech, got the notification that I had researched Bronze Working and then, Viola, Isaac Newton was standing on my capital. I have managed to get the Scientific Leader to work so as to appear and speed production, but I have never had one appear with the first Tech researched.
Second, I normally manually put in the starting location for the civilizations I plan on competing against, in this case, the Aztecs, my favorite punching bag, the Mayas, and the Incas. This game I did not, and I had England located on a smallish island located close to a more continent-sized land mass. Once I got a curragh over there to check it, quite early in the game, I discovered that the Aztecs were right next to me. I figured to try to get along for a while, but also checked my master to see if there was something close that I wanted, and found Oil right by both me and the Aztecs. I headed a Settler and Pikeman over there to get control of it a bit early, and found an Aztec Settler about to take the same spot that I wanted. That started the war. I had Knights and my boosted Crusaders by then, so kept plugging away until no more Aztecs. All the Aztecs had were Spearman, Archers, Jaguar Knights, and Warriors. It did not dawn on me until after I wiped them out what that implied. There was no Iron anywhere near the Aztec area. Went back to my Master map, and except where I put Iron next to the Starting Location of the civilizations that I am planning to test, no Starting Location was close to Iron. My Iron-25 bonus resource is all over the place, so I do not know it that was a factor in reducing the amount of Iron on the map. I will have to do some checking on that.
The third thing is that when you set Barbarians to raging, and the Barbarian Camps have a lot of turns without being disturbed, you get some massive stacks of Barbarians coming at you. I need to decide if being "hoist by mine own petard" is a good idea or not. I did lose a fair number of ships to my boosted Barbarian Privateers.
Last thing, and I have seen this before, but it may be of use to the community at large, is that setting the Settler to require 4 population to be built definitely slows down the AI expansion. Up to the time the war with the Aztecs broke out, I was keeping up with the AI on building Settlers, and still being able to develop my cities.
Overall, using England with the later Unique Unit, and that a naval one, does make the game a bit more challenging when fighting a land war.
Edit Note: Forgot one other thing. I am playing England as Expansionist, Commercial, and Sea-Faring and I have reached the Explorer unit. Still a lot of the map to explore. However, with the Explorers out, I proceeded to pop 4 Goodie Huts into new villages in a row. One of them was in a lousy location, right in the middle of the Tundra, but the others were not too bad. Just had never had that happen before, so again, I do not know if it is a quirk in the mod, or just a coincidence.
