PCII Pericles

Chop pyramids, use great Engineer for great library, maybe shot on Parthenon, maybe great wall in second city if the forest is large enough. Maybe even Paya if the religion of your neigbours is favorable

Boxed off the inca now they declared on me at cautios +3. So it was a good thing it kinda slapped me in the face because I realized I had no more than 2 warriors in on of the Worlds top five cities. Athens. so I whipped an archer and managed to hold off his small army of swords and catapolts. Started chopping for macemen and am about to kick his rear. Darius, my close neighbor has about as much tech as I do but in different areas. I Steel his techs and research my own. I'm sitting on a heaping saturation of beakers. I actually planned on declareing on daruis but inca slapped me before I could. They wasted about 300 shields on an army that didn't kill anyone. They have dicided to talk but now that thier boxed in and have ancient weaponry, It's time to let loose the dogs of war! Can't wait to start playin' again.

Going into world builder I tried not to look too much. Early on my first try at normal speed I met a cpl of AI's very fast so I knew some were close before hand and I couldnt help seeing horsies in bfc. But I didnt get too much info cuz I just opened then saved and exitied without looking around.

I restarted in scenario and set it to marathon speed. One thing I noticed was on doing it like that it gives away all the leaders :/. I KNOW there is a way to make it so they WONT be given away cuz everybody else makes em I just have noooo clue how they do. But it wasnt THAT big a dealio cuz in one of reports most of the leaders wher ementioned in an unspoilered post so I already kinda knew who I was gonna meet.

I scooted my settler on down to coast like I did on my first try. I knew I would be missing out on horseys in bfc but I figured peri being creative my borders would cover by time I was ready to to make some chariots.

I wasted two turns before making my cap just cuz where I settled was on a forest but I had a scout and was keeping fingers crossed that he would get lucky on some huts so things would be ok as long as he dont get eaten by bears.

He got eaten by bears grrrr. Good news is he DID mange to score 200 and something gold AND AH so after ag was done I start on wheel.

Now in first try I saw HC's warrior come in VERY fast from the west so KNEW he must be close out that way. I wasnt sure how close cuz made a point not to peek when in wb and yeah he was close. But sinc emy lil scout got turned into bear chow pretty early I had TONS of unexplored land especially to the east cuz my scout went west to go find HC.

So first chariot I make goes a scouting out east and:



Turns out Dari is even closer. Good old dari not ONLY was he nice enuff to found a religion for me he made a worker for me too

SO after ::ahem:: "borrowing" the worker I chop/whip/build a few buddies for my first chariot and:



They all come back to say thanks

I guess Darius isnt used to ppl being polite cuz shortly after that he kinda left the game. Although he did leave a nice holy city for me

Anywho I called the chariots who wer eleft back home while chopping/whipping a few more to rebuild their numbers and then:



They go say hi to hc. They made it just in time to cuz HC was getting waaaay to close to IW for comfort. My chariots are fun loving guys but they do NOT like to go say hi to ppl who have teched through IW

But luckily for them HC wasnt finished with IW and even though he did get BW done he didnt have any copper hooked up so it was ok for the chariots to party with HC.

Turns out HC doesnt like visitors anymore than Dari cuz he leaves soon after too but he was nice enough to leave me a capitol and some gold thanks to like about 3 other cities he built and my guys pillaged

Meanwhile while HC was playing with my chariots I met the other AI's did some teching. Dari's cap was off by itslef unconnected for a long time. But I got two more workers during the fight with him and since his cap had TONS of trees all around it I figured it might as well keep busy till it got connected to rest of empire and:



After that it was mostly getting another settler out to go get some copper connected. Explore some more--there is TONS of empty land and I STILL have NOOO idea where the other AI's are even though it looks like land seems to be ending.



So either landmass LOTS bigger than I thought or there is one HECK of a chokepoint out east somewhere.

At this point Athens has a library--a Gpsy is coming soon and after that it grows a bit it will be doing some scientists. I'll probably settle the gspy for the 12 esp points and its beakers--which will be 6 thanks to rep. Copper is all hooked up so will build some phalanxes while chariots go scouting looking for other AI's And try to settled a few more cities.

Tech plan right now is like Alaphabet then currency and hopefully trade those around for backfill and by then will be ready to go after someone else.

You sure didn't save on the chariots. Every 2 chariots could have been an extra worker. You had waaay more than you needed. Just expanding and taking out the AI a little later when they have more things to give you might have given better results. Anyways you got huge amounts of land so make use of it(Rex). On marathon workers are cheaper, so there is no reason not to have more rather than less(1.5 to 2 per city). By keeping a decent amount of workers it should be hard to crash your economy while rexing. Not sure why your capital is size 3(growing it sooner rather than later is often best, and you should pretty much never whip it before you get a granary at least). Speaking of granaries, with pericles that should probably be the first build in pretty much any city... Why the heck are you building barracks? They do nothing for you at this stage(you don't need more units until you've rexed out some more land), granaries(if you don't have them already), libraries(great with creative, with philo and mids running scientists are also pretty good) when you grow. Also more settlers and workers are obviously more important. Grow your cities onto more tiles. Having a lot of cities is all well and good(though you don't exactly have that), but having a lot of large cities is way better.

After HC is taken care of and copper all hooked up I get some phalanxes going to add to the chariots. I figure Justi would be best target since he odd man out religious wise.

My boys get to his first cit what the %&^^*& somehow that dilhole got longbows and were still in the BC's?????? I know he got oracle done so I am guessing he picked monarchy as freebie tech then belined feudal FAST.

Well it is PAINFUL but I take two cites including his cap then my guys r crying no mass. The big sissies whining bout "we're ancient era units fighting longbows behind walls" whine whine whine men r SUCH crybabies sometimes

Well Justi is will to go for peace at this point anyways and he throws in some gold and meditation.

Besides my economy was starting to get close to crashing so I wait and trade for some techs and resaerch some more trying to get my everything settled and then I come back with my answer to early longbows:



A big stack of suici....er I mean uhm elite forces who arent allowed to whine. They were a bit more eager to take on the longbows. They did have some questions bout how my economy could afford so many units and just kind of appted their collected heads and said dont worry problem of fnancing so many units will work itself out by end of the war hey I said they were eager not bright hehe


And a few more turns and tons of dead cats and swords later:



Justi's last city falls. Now all this time AUgie been pretyt much keeping to himself. Suri seems to be off the main land mass somewhere but he did manage to get one city on this cont. And that seemed to be enuff to tick off Toku cuz the two of them been fighting back and forth the whole game.

So at this point I am taching on towars machinery and with CS already done that means Maces and xbows.

So plan is toku is pretty weak powerwise and constant warring meant his tech pace been slower than his usual snail on three bottles of nyquil speed pace. S I figure hit toku and by time he is done maces should be online and then it time to go get medieival on augie.

HOWEVER its round this time I noticed something. Look up in right hand corner of last screenie. Yeah 58 turns left in game???? Grrrr I guess saving game as wb save and then playing custom scenario didnt work out. It changed the tech costs and stuff to marathon level but NOT the number of turns grrrrr.

So I guess no pint in continuing. I SWAER civ is totally gainst me finishing CFC series game lately. This is like 5th or 6th in a ROW that ended aerly for me for one reason or another. At least this time it wasnt cuz of me getting whomped. Not that I was exactly whomping in this game. I was doing ok in warring so far but my economy was always THIS close from a collaps and I had to be careful WHOLE freakin game to try and pace myself so I wont start going on strike. Which meant Augie and Suri still had as good a shot or better as me of ending up on top at this point. But at least if FELT like I wa smaking progress and had a decent shot of maybe getting in position to win. I even had a lil plan:



in addition to his unfreakin believable longbow speed grab justi ALSO founded FOUR holy cities and put two each in a city. Double Doulbe Holy cities if you will. If I could just gets some holyprophets going TWO dbl shrine cities plus the single shrine city dari made for me could do LOTS to getting economy on track. But oh wells guess it not meant to be.

Anyways here is my empire at this point:



still LOTS of room and if I could ever figure out a way to get decent economy going I could start doing good if I could be able to settle it out and take adavntage.


and final demos:


No HUGE leads in any category but at least I wasnt TOO far behind in most things and even ahead (just by lil bit tho) in some.

Final tech sitch:



EVERYBODY has calendar on me but NOOOBODY wants to trade it

Yeah I knowI had room to move out peacefully but they AI"s were sooooo close and I had chariots and axes so how is a gal NOT supposed to go kill them before they start building stuff on MY land??

Besides it sometimes gets ANNOYING the way AI settles their cities. As it was I was already growling cuz I was resigning myself to fact that most likely i was gonna have to KEEP many of tokus and Augie's cities no matter how sucky they were located just cuz it getting to point in game where it just better to keep the semi gorwon cities instead of razing and resettling from scratch.. I just find it so MUCH more convenient to kill everything on MY continent then settle at my leisure so if I have a chance to kill em off early Im probly gonna take it hehe.

As for amount of units my dad always taught me it better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it (case in point suddenly finding out your target has longbows so in one swoop stack goes from overly large SoD to BRAELY addeuqate stack to take a cpl a cities and force a peace) so I tend to go a tad overkill on my stacks sometimes hehe

As for buildings yeah I chopped whipped my cities to the bone so even by time whipping spree was done happy cap was so low I DIDNT want em growing back TOO fast so put off the grainaries for stuff like barracks and libraries and THEN grainaries once mids got chopped and I had a better happy cap. (at least in the as far as athens goes. Granairies did get put up sooner on those 5 pop cities and thats why they were getting barracks cuz it was their turn to feel whipping crack to replenish stack and go warring while athens and sparta recovers and grows)

Maybe as you said whipping so hard to get that many units wasnt best move in world. I mean yes I have had games crash HARD cuz of making too many units and warring to fast. On other hand though in my epxerience at least while you CAN lose form a succesful rush with too many units you at least have a CHANCE to reecover if for no other reason than because fewer rivals around to take advantage while a FAILED rush cuz of too few units is almost ALWAYS a game killer. So if I am gonna rush it gonna be ALL the way with as my units as my lil whip can crack out hehe

So it wasnt ALL willy nilly haphazzard planning. I mean I DID have reasons for doing what I was doing--maybe not great or smart reasons but there WERE reasons and thats MUCH better than how I played when I very first started this game hehe (And maybe thats why Im still pretty much just a noble skill level player but I am getting better since like I said I have reasons now for why I do some stuff hehe)

As for workers I think I did keep up reasonably well at least at begining. By end of war with Dar I had 5 cities and 7 workers. Not QUITE 1.5 workers per city (I tried to cut a worker in half but they complained..union rules or some such ) but close. ALthough by end of Justi war I think ratio was 15 cities 12 workers but I WAS starting to get some more on the to que list. It just by that point I realized game was still counting turns in norml speed turns and I ha dno chance of winning before time was up :/