Assyria or Carthage?

Yeah I agree about the Assyrian UB. The first Royal Library should just come with a Great Work of Writing. These are very hard to find in AI cities until the medieval age and for an aggressive civ like Assyria you shouldn't be forced into working the Writers Guild.
The Devs should just give the first UB the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' or something...

So, far i am playing as Assyria. I am playing on Earth map, emperor, and 22 civs (i do this more for an overall challenge, and if i win, makes me feel giddy inside), and i think Assyria gets a desert start, which is making things alittle challenging for me. My start is really god awful, nothing but desert, and 1 mtn range and 2 luxuries.

Anyways, im now on turn 216 on an epic game, and its been a challenge. I had two cities, before i went on the offensive. I took 4 spearman, 3 composite longbow, and 3 siege towers. I am 9th in tech, so i went after a country with 6 cities. Thinking they would have to be infront of me techwise.

As someone else stated, it amazes me how freaking fast you can bum rush the AI. I took 3 cities so fast, the AI and Arabia didnt know how to react. I was really impressed by the UU, it made my spearman deadly taking the cities, and the dmg it did to the cities was impressive. Sadly, i didnt get to steal a technology cause I quess they were behind me techwise. Arabia begged me for a peace treaty, offered me, 300 gold and 2 cities. Which i took.

Well, its an impressive civ, but as some people mentioned, my issue is with the start bias, being desert and being a pretty much one dimensional civ. But, if you are looking for DOM win, i can see it as being great.

NOw, i am going to try Carthage and compare.

And no doubt regret the time you lost playing as those nasty Assyrians. I highly recommend playing as Carthage, just make sure the map has plenty of seas/seashores.

daft said:

And no doubt regret the time you lost playing as those nasty Assyrians. I highly recommend playing as Carthage, just make sure the map has plenty of seas/seashores.

Click to expand...

DO you want an i told you so? =) Cause sit down, cause its coming, YOU told me, i should have listened to you. I am starting a game as Carthage. Whats crazy, is i was playing epic speed. ON Emperor, freaking Celtics, had a score ive never seen, 920, at turn 220, i have never seen this in MANY games. with 9 cities, and a HUGE military. Oh well

Assyria of course.. its the expansion civilization. Carthage is fine too with its african forest eles but i know that their elephant fear bonus disappears when upgraded to knights.. As for the seige tower.. its kind of weird because I havent really tried it out. The only time I tried it out was against a city state quick capture and the seige tower went in quick and it did good damage to the city bar.