Dido and Theodora- they ever succeed?

Ive seen Theordora and Carthage have run aways.

Theodora got a desert start, took desert folklore and had ran away with the religion side of things.

Ive seen seen Carthage do well most of the time, with a good coast start.

I play Huge Maps, Immortal. This may affect it. More coast to exploit, etc.

Ive see the Celts run away with it when they get the right religious beliefs. They can rush early, and with the right combination of religious beliefs, the buffs stack pretty high with their pictish warriors.

For whatever reason, the Mongols ICS in damn near every game I see

Noob alert but what exactly does ICS stand for? Instant city spam? Because Orange Willy has done that in nearly every game I've played.

infinite city sprawl. with different combos of policies, beliefs, civs, etc. it meant that founding a new city immediately or almost immediately paid back its happiness/gold costs, so every city you added to your empire wasn't a setback, but further on the path of exponential growth.

Try Carthage on a tiny islands map with low sea level. Get the +2 science on trade route pantheon, get optics and the wheel, found a religion with ceremonial burial and +1/+2 happy on shrine/temple, choose piety tree. You can go totally nuts. Super bonus for grabbing Machu Picchu.

Egypt's also a surprisingly good choice for it, with zero maintenance temples that give +2 happy (+4 with religious belief choice!)

Theodora usually stays small to mid sized in all of my games, but she doesn't get too far behind in the tech or score charts.

Dido, on the other hand, seems to have no problems growing her empire but is always at the bottom of the tech and score charts.

Theodora and Dido are approximately tied for #2 in my current game (I'm #1). Theodora somehow expanded at a nice pace while spamming wonders in Constantinople.

They usually both stink. The one AI who I find is consistently awesome every time I meet him is Rammy. Every time Rammy is on the map, I know who my #1 enemy is.

Dogmouth said:

Theodora and Dido are approximately tied for #2 in my current game (I'm #1). Theodora somehow expanded at a nice pace while spamming wonders in Constantinople.

They usually both stink. The one AI who I find is consistently awesome every time I meet him is Rammy. Every time Rammy is on the map, I know who my #1 enemy is.

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Rammy as in Ramkhamhaeng or Ramesses? I find the former more consistency powerful than the latter, but Ramesses is nonetheless often a contender.

Byzzy usually is in the bottome half of my games but Dido dominates about 50% of the time. William is almost always at the bottom of my games. i love seeing that pushover in my games. i tried playing as him once but the sea beggar was deep enough in the tech trees that i lost interest. i was also on a map where i had no marshes to build a polder so i'll get around to playing him another time. i just wanted to make a beautiful map with them.

Dogmouth said:

They usually both stink. The one AI who I find is consistently awesome every time I meet him is Rammy. Every time Rammy is on the map, I know who my #1 enemy is.

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Agree. Rhammy is always a threat, and probably the most frequent runaway bastidge in most of my games. His UA gives him a huge advantage in every way, as soon as he can start buying up CS's. Happys? Culture? Food? Faith? Units? No problem. While everyone else is still struggling to get a pot to pee in, he's rolling fat and happy in all of those. And as soon as he gets his elephants, he's unstoppable if he decides to roll over the neighbors. And he usually does. Seldom see him turtling- he's into conquest with a major in science.

It's often warmongers that are close to win in my games. Well, technically they're both warmongers and spams cities near ever corner they can get. This is usually Russia, Greece, France, Mongols, Siam, America, Japan and so on as long as they have some decent space between their neighbouring civs.

Wonder hogs almost NEVER get close. They are often screwed over by neighbour warmongers at some point. Or I get annoyed they're "coveting my wonders" and wait for Battleship and Bombers to take them by surprise - they usually never stand a chance.

As for Byzantium, they can usually keep up with science even though they aren't doing ICS. I had Theodora make the UN once. Sad I used it to win though. Carthage is usually around in the middle. I've seen them take the lead at one point only to be backstabbed and screwed over by Sweden. That was a pretty chill game. Seeing Sweden beat Carthage, France, Ottomans, and closing in on Greece. One word: Caroleans.