Monarch Student X - Charlemagne

Settled 1S on the wine; started immediately on a Settler, working the Flood Plains until Meditation then switching to the forested plains hill. Early tech path was Meditation > Agriculture > Mining > Bronze Working
3900 BC: Popped Archery from the nearby goody hut; very nice, I might go for Masonry before starting the Oracle now that Archery is off my early tech list.



3675 BC: Popped a Map from another goody hut to the south, meeting Napoleon and showing me the location of Paris.



3650: Successfully founded Buddhism, and teched towards Agriculture and Mining while continuing Settler build.
3600 BC: Popped 109 gold from another goody hut.
3400 BC: Met Shaka. It may be hard to keep him from jumping me if I go for the Oracle slingshot, but perhaps I can go to Bronze Working first since I won't have to tech Archery.
3250 BC: Finished Settler, started building an Archer while letting Aachen grow a bit.
3200 BC: Founded Prague, started on Worker. I had a hard time picking out a second city site, but this seems like a good one for early production, and I'm going to need to pump out some units to keep Shaka off my back, most likely. Those empty tiles and lack of forests give me some hope that I might find horses or copper later, as well.



3100 BC: Finished Mining, decided to delay Priesthood in favor of Bronze Working.
3025 BC: Met Kublai.

And then comes 2825 BC, and guess what?



Yep, it's our good friends the Vedic Aryans. If I were playing this game offline I'd just give it up at this point, but I'm going to stop here and ask everyone's opinion on whether it would be acceptable for me to WB them out and continue. Thoughts?

I didn't bother loading this as custom scenario to turn events off, aren't they dumb?- since you won't be able to whip an archer (no BW yet), if they head to your cap i'd say WB them out. What's the point of taking the loss and starting over? I think WB'ing them out and continuing your game would lead to a more "legit" win than restarting with knowledge of the map (i hate having to replay maps, feels like cheating)

You could try and see if you can ride it out first i suppose, but it's your call. Who knows, maybe nappy's archer will take out 2 or 3 of them. I don't think anyone will have a problem with you using WB though.

My start, if i remember it, was settler first while going for worker techs not religion. Went AG-Mining-BW-Wheel-Pottery. Settled a city SE first cause i didn't want to mess around getting a good spot only to have a wolf eat my guy. Built worker in both cities after that and played normally.

Nappy ended up spreading Conf. to me so i converted. He's settled a couple cities on top of me, but they weren't spots i wanted anyway. Just trying to stay peaceful long enough to settle my cities. Was thinking about moving the cap to vienna, but it might just stay as a production city. I will try and settle 3 or 4 cities to the East soon before Hannibal gets there. That will give me enough to out tech and out produce everyone and gear up for a war.

I actually gave a couple AI's pottery to open up alphabet trades. A couple of them were very slow. Actually everyone seems pretty slow, which is a good sign for me. Just traded currency to hannibal for sailing and polytheism i think, just cause i had no other options and wanted them. I have currency on everyone else, and aestetics but no one will trade anything. I might switch research to priesthood to open up monarchy. I also want masonry to get that marble since i should be able to get the great library easy after literature.

I was tempted to settle that great chokepoint, but i'm glad i didn't. It would have been expensive, and hannibal isn't settling my way anyway. I had time, but now need to prioritize getting over there.

It's fine. Your protective. Whip 2 archers, and they will for sure hold back the barbarians (archers suck at attacking but are superb at defending).

Problem is that he's 5 turns from bronze working. So that means revolt to slavery in 5 turns, whip on turn 6, archer on turn 7. With only a warrior to defend the cap for 7 turns, 4 archers could be a problem. This is assuming he has 1 warrior to defend that can get there in time(it's undefended now) If he even had 1 protective archer in the cap i'd say no way 4 archers could take it - but this event came a few turns too soon to handle probably. Maybe they won't even head to the capital though, who knows.

Does it not normally say when you will take the brunt of the horde?

This was actually my second attempt, my first one was ended by a very early DoW from Nappy when he was at pleased. I wish that game had worked out, it was setting up much better than my second try.

After reading the stuff on here about where to settle, I decided on 1S on the wine. I worked a flood plain while researching meditation, and got Buddhism. I tried settler first in my first try, but decided on a more generic approach this time, doing everything pretty standard after meditation. Although I missed the Oracle by a few turns, and self researched CoL pretty early and founded Confu. I got archery a map and some gold from huts.

I had terrible luck with religion spread. In my first try, KK founded everything on the right side of the map, and I ended up getting Bud to Han, Brennus, Nap, Church and Sully. This time, Hindu, Judaism, and Christianity spread like wildfire, and I ended up having to go NSR to save some diplomacy. Buddhism is currently in 4 or 5 cities, a complete waste of time to found it really.

Anyway, my strategy was to settle far away, blocking a lot of land for later. I settled my first 2 cities just above Nappy, and another to the east. Unfortunately, these cities set me back short term, they are hurt by jungle/desert and lack of production, but they were crucial to get more land later.

I got worried when Nappy went wheoohrn early again, but thankfully he went after Church thanks to an ambassador event. Unfortunately, I had to deal with another idiot before the round was over. I don't know where Shaka is, but I know I'm very far away from him, he declared on me and almost took my eastern blocking city. I killed his medium sized stack and gave him CoL for peace. Basic crazy warmonger mentality, nothing to gain, but just has to war anyway.

I took care of all of my tech needs with CoL. I traded it with Sully for alphabet, since he was the only one with it, and then whored that around. I ended up getting alpha, math, IW, mono, sailing, monarchy, and some other techs for CoL. Tech situation is good, Brennus is the current leader, but my economy is still in the tanked phase.



Aside from that, I'm currently teching off the economy recovering techs and filling out my land. I should be able to get ~12 cities peacefully. Not sure on my overall plan, I'll probably peacefully tech to rifling, and wipe out one of the sides since we're in the middle of everyone.

Here are my southern cities:



I have to get some workers down there to chop up that jungle, aside from that, both cities are pretty good, but need to be developed more. And the north:



Nuremberg got whipped to nothing to survive Shaka's attack, but It will regrow once I fix the improvements. I got the GLib built in the capital, easy with marble, that helps research a lot. A lot more land to settle up there. I'm getting some swords out to take the barb city, but there is a ton of land to settle besides that. I was already first in the largest civ list, and I'm going to double what I have. KK is the only one with enough cities to come close to me, so hopefully that equates to a dominating position later.

Settled 1S – on the wine – settler start, and we’re racing for buddhism…but huts are good for a bit of gold and Agriculture - how useful is that with irrigated corn! And we are successfully Buddhist on turn 13. Hindsight – not sure why I didn’t do poly, because I always forget I need poly for aesthetics, and GLib is a no-brainer with marble. Oh well. Meet napoleon – he must be close. Since I got AG from a hut, I figure I can go masonry to speed through oracle. Then meet this guy:



Ok, so I won’t delay long on military! Nasty neighbors! Unfortunately, because I got a little sidetracked after spotting one of the huts from a hill, I hadn’t finished scouting by the time I got my settler out, so I was terrified a barb animal would eat it as I raced it down to block some land and claim gold. I think this is near napoleon too. Here’s Prague:



I figured with 160 hut gold, I can afford it to be a bit far from the capital. Meet Hannibal too. Clearly Prague is close to France:



That message got annoying the 10th time it popped up. Oh, and my scout found one last hut – XP which got me to 9, and I let a barb warrior attack me in the forest and lose, so this:



HE unlocked thanks to a hut – ridiculously unbalanced. In my favor I know, but still unbalanced.

First time in ages I built Oracle:



Wow – what to do?? Monarchy or COL. Monarchy sure is tempting for early HR happiness. But I chose COL, figure I can self tech monarchy pretty easily and access to the rathaus will be nice. Plus I can get a missionary and make Nappy Confucian too, which I did. Now just need the Oracle prophet to help pay for the empire. Vienna here – blocking some more land and locking up the ivory.



Teched AH finally in 1300 BC – way late! And horses are in Prague’s BFC, so that’s nice. Just need to block a bit more land to the east, and should be easy to fill in a bunch of cities.

An all important trade:



This opens up a few more trades as well, including IW, which I needed with the jungle around Vienna

And here’s my first ever attempt at the walls trick…before – 10 gold:



After a whip and 4 chops:



246 gold. Not bad - I know this would have been better after math, but hey, the gold came in handy to fix the economy. My workers can then get back to improving the other cities. And shrine time – this helps the economy immensely.



And state of the world at 5 BC:



My only fear is diplomacy right now…I had Nappy in Confucianism, but he converted to hindu. And Shaka is nearby, and I saw a few impis a turn or two ago near my borders. Impis aren’t hurting pro archers though. I don’t have many archers is the problem(8 total) . But as you can see, I just hit the point where I’m getting HE built in Prague (which happens to be my Confucian holy city. I know it’s not optimal to have a shrined holy city also be your unit pump, but it’s also my best production city with all those hills). Aachen is going to be a ok bureau city with those cottages. My city specialization has been mediocre this game, and I haven’t even really developed my GP farm yet. Might be the first game ever that I build HE and Wall Street in the same city - wouldn't that be something?

Next steps are to survive the next 15 turns without a war, so my unit pump can start doing just that, switch to caste and start getting the benefits of some specialists. Thanks to more aggressive chopping around Aachen, great library is coming in a turn or two. Have lined up more settlers and workers to fill in the gaps – I’ve blocked some good land, and can easily fit a few more cities in. I haven’t scouted all that well, but it appears as if we’re all on one landmass, and we’re all pretty tightly boxed in, because tech is slow – case in point:



Tech board should be a lot worse at 5 BC on emperor, so I assume this map doesn’t have a lot of land for the AI to settle. Once someone is willing to trade construction, I'll be churning out elephants, which will probably mean I have to start warring, probably with the short french guy first. Currency and CS are key techs now to get bureau and start chain farming - a couple sites need some extra farms.