Immortal University IV: Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire

3960BC - Istanbul settled 1E to pick up the gold. Start off with a worker and mining.

3920BC - Worker pops hut for mysticism.

3640BC - Mining > Hunting.

3600BC - Willem appears. A cre neighbour is going to be annoying; his scout is moving W to E so he's probably W.

3360BC - Hunting > Archery; Worker > Warrior.

3040BC - Archery > AH.

2800BC - Willem's borders spotted; he's S of the jungle belt, and has founded Buddhism.

2720BC - AH > Bronze.

2680BC - Archer > Archer.

2520BC - Archer > Archer.

2400BC - Archer > Settler.

2360BC - Bronze > Pottery; Masonry popped from a hut.

The known world, with 3 proposed city sites to block Willem who is just off the S of this map:

Nice move for going archery on time. I made the mistake of skipping it and I ended up with a lot of barbarian troubles that cost me the good spots.
I would suggest another worker before a settler. You will get more chopping and more mines. hammers from chopping and mines are multiplied by 50% for imperialistic, but not food. With this capital you can work 4 mines and pump settlers like crazy.
I possible I would try to go even more south with the sugar gold city, to reserve a spot for a fish-gold city, but Willem will probably get it before you.

NOTE: I am not an expert immortal player, take that into account when reading my advices.
NOTE to the REAL experts: if my logic above is wrong, please explain to me why.

popped 45 gold from hut.
Settled 1E.
Build: worker->4 warriors->worker->settler->2 warriors->settler->worker->
Research: AH->mining->BW->hunting (partial)->mysticism->pottery->writing->mathematics (partial).

3600 BC - we meet Willem van Orange. He seems to be somewhere to the south.

2560BC - we finished BW, and we find no nearby copper. There are nearby horses, but they are not in a good city spot. I decide to go for archery for barb defence for now.


2520BC - change of plans - we found copper to the north, switch research to mysticism.
2160 Stonehenge BIDL
Edirne founded
http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk162/silverbullet_sz/Suleiman/?action=view&current=2160bc.jpg
I think this was a mistake. I should have sticked to archery and block only southern spots for now.

It took some tmie until I hooked copper, and had a lot of barbarian trouble. I had to keep pumping warriors in the capital and tried to build some settlers and workers.

After I have 4 cities I start building a library in Istanbul. I choose mahtematics as the next thing to research, hoping to trade it for IW with the dutch and unlock the UB for extra hapiness.

in 975BC, this is our status:

North Turkey:

Sourth Turkey:


The Netherlands (what we have explored so far):


I really hope to scout more and find at least another civ before optics, or else tech-trading would be a problem. If I trade with the dutch I won't be able to have a definite military advantage over them, and if I don't trade with them we will both be backward compared to the other continent. Perhaps this is a game for optics beeline?

I only discovered the marble patch when I was halfway to mathematics, or else I would have gone for Aesthetics->literature. I might still be able to grab the GL, but as Rusten mentioned, it is less attractive for phliosopical leaders. Expanding and exploring should be my top priorities now.

Overall i don't think i had such a good opening game. I lost good spots to Willem because I was too busy fighting barb archers with warriors, and had to settle the north instead of the south for copper (I only discovered the southern horses later - again my scouting wasn't perfect).
I don't think I am in such a bad state that I need to reload and restart though.
Any advice is apperciated.

Well, the start looks great -> move to grab the gold and two 6 food tiles

Build was worker->warrior->warrior so that the capital could grow quickly to use all its nice tiles.

Tech:
AH->Mining->BW->Myst->Pottery->Writing->Math(partial)->Fishing(partial)

Three huts were popped for ~100 gold, and one for a pair of barbarian brothers.

Due to unfortunate scouting I had a little trouble finding a good early city that had access to a strategic resource, so warrior spam was the name of the day.

Willem is discovered on what appears to (possibly) be a two civ start. He founded Hindu and has stone in his capital's BFC. There is a band of jungle between us with gems and sugar -- I will want those before he gets them

Our four city Empire is 1480bc:



The immediate plan is to continue to ReX out, probably building come cottages to support a largish early empire.

Settled for the gold and teched agriculture -> mining -> bronze working. Didn't find copper anywhere so I then went on towards archery (horses poorly located). After noticing 2 gems and 2 more gold mines south (and willem) I decided to opt for some aggressive imperialistic settling because;

a) Willem has more spy points on me than I have on him, thus I'll assume for now it's a 5/2 split. As we only have 1 rival nearby settling towards him is important.

b) As we only have 1 rival we won't be able to trade many techs and when we do trade he and he alone benefits from it. With this in mind I can afford to "crash" my economy a little and look at the long term gain because there's no need to rush towards alphabet and aesthetics.

c) Willem is peaceful so I probably won't have to worry about getting attacked in the early stage.

After the starting techs I immediately researched IW before pottery/writing to be able to settle in the jungle and work the gems.

Founded the second city for gold+fish. I made a couple of workers next (4).



Here's the current overview. Note that I never would've settled that southern city so aggressively if Willem had a religion, but as he doesn't I should be able to hold the cultural pressure as long as I get a library out soon-ish



As you can see I didn't even start on writing yet, but I'll work my way through techs soon. I can grow all the way to size 7/6 already which is great. I'll probably tech metal casting early and whip out some forges for even more happiness.

This set it characterized by two thing:
1) Barbarian swarms -- testing our warrior spam to its limits.
2) Rapid expansion, and the annihilation of our economy

A typical barbarian swarm:



Archers gradually get easier and easier to deal with as our warrior get their woodsman promotions. Luck doesn't hurt either: check out this guys healh remaining:



At the end of the turnset we had to briefly abandon our capital to protect our gold:



You'll notice that we're at +0 gold with the slider set to 100%. This is because we've planted jungle cities to the south:



After a worker pump our economy should rebound smoothly -- I should have set research to Iron Working instead of Mathematics though Copper has been hooked up -- this will be vital since Willem built the GW, meaning all of "his" barbs will come looking northward.

Hopefully all goes as planned ...

It does look that Willem is going to be a pain in your game -- especially since he got Nijmegan

I also was surprised by the barbarian ferocity, but don't give up on the warrior spam. The trick with fighting barbarian archers is to stick to woods and cities as much as possible. I've lost ~5 warriors so far, but that is only 50 . Try to double stack warriors as much as possible, so that even when archers win they don't advance towards your cities (and can possibly be killed by a quick counter attack). I've needed as much as 4 warriors in various locations to keep the "northern copper" city clear.

This was pretty much a pure building round.

My error of getting Mathematics before IW meant that Hammams were available to be chopped out in most of the larger Ottoman cities -- so maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. A large stream of workers quickly allowed our economy to limp back towards respectability. A small force of axes is put together, and raids a barbarian city:



One axe died, enabling a 8/10 wood II warrior to open up the Heroic Epic. Currency was researched and traded to Willem for Alphabet (the only tech he was willing to trade). After an Aesthetics->Literature beeline the northern marble is settled, and Istanbul completes a fairly late wonder:



Because no one else had built it, my military city is assigned to build the Parthenon, we get it.

Monarchy is pickup up towards the end of the set.

The Ottoman North:



The Ottoman South:



Willem still has a large tech advantage, but at least he's up to Pleased:



Demographics are not very inspiring At least we're first in land area.



A GSci has been used to build an Academy in our capital and another was settled.

I'm reasonably happy with the current situation. Willem will have to die, but not for a few hundred years. Maybe a steel beeline to support a Janissary force

And a save is attached, for a change.