The game went pretty much according to plan. First I started with the farmer's gambit, starting with the granary right away. The Goody Hut next to the capital suggested this idea. On Demigod and higher, the risk of barbs from the hut destroying your infrastructure & killing your units is just too high. So this is what I did:
Più Freddo;14241996 said:
I'm sorry you had such problems with the Goody Hut. The idea is that since it is quite visible, you adapt your play to it and wait a few turns with building the first military unit. Then a better result is guaranteed.
Like templar I got a map from the hut. Not much, but better than barbs...
Other things did not go quite according to plan, e.g.:
1350 Philo in… and… REPUBLIC!!! Yes! Not the greatest slingshot date for sure, but it sufficed.
You are quite lucky, do you know that...
As Rome and the Mayans had Writing long before me, I did not dare to go for the full slingshot, so I went for Philo directly, hoping to get CoL for free and then do Republic the hard way. So when I got Philo somewhere in the 1600s, I got -- nothing!! Someone on the other continent must already have gotten Philo before that!!
(Popped from a hut?)
Luckily I was able to trade for a few turns of CoL and later also a few turns of Republic, if I remember correctly. (AI was astonishlingly fast in research in this game!) So I did not have to stay in Despotism for too long. (But I had to bust my trade reputation in the process... Fortunately both the Romans as well as the Mayans were gone before they got contact to the other continent...)
Other things, however, went quite well: the Mayans built Artemis, The Hanging Gardens and the Pyramids (or was it the Romans?! Can't remember.) So after I set up my core and built a handful of early libraries, I built horsemen and started capturing these nice wonders, while bee-lining for MT. I also upgraded my MP-warriors to swordsmen (and later medieval inf) and started capturing the first Roman border towns with those. (I also had two 20spt cities, which build a couple of MIs for the Roman war.) An early MI-Army also helped with the Roman Legions...
While researching towards MT, I finished Leonardos, secured salpeter on former Mayan territory and then upgraded horses to Sipahi. They triggered my GA and quickly took out the remaining Roman cities.
I also got lucky that around that time a suicide galley survived 3 turns on sea and established contact with the Byzantines. They already knew Printing Press at that time
eek
, so I was able to trade for the remaining overseas contacts! With my techs from the lower branch I was then able to trade most of the techs from the upper branch, e.g Monotheism, Theology, Education, Music Theory, and I think also Astronomy (or the last turns of it, can't remember exactly). So I only had to do Navigation myself and then was able to ship Sipahis over to the other continent right after finishing off the Romans.
The other continent then crumbled quickly and Domination was achieved in 560AD.
During my GA I also built Bach's Cathedral -- not sure, whether it is worth it, but I always like the extra happiness. It basically trades "shields for faster research". Originally I had planned to do connect/disconnect on saltpeter after the end of my GA, but the game was already almost over by that point of time, so I never got to that. Those Sipahis would not have reached the front in time anyway, so I used the gold instead for rushing a handful of (regular) Sipahis right at the front, and of course for settlers.