PYL VI: Same Start Showdown!

Since Pacal showed up on my left VERY quickly, I decided he was close enough to Rush, so I went for BW, built 50 Axemen, and ripped him to shreds! Heres is a screenshot of those shreds. <insert screeny of 3 City Ruins from that REX-spammer>

Why I don't have The Wheel?

Since the warrior revealed nothing interesting, I see no reason to move the settler, so I settled in place. I don't like food poor starts very much, but will live with it. The next turn I saw, that I have a coastal tile in my BFC Started with AH and worker of course. Very very soon I meet this guy:



He should be very close to me. Soon after:









This should be a crowded Pangaea map. I found only one hut, besides the starting one and it popped 2 barbarians. My warrior got lucky and survived, gaining W2 in the process. JC and Pacal are at north, Mao and Joao at west. I still don't know where Stalin is. Pacal founded Buddhism and our religious hater Mao, founded Hinduism.

3430BC I compete my first tech and:



For some wired reason I don't have The Wheel, but have Fishing. Well it's now explained why, but I am not going to replay the game, I'll live with it.

2200 BC I finish my first wonder and it is 12 war chariots Send them to take some land for me. JC expanded to north, instead to the south where the copper is, so they meet only archers. Soon:



Wow, that's a nice capital with two already improved gems mines. And I decided to keep Antium, while the third city was auto razed. Forgot to mention, that Julius bribed Stalin to DoW on me, but I still don;t know where he is and didn't met any of his units.

2000 BC Julius is no more. Rome is a nice commerce city, while Thebes is a nice production city. The both gems and the gold should pay the maintenance and I plan to forget about any wonders and REX next. I'll run settled great prophet economy for now. Henge and TGW were built in far away land:

The explored map:

I decided to settle in place, my warrior started down to the SE and I moved the wrong way so I missed that there where coast to the west. Nevermind, It'll be a great productioncity.

I meet my closest neighbour almost right away and realised I needed an early rush.

Early research went Agg, AH (for the cows), Mining, BW, Hunting, Archery then I really don't remember much more atm.

No settlers here, I decided to go chariotrushing on Rome when I saw the nice horses in my BFC. Initial build was warrior, worker, worker, Barracks, Chariot x8

So...


And a few turns later, Julius and the romans is an extinct civilization.


Julius did provide me with a founded religion and to pop some borders quicker, I adopted it, this has later proven a pretty poor decision with the rest of the world Hindu. But I am Tokugawa, supreme ruler of the Japanese and I don't care about anything or anyone but myself.

I went on to REX like a maniac to block of Pacal in the north and Joao in the east. Unfortunately Joao managed to sneak in a few cities where I didn't want them.

Here's the land at 10AD, my economy is pretty much non excisting atm, noone to trade with either, only Joao has Alphabet and he doesn't like me very much.
North:


Mid:


East:


What to do next, if I Rex anymore I'll go on strike at this point, I need to grow into my land a bit. Joao on the other hand is to close and to strong to be really comforting so I'm trying to match his powerrating at this point. If I know myself enough I'll probably do a little razing campaign to hurt him a bit. Though without cats it'll be hard and construction is a long way of with my poor researchrate atm.

The poor relationspage...


So the best would likely be to focus on getting economy back on track, backfill the land and when the era of Samurais comes along, go after appropriate target. I should adopt Hindu at this point to make some friends in the meantime. But who am I to do the best thing...

Oh, some graphs, I still lack esp points on some of the leaders, I've focused on my close neighbours.

4000 BC - London founded in place (the nearby hut gives 166 gold) and start building a warrior. We have mining and fishing, research start on Bronze working.

3650 BC - London grows to 2 and the warrior is complete. He goes out exploring. Start building a worker.

3600 BC - A warrior get a map from a hut, wich reveals a green border to the east (15ish tiles away)

3525 BC - BW is done and we switch to slavery. Next tech is hunting. There isn't any copper in sight.

3500 BC - 147 gold from a hut

3325 BC - Hunting done, start researching AH. Buddhism is founded far away.

3300 BC - One of our warriors meet the first AI to the east (a scout, we don't know where they are):



3275 BC - That green to the east is his land:



3325 BC - Next AI:



3175 BC - worker in London is ready and starts mining the gold. London starts building a warrior.

3025 BC - Random event:



2975 BC - Warrior is ready, next is a settler, with a chop.

2950 BC - AH is done and there are horses in the BFC. Next tech is the wheel.

2825 BC - Hinduism founded far away.

2800 BC - Wheel done, next is Pottery. 66 gold from a hut.

2725 BC - With 3 warriors, we are the 2nd most powerful civ:



2675 BC - Next AI. And he is VERY close to the north. Not checking our immediate neighborhood in every direction was a bad mistake:





2625 BC - One of our warrior is eaten by a lion. Pottery is done, next research is Iron Working. Finding the Romans so close make us a bit worried, so we need some decent military up.

2500 BC - Settler is done, next is a warrior, followed by a granary.

2425 BC - Map from a hut far to the NE.

2350 BC - York is founded and starts building barracks:



2225 BC - IW is done and we have some iron very close to the NW. Next tech is agriculture:



2200 BC - A warrior finds Pacal's land, NE from the Romans:



2150 BC - Stonehenge BIDL.

2100 BC - Agri done, next tech is Mysticism. London completes its granary and starts building a worker.

2000 BC - Research moves to sailing (London and York are still unconnected by roads, but connected by a river).

1825 BC - Worker done, starts a settler.

1800 BC - Sailing done, next is masonry.

1625 BC - Barracks are completed in York, wich starts building some archers.

1600 BC - Research starts on writing. Great Wall BIDL.

1550 BC - Settler is ready in London, wich starts building the Pyramids. A bit too late, maybe, but the gold would be useful anyway.

1525 BC - Nottingham is founded to claim iron, rice and cows. First building is a monument:



1500 BC - York keeps building more archers. We find Stalin's land far to the NE. How did he manage to get a scout so far away in 3300 BC?



1475 BC - We are the wealthiest civ:



1450 BC - Writing done, moving to Alphabet.

1350 BC - Joao proposes open border, we refuse. York keeps building archers.

1175 BC - We open borders with Pacal. He is N from the Romans, so he may be useful in a possible war with Julius. Pacal is the founder of Hinduism.

1175 BC - York starts building a monument.

1150 BC - Nottingham starts a granary.

1160 BC - York farm is razed by a barb warrior.

1075 BC - Alphabet is done, next tech is Mathematic. Tech situation isn't bad:



1025 BC - York starts a worker.

975 BC - The Romans have axes:



850 BC - To make Pacal pleased:



825 BC - Research goes on to Construction.

725 BC - Granary whipped in York, wich starts building a chariot. Judaism founded away.

700 BC - The romans found Neapolis and have Praetorians:



675 BC - Julius proposes open borders. Not yet. More chariots built in York.

625 BC - Romans convert to Judaism.

575 BC - Iron is online and York starts building swords.

550 BC - A barb city pops to the SE:



500 BC - Nottingham starts building barracks.

485 BC - Next tech: calendar. Joao is quickly expanding, as usual:



395 BC - Joao wants Mysticism. Nothing harmful here, so we accept:



365 BC - Mao wants open border, we refuse. Pyramids are completed in London (with some chopping), wich starts building a settler. Switch to rapresentation:



335 BC - Most powerful hit parade is looking very bad. Kashi Viswanath BIDL:



305 BC - Nottingham starts building a catapult.

290 BC - We finally open borders with the Romans to see what they are doing.

275 BC - Research starts on Currency. Joao converts to Hinduism. Julius is still alone with Judaism.

230 BC - Confucianism founded in a distant land.

200 BC - No open borders with Stalin.

185 BC - London starts building a library. Joao razes the barb city to the SE.

155 BC - Nottingham will build some archers, and York some spears.

125 BC - Hastings is founded. First build is a monument:



80 BC - Research moves to Code of Laws. Mao converts to Hinduism. Julius is alone.

35 BC - We close our borders to Joao. He's expanding like crazy and we want to keep he away from the SW tip (Hastings' borders are going to block that part). Nothing amazing there, but we are running out of land.

10 AD - London starts building axes.


And I stopped here. I'm not happy so far. Should have noticed Julius way earlier, claimed more land to block Joao and probably shouldn't have wasted all that time on the Pyramids. I think I will need to wait for maces to start some war.

The cities:



Northern part of the empire:



SE region:



Tech situation is good:



Our part of the world:



Diplo situation is a love-fest: no negative scores, no wars so far. But we are running out of land very quickly. Julius only is judaist, everyone else is Hindu:



Relations:



My thoughts:
- I'm a bit worried about the Romans and their Praetorians. If they ask me to convert to Judaism, I'll have to decline, as the rest of the world is Hindu.
If any Hindu civ asks me to convert and I accept, I'm gonna piss the Romans off.

- I'm not taking advantage of Liz's traits. York could be a nice commerce city, but it happens to be the only one with some good production potential. All those plains at London are not going to support a lot of cottages.
And I don't have any city with a good surplus of food, to make use of her philosophical trait.

- Overall, I don't think I've put myself in a strong position. I'm pushed between the best REXer in the game and one of the best warmongers of the classical era. And my land isn't that great. I'm going to settle one more city at the fur-sheep-iron spot, but that's it.

I don't really know where to go now. Probably not converting to any religion before maces (if nobody asks me to convert), then become Hindu myself and declare on Julius, with the support of a Hindu friend or two.
If he declares on me before maces, I think I'm pretty much toast.

Any kind of advice would be really appreciated.

Looks to me that you're a bit squeezed in at the moment. You can only get one more good city in the land still open nearby and that's NW of Nottingham, I suggest settling there asap else Julius will soon be there.

You got to few cities, look at my game, I got 7 at this point and I could've had a few more to be really rexing.

With Liz you have poor land to really use her trait, sure there's gold, a few cottagable places but you lack some coastal cities, Nottingham could've been placed a bit differently and you could've had two coastal cities west of Nottingham, claiming the seafood and commerce from the coasttiles, perhaps even possible to get TGL.

Next, well, you really need more space and war seems the only option, but it'll be hard. Joao might be an easier option than Julius but I'd gone for Julius anyway, keep friendly with your religious buddies as long as you can.

Where would you settle that next city? SE of the clams? I try to avoid overlapping cities, but I think it's a habit I carried from Civ 2, wich doesn't matter so much here.

The main mistake was not rushing JC asap. Didn't realize how crappy the southern land was and now it's too late. Not gonna restart with this kind of future knowledge anyway.

I think I'm converting to Hinduism, build catapults until maces, then some maces and declare on JC.

Thanks for the input.

Well now...this makes things a little slower, eh?

I settled in place. Started a warrior while teching AG, AH, Mining.

After all the basic techs and bronze I went archery then writing. Gold helped out a lot in recovering from being techless, but unlike a lot of others I was in no position to rush with this start/difficulty/leader. Most of my early game military was archers actually. I went buddhism since Joao won't backstab the way JC does, and I wanted and at least 1 secure border. Comes at a price though:



No buddhist love fest...



For some reason though, the war with HIM never came during the archer era. Probably because I had about 9 garrisoned in his likely attack target .

Empire @ 265 AD, pretty uneventful for me but some wars between Joao/Mao and whatnot:

My peaceful teching didn't last me forever:



So I dial up my buddhist bro:



Stalin goes with the flow:



D'oh. War with 2 people and a cautious JC right next to me . The AI is bad at war though. I move some of my archers onto the hill near my northern city and give them guerrilla. I lose a lot but it also cripples their SoDs (even their siege) without them having the benefit of bombardment or collateral on my tougher units I'm massing. I was prepping for a cat war vs rome so this is fine. I get them both to take peace for trivial amounts from me (35 gold and some throwaway tech respectively).

I mass up a bit and make my move:



This is a tough fight and it spans 2 wars. However, how am I doing techwise through all this?



Not bad. More trade bait. This is all courtesy of the GP farm, which I decided would be the 2x fish/rice/cow site for obvious reasons. If I get get to constitution and win the war I'll be in ok shape.

Shortly after I won lib, Stalin interfered again. The war dragged on and on, but ultimately I repelled Stalin once again and finished the job vs salad man:





Tech lead slips a bit.

Now, close to 1600 I realize pacal is near rifling. I have a lot of leftover troops, and mutal is pressing my northern city. I decided to go for it:



High CR trebs win out:

I'd long since auto'd my workers. I took them off leave old improvements and specialized most cities to hammers. These hammer cities cranked out the hammer multipliers, then EP buildings, then units. Why espionage buildings? Because I've learned they''re amazing for a big empire and let hammer economies keep up with any other.

Stalin goes at it again!



This is really rough. Cossacks. I have way too much cavalry since I wasn't planning on going for Stalin yet (wanted to dogpile Mao with Joao). I lose a lot of units capturing 2 cities. Stalin grabs 2 of Pacals, then we call for peace.

I continue to mass up for war, stealing techs from Joao (all my trading with him earlier let him run away from the other AIs a bit. Now I'm using him for a tech lead). I declare in 1812 again with designs for another vassal:



Hah. Airships! I usually don't go for physics early, but the AI does, and running EE I stole it...might as well. I thought airships suck. They certainly do in the hands of the AI but they helped me tremendously in this game.

I liberate some Mayan cities:



Airships help a lot:



Nevertheless, this war bogged down painfully. I had to capture cities, heal, and repeat. Stalin was big and he'd spammed units nicely. In 1863, I'd almost won but it was long:



So how did that effect my tech rate?



Not much! I kept stealing from Joao...only needed 1 hammer city pumping spies over there. I stole a LOT in this game. Steel, physics, MS, Electricity, Steam power, railroad, combustion, industrialism, rifling, replaceable parts, and probably some more that I'm forgetting. It's even more fun to trade things you've stolen...!

Stalin gets the picture:



After stealing industrialism off Joao I go after China:



I take a city and:



MUCH nicer!

I gift the city immediately back. Joao used to like me a lot. That was before -15 for spies causing trouble. Nonetheless, I wasn't his worst enemy for most of the time and I was quite strong, so he never attacked me. He regrets that, I'm sure. Mao counts as a land target now, making capitulation much more likely. My war prep for Joao wasn't long:



My 16 airships are still in service and still quite useful, dropping all his defending infantry to 16 STR:



I killed over 40 units and lost maybe 3 at perfect tech parity. 3 cities later, Joao folds even though he's still pretty big:



I was more than willing and almost ready to head for Washington, but it turned out I had enough land after the captured cities popped borders:



And that's that. I love the terrible tech rate beakerwise still allowing me to lead because of oppressive levels of espionage...most of which I did nothing to run except spam spy buildings. Cool!

In your game with the placement of nottingham I had placed a city on the forested grassland hill just SE of the clams NW of Nottingham. It'll have both clams and fish and hills for production. If you put Moai in that city it'll be a pretty decent production city that'll claim some income from the finansial sea. It'll not intrude much on Nottingham as you will focus the new city to work the seazone and the hills to the east outside of Nottinghams BFC.

I changed the WB file so civ color is black. At the start settling in place would have a water tile so I settled 1E(yeah horse would have been in the BFC, but got it on the 2nd border pop).
Tech path was mining>bw>myst>wheel>hunting>archery>AH>pottery>writing>math>
masonry>poly>mono(Judaism)>monarchy>construction>preist>CoL>sailing(t)>
IW(t)>alpha>currency>aesthetics>CS


Met JC directly NW of me, Joao to my East, Mao was down to the SE of Joao, Maya was way up N of JC and Stalin was in the NE of the map. After BW I saw JC was real close to a copper hill so chopped out several dogs and took Rome after OB with him to scout his city, which was a real nice city having a lot of forest I'm going to make it my NP city. Once Rome was captured, started rexing to block Maya up N and Joao(who still sneaked a couple cities past me, that Exp/Imp traits are working good) Maya founded Hinduism and the Shrine. Once hindu spread to me I converted and built a missionary to convert Joao who was budda.

Once Maya blocker was settled, started dogs/chariots/cats and took the hindu holy city, took Maya down to 1 city then he capulated to Mao, Mao declares on me so I finish Maya out and declare peace. Now I'm just rebuilding economy.

Techs


World N

World S

Demographics

Top 5 cities, Mao is being a wonderhog


So I'll work my way to him later.

First thing I did was move my capital to the west...oops, there was very little food here and I discovered that was a mistake, but I decided to just take it and deal with it.

I researched AH and found horses nearby, so I decided to War Chariot Rush Caesar. I founded my 2nd city on top of the horses to get Horses out fast and made short work of Ceasar.



Then I founded Judea, and swapped to OR for a "free forge" and started producing settlers and wonders. I settled along the western coast. Planning to get TGL made those cities a lot better than they first looked. Anyways, Rome's dual Gems paid off and then some, and I was able to expand pretty quickly.

Thebes built the Pyramids. One turn later my horse city (Memphis) whipped The Great Lighthouse up. Rome, now under my control, ended up building, chopping, and whipping The Oracle and I used that to found Christianity.

Pacal was building up a bunch of wonders in Mutal, so I knew he couldn't have a huge army even without looking at the power graph. I swapped to Theocracy and started building up a huge army and charged after Pacal. My army was probably twice the necessary size to take him down! And if it wasn't for the one Barbarian city he captured about 3 turns before my DoW on him, he would be wiped out. Mutal has Stonehenge, The Temple of Artemis, (it's coastal, too!) and The Kashi Vishwanath (Hindu Holy Shrine.) Along the way I picked up Code of Laws first, and got lucky and founded Confucism in my Jewish Holy City (I already have the Jewish Shrine, too.)

Eight cities, 3 religions founded, 4 religious capitals, 2 shrined, owner of every world wonder built so far except The Great Wall, 4 of the top 5 cities in the world, the strongest (known) army in the world, and I'm betting the most land, too.

I've done all this and it's still only 300BC. Anyone who wants to pick up here with a nice lead can have some fun.

Here's a picture:



Edit: I should add in that my plan in this game is to get very very early Macemen, switch to Theocracy, and crush the rest of the known world. My goal is a very early domination win.

Edit: Oh yeah, if you do pick up here, wait 4 turns then swap off of Slavery. I've been using Ramesses Spiritual trait to hop in and out of Slavery as necessary. It just so happened that I had whipped something last turn, and am waiting to go back to Tribalism. (Caste System is 1 more gold upkeep, and I wouldn't be using it anyways, and I'm Spiritual so I can change back at any time, so why bother with it now?)