ALC Game 16 Pre-Game Thread: Playing as Cyrus

i'd like to see the initial goal to be a conquest victory. and as far as SE or CE i'd like the terrain to determine that.

I also finished a Cyrus game recently(domination win). I wiped out 3 civs with 14 Immortals with 2 promotions each, leaving me with my own island. I conquered all of it using the Apothecary to help combat disease in the south, which was all jungle. Lots of bananas and wine though, as well. I also got to experiment with a GME (great merchant economy), which was lots of fun and made my mass upgrades that much easier. then I moved on to conquer the other island for the domination victory. I used 4 cities to begin the immortal rush. Although 1 factor may have helped;I had 3 iron in my capital's fat cross
All in all, stonehenge was a nice bonus, but not necessary. GW was useless for more GG's. Immortals were unstoppable and great barb-hunters as well. Apothecary let you get back the expansive trait minus the faster workers. Definetly, Cyrus is one powerful monarch.
again, good luck and please begin the game soon!

Seeing the results of my own game (1466 dom victory but the last 40 years were settling the voids and waiting border pops), i can confirm that a very early rush with an army of only immortals is powerfull indeed.

The very nice thing is that when opponents start to be a bit tougher (cities with culture at 60% + wall, protective), you have plenty of combat IV or V immortals that can handle that. The heavy loss are not a problem, as those guys are so cheap. I think i got more than 10 GG (all settled spare the medicIII).

The only city before longbows i had to wait for cats was Wong capital (protective) which was on hill and with 10 defenders.

The RE economy (razing ) seems to work and dont slow you down. A very nice trick is to spam missionaries each time you take a shrine, that helps a lot. Razed 20 cities or so.

Also i did capture the GW early which was great (razing cities means a lot of voids for barbs ), then the ToA which generated some GMs.

I was at war 99% of the time.

I did go cottages, the economy was a bit shaky (running deficit balanced by cities ransoms) but teched at good pace (lib in 1050AD). I would have probably switched to SE if i had captured the pyramids earlier (around 1000AD too).

If Pangea, going conquest should be even easier, here i had brennus on an island by himself.

Edit :
Point noteworthy : immortals have strong bonus attacking axes and archery, not swords. Against someone like Shaka, who favor them, be carefull

And we're off! The game thread is underway HERE.