Just managed to finish before the deadline...
I went for Conquest. But it was a lousy game on my part: due to my experience in the previous game, I made sure to build the Lighthouse myself and then concentrated on my continent first, relying on the Lighthouse to find and get to the other nations later. So I stopped research basically after Currency. Only much much too late I realised that there was no safe passage to the other continent even with the Lighthouse! When I found that out, shortly before my own continent had been subdued, I had already lost like 30 turns of research. If I had kept researching, I would have reached Navigation around the time it would have been needed, but as it was, my huge horsemen armies had to wait idly for suitable transports to become available. (Unfortunately not even Caravels+Lighthouse was sufficient, so I had to go all the way to Navigation...)
Of course during those 20-30 turns delay the AIs on the other continent got stronger so it also took me longer to take them out once I got there... And to add insult to injury, the Germans had a settler in a boat, when I took their last city (which coincidentally was "Heidelburg"...
). So I had to spend another couple of turns to chase that galley, which on top of it survived my first attack with two caravels, so I had to rush more Caravels in the vicinity and send a second wave...
All this resulted in a rather late Conquest victory in 660AD.
My GA was wonder-triggered (Lighthouse + Mausoleum) around 400BC, if I remember correctly. The GA was well-timed for kicking my continental neighbours effectively... If only I had kept researching during the GA...
I used mainly horsemen, which were sufficient on this map. None of the scientific AIs got Feudalism as freebee, and I didn't bother researching it, so no Knights this time. But as none of the AIs had Feudalism until the end of the game (them lousy buggers, what are they doing with all their time?), I met no pikes, and therefore horses were ok. The only problem could have been the Romans, but they had built only a small number of Legions (around 10), before I cut off their iron... And those few Legions that I did meet, were handled by a swordsmen-Army and a horsemen-Army which I had by that time. (Three MGLs in total this game.) And even my ordinary horsemen proved quite successful against Legions: On average 3-4 horses were enough to kill one Legion: one horse would die, 1-2 would retreat and the third or fourth would win.
I went for Conquest. But it was a lousy game on my part: due to my experience in the previous game, I made sure to build the Lighthouse myself and then concentrated on my continent first, relying on the Lighthouse to find and get to the other nations later. So I stopped research basically after Currency. Only much much too late I realised that there was no safe passage to the other continent even with the Lighthouse! When I found that out, shortly before my own continent had been subdued, I had already lost like 30 turns of research. If I had kept researching, I would have reached Navigation around the time it would have been needed, but as it was, my huge horsemen armies had to wait idly for suitable transports to become available. (Unfortunately not even Caravels+Lighthouse was sufficient, so I had to go all the way to Navigation...)
Of course during those 20-30 turns delay the AIs on the other continent got stronger so it also took me longer to take them out once I got there... And to add insult to injury, the Germans had a settler in a boat, when I took their last city (which coincidentally was "Heidelburg"...
). So I had to spend another couple of turns to chase that galley, which on top of it survived my first attack with two caravels, so I had to rush more Caravels in the vicinity and send a second wave...All this resulted in a rather late Conquest victory in 660AD.
My GA was wonder-triggered (Lighthouse + Mausoleum) around 400BC, if I remember correctly. The GA was well-timed for kicking my continental neighbours effectively... If only I had kept researching during the GA...
I used mainly horsemen, which were sufficient on this map. None of the scientific AIs got Feudalism as freebee, and I didn't bother researching it, so no Knights this time. But as none of the AIs had Feudalism until the end of the game (them lousy buggers, what are they doing with all their time?), I met no pikes, and therefore horses were ok. The only problem could have been the Romans, but they had built only a small number of Legions (around 10), before I cut off their iron... And those few Legions that I did meet, were handled by a swordsmen-Army and a horsemen-Army which I had by that time. (Three MGLs in total this game.) And even my ordinary horsemen proved quite successful against Legions: On average 3-4 horses were enough to kill one Legion: one horse would die, 1-2 would retreat and the third or fourth would win.
