This is my first HOF / GotM. This site is awesome!
Anyway, this is an unofficial since I re-started this once a few days back and hopelessly screwed up by being way too passive... I was afraid of King difficulty, not realizing how easy it really is. In attempt #1, England settled a few cities in the midst of my empire and then got mad and attacked me. Monty joined in for giggles. It was not pretty. So I knew a little bit about the world I was in when I tried again a few days later. Oh, and it crashed around turn 252, so I reloaded from 250 to continue.
Basic approach: beeline for horsemen, 4 horsemen (thanks to a lucky unit from nearby friendly CS), kick the crap out of India, then England, then France, and then finally Monty. I puppeted all but the dumbest of cities, then slowly annexed as happiness permitted. Then beelined for space victory. I started one tile south-east of the starting position. 2nd city was near the 2nd marble.
Mistakes:
- I didn't spam cities after taking control of the continent. This slowed me down in the mid-to-late game.
- I didn't specialize my cities early enough. I had a wonder city, a production city, and a specialist city, but my other cities were generalized. Left me cash-poor for a while in the middle ages until I fixed things.
- I was caught low on happiness for a long time in the late game; not much impact since I didn't need much more population anymore anyway.
- I screwed up timing on the Great Scientist pops -- should have held back a few and used them on the pricier techs.
- I didn't notice I needed the top portion of the tech tree for the last SS component... thought I was one tech away when I popped, ended up having to use the GS for a tiny tech.
- I didn't use great engineer to help complete my last SS component (assuming you can). For no good reason.
Things That Went Well:
- Horsemen rush really caught computer with its digital pants down.
- Trading away extra luxury resources for cash to buy off city-states.
- Honor -- made my horsemen lethal; Rationalism -- helped with the technology.
Weird Civ5 Stuff:
- I got trade routes from a puppet cities' harbour (I think?), but it didn't put the little trade route icon on my cities. So I built a big road to connect East and West, and didn't gain anything for it (except lots of maintenance and the icons now showing).
- Gotta fix the whole cultural borders vs. line of sight bug (Elizabeth settled in weird places in my first game).
- The other three AI countries sat on their island and didn't try to harass me. All I had were five horsemen to defend my entire continent... AI should be more aggressive?
Looking forward to doing the next one for real!
Anyway, this is an unofficial since I re-started this once a few days back and hopelessly screwed up by being way too passive... I was afraid of King difficulty, not realizing how easy it really is. In attempt #1, England settled a few cities in the midst of my empire and then got mad and attacked me. Monty joined in for giggles. It was not pretty. So I knew a little bit about the world I was in when I tried again a few days later. Oh, and it crashed around turn 252, so I reloaded from 250 to continue.
Basic approach: beeline for horsemen, 4 horsemen (thanks to a lucky unit from nearby friendly CS), kick the crap out of India, then England, then France, and then finally Monty. I puppeted all but the dumbest of cities, then slowly annexed as happiness permitted. Then beelined for space victory. I started one tile south-east of the starting position. 2nd city was near the 2nd marble.
Mistakes:
- I didn't spam cities after taking control of the continent. This slowed me down in the mid-to-late game.
- I didn't specialize my cities early enough. I had a wonder city, a production city, and a specialist city, but my other cities were generalized. Left me cash-poor for a while in the middle ages until I fixed things.
- I was caught low on happiness for a long time in the late game; not much impact since I didn't need much more population anymore anyway.
- I screwed up timing on the Great Scientist pops -- should have held back a few and used them on the pricier techs.
- I didn't notice I needed the top portion of the tech tree for the last SS component... thought I was one tech away when I popped, ended up having to use the GS for a tiny tech.
- I didn't use great engineer to help complete my last SS component (assuming you can). For no good reason.
Things That Went Well:
- Horsemen rush really caught computer with its digital pants down.
- Trading away extra luxury resources for cash to buy off city-states.
- Honor -- made my horsemen lethal; Rationalism -- helped with the technology.
Weird Civ5 Stuff:
- I got trade routes from a puppet cities' harbour (I think?), but it didn't put the little trade route icon on my cities. So I built a big road to connect East and West, and didn't gain anything for it (except lots of maintenance and the icons now showing).
- Gotta fix the whole cultural borders vs. line of sight bug (Elizabeth settled in weird places in my first game).
- The other three AI countries sat on their island and didn't try to harass me. All I had were five horsemen to defend my entire continent... AI should be more aggressive?
Looking forward to doing the next one for real!