Civ4 GOTM 52 First Spoiler - 500 AD

GOTM 52 First Spoiler

Reading Requirements

Stop! If you are participating in GOTM 52, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 500 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 500 AD.
• Please do not reveal any civilizations located on landmasses other than the starting continent.
• Please do not reveal any location of other continents.

Did you focus on settler spamming or wonder building? Did you grab enough land while maintaining high research rate? Specialist or cottage economy?

Settler spamming. And in particular, cutting off the Incans. There is still plenty of North America to settle, but I grabbed Central America (Panama, gems) and Venezuela (marble, settled on cows) and culture flipped Columbia (HC beat me to the fish/horse/rice/marble site, but I settled cities 3 tiles away and stole the rice & marble, then flipped it). Panama founded Confucianism and Venezuela built the Oracle (CS). (AKA Boston and New York)
Tech rate way ahead. Settled on the Wine Hill and cottaging the capital. Still haven't settled the nearby flood plains (oops).

My game has featured exciting races to settle ahead of the Incans. Don't know how I am goingto win a UN vote but trying to grab as much land as possible. Maybe I should have let the Incans found more cities that I could flip. Or maybe if I get their vote, it doesn't matter that I took their land.

This is my first GOTM in a very long time. Finally got a computer that can play Civ 4, but never got back into it until recently. I did play a partial test game and learned that its not too hard to beat the ai in the land grab. So I felt comfortable moving the settler 2NW to look around after moving the warrior NW and not seeing anything. I see what looks like a plains hill 3W, so I head SW and settle north of rice. This gave three plains hills, flood plain, rice and 2 wines, plus lots of grass to cottage.

In my test game I managed to get 5 of the religions, and we already have enough tech for the worker to get started on the rice/FP, so will go for Hinduism. Meanwhile, warrior is discovering how barren our land mass is. Turns out he missed most of the spits of land the first time around, so I truly thought I was isolated for a LONG time. This led me to delay my first settler. I got Hinduism, then Priesthood, and started Oracle. I did AH next, and then eventually realize I've left my worker nothing to do. I should have teched mining and/or wheel first. So worker went to pasture the cow, and then once wheel came in, started roading including the horses outside my border NE. Meanwhile, the warriors (all 2 of them) are still wandering around and finally find Inca down south on turn 41 (2360BC). I had just switched from Oracle to first settler 4 turns before and I'm still 6 turns from finishing. My contact is a scout to the east of marble so I head west figuring Inca is off to the east, but no, they are to the west. Couple turns later and I see a settler headed north. He settles 2W of marble. My settler is heading south. I could take the marble by settling 1E of it, but I decide it is better to block off the southern piece, so I settle SW of wheat and will not trade open borders when I get Writing.

I built a second worker in Washington next (still partially done with Oracle). The first is building a road to New York, except for the hill where I plan to place third city. I do make sure road connects to river though. Then he farms wheat. About this time I get BW and see copper near floodplains site. The hill I planned for city 3 won't get copper, so will change to 1SE of copper. Writing is next, and I work tiles to finish Writing and Oracle same turn. Then decide to revolt to slavery to rush Oracle. I'm worried about getting it. With writing due in 1, rush Oracle for 2 pop (drop to 4). Take COL and get Confucianism in NY. Convert to it so New York will expand and missionary will spread to Washington. Few turns later it spreads to Inca and HC converts.


Settle Boston SE of copper by flood plains, and will continue to settle widely spaced cities trying to fog bust as much as I can. I am cottaging the grass around Washington, and will do cottage the FP in Boston. Hook up horses once Washington expands into them and build a couple chariots for fogbusting. I actually stopped mining the copper in Boston just before I finished as I realized that would invite barb axes. So far I'd been doing good against the warriors. I realize now I never saw any archers. Once I saw an axe in the NE, I finished the copper mine (wasn't much later actually).

I've made a number of mistakes so far, like going for Literature before I was ready to use it, and teching things in the wrong order, but I'll chalk that up to not playing much so far. I also kept getting called away from my PC which led to more mistakes (like a settler arriving at a city I just founded a turn before). GP built the Kong Miao in NY in 150AD, which helps gold a bit (I'm trying to spread Conf. to all cities). By 500AD I have settled 8 cities largely covering the main land mass, and am heading for the one tile island w/ hut off SW coast to eventually grab sugar by expansion. I expect to get all of the main land are, including the northern spits. Seems that Inca is our only contact and he won't trade, so it looks like I need to get to Astronomy pretty quick if I can.

More in next spoiler...

Xevious said:

Meanwhile, the warriors (all 2 of them) are still wandering around and finally find Inca down south on turn 41 (2360BC). ...

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Hi Xevious, welcome to GOTM.
I missed the isthmus and thought I was alone until a quecha wandered into my territory.
some stuff I've learned from civfanatics:

So far I'd been doing good against the warriors. I realize now I never saw any archers. Once I saw an axe in the NE, I finished the copper mine (wasn't much later actually).

Click to expand...

You can prevent barbarians from spawning: they won't spawn within 2 tiles of any unit. So each of your warriors will "clear" a 5x5 square.

First I busted the east and central, then finally the west and two northern "spurs". Only dealt with warriors and one archer.
Lost my first worker by moving next to a barbarian (oops!).

Seems that Inca is our only contact and he won't trade,

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AIs won't trade with you (except Mansa) if they think they have a monopoly. Since HC doesn't know anyone else, he won't trade. But they/he will always trade at friendly. Get him to friendly (maybe by gifting a tech) and he will trade.

You are well beyond the above advice, but maybe next time.

I had the same happen to me: I thought I was alone, until HC's quechua discovered me...really missed the little land bridge. Once it was clear that HC was the only competitor close by and it looked like we were on the "new world", I decided to cut HC off and take the northern continent all for myself. After my first two cities I settled another city by the bridge with the gems, then I was ready to fill the rest of my land.

I got HC to friendly easily and early enough. After CS-sling and worker techs it was monarchy-alphabet, and by gifting CoL he got to friendly.
I met him when his Quechua entered north america. Until then I thought we were isolated. I did settle my 3rd city on the isthmus (1N of gems), and also grabbed the eastern jungly peninsula before HC, so that leaves plenty of room for expansion.

At 500AD I control 11 cities, where one was captured from barbs. Working on Oxford, and a few turns from optics. I plan to settle every unclaimed island to grow large enough to avoid having to befriend more than 1-2 of the old world AI.

I settled on the wine hill on T1 for the nice 223 city center. Seeing the rice sealed the deal, particularly since resources in the starting region are very scarce.
I cottaged most of the cities, and obviously focused on expanding. Wonders built: Oracle only. I dont think I will build any more until UN (maybe some of the happiness ones by then).
I am slaving happily, and thus have no real GP farm, so I'll probably get one or two shots at generating a GE at ~35% odds.
Civics: Probably going to stay in HR for the duration of the game, since I'll probably have to abandon the religion at some point. This way HC's vote is safe (unless he is the opponent - a good incentive to limit his expansion!), and I can work out a way to make a couple of friends in the old world (hopefully someone else will have appropriate favourite civics).

OK, I played this like a test game.... as in, first time ever I play with "Always Pizza".

Contender Save. Noble level... am I worried, no I am not.
Goal: Diplomatic victory. Preferably fast. Not comfortable milking a diplo game, so aim to win first vote.

I settled 2W from start location. On Terra map I'm thinking inland is best to get land, which could be the only challenging aspect of this game, I thought. 2W had lots of food, and good commerce potential plus good production. A good all-around capitol since capitol city is usually called upon to play many different roles across the span of a game all the way to Mass Media shall require. Mining the grapes was a first for me, but don't knock it, its a pretty fine tile! The other got farmed iirc, until monarchy was around then I made it a winery to opiate the masses.

I plan to rely on bulbing a lot to speed up the techs, so GLib and Nat Epic will go in Capitol. I believe both were pre-500AD by some centuries. I want CS-sling from Oracle, and go via Polytheism since this is also towards Literature. I didn't expect to get Hinduism, but I did... holy city is capitol. I get the CS-sling, though forget what year. This slowed my expansion rate somewhat, but I was not concerned, having learned I am isolated on a large landmass with HC, I send my first settler to black off the north. Unfortunately, I have one tile not-barb defogged, and as per Murphy's law, that tile spawned a barb who killed my first settler. (There goes the medal - actually, by forcing the best players to go for same victory type, I never really consider myself a medal contender for this GOTM). It cost me the rice city that I had labelled on the map "HC blocker" already. Had to erase that label and put new one 1N of the Gems. So my first city settled after capitol was 1N of gems, from my second settler built. Still got the CS sling (not needing math in Vanilla really makes it easy), but had to leave borders closed to keep land blocked. COL of course put the Confu holy city in the 1N-gems city, which helped the culture push. I was waiting for HC to found a religion, but he didn't. I gave up waiting and adopted Hinduism (I had 2 cities Hindu and 2 cities confu... total 3 cities -- settled Mississipi as third city). I was stupidly thinking that Hinduism was around longer so HC should get Hinduism first and adopt it. But religion spread works by proximity to Holy City, and therefore I should have chosen Confu. Cost me an extra turn of anarchy to switch to confu after HC did.

The rest is settle and tech race. HC gets friendly fairly quickly - even though I early rejected a request for tech that I should have accepted (what are you going to do, keep all those smoke hamsters for yourself?). Friendly opened up some trades, but not much at this difficulty level. Built a lot of Courthouses to keep tech rate up while expanding wildly, Forbidden Palace on West Coast somewhere. Plan to use Liberalism to get Astronomy or maybe Radio depending on how advanced other AI seem to be. They will be numerous on a single landmass, so should have reasonable tech rates I suspect. I will avoid founding any more religions because I don't want to face a bhudist lovefest...

I built the GLH in Mississipi (chop chop)... maybe not optimal since HC is the only trade partner and capitol is not coastal. But every other city is. And up to 500AD my tech rate never drops below 70%, and will only get better from here.

Definitely weird feeling having no military needs except barbs -- who are busted by my cities borders anyhow. This should go faster than a normal diplo game, as all efforts can be focused on getting Mass Media asap, and growing population. Now wars should mean pretty friendly relations all around, so really critical about not hogging religions... someone will be my opponent in any vote. I think I built cottages on the flood plains but everywhere else was just farms to get high pop. This leaves me option of building UN in a city I can gift to the most hated AI, if the #2 pop guy is too loved.

All in all, the always peace/diplo only settings are interesting to see what its like... but it makes the strategizing too simple to be something I'd want to try more often. Its all about execution. And when the barbs execute your first settler, you can pretty much count yourself out of the serius competition.

Aldor said:

Possible other strategies: block HC off AND at the same time try to send boats with settlers down to take as much of his land as possible. I was again surprised by how easy it is with a financial leader (may also be because its Vanilla Civ) to keep up a high research level...settling some strategic cities in the south wouldn't have hurt much.[/spoiler]

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I chose not to settle soutwards, not even Cuba or the western islands, because I was concerned about close borders sparking tensions - probably didn't need to worry about that, but it is affected by how many tiles shared border you have. HC was the most certain to get to Friendly, since you will have the most time to do so and he will be your only trade partner for a long time. Therefore, having HC be large (though not large enough to be #2 in pop) only helps you win the diplo vote.

What makes the high research rates easy to maintain is the total lack of need for military units. The AI do not adjust to specialized game parameters like this and build units according to some pre-set formula that figures in all victory types. Therefore the AI cannot possibly expand as fast as you without stalling their research, which they are programmed to avoid.

Turning off any 1 victory condition gives the human player an enormous advantage, usually. Turning off all but 1 distorts the game so badly that if it weren't a GOTM competition against the other humans to do it better, there would be no point to it. Humans make adjustments to the altered game parameters... and no matter the human's skill level, will almost certainly make a more appropriate adjustment than the AI.

Of course, Diplo victories can be tricky unless you are familiar with all the ways to make the votes go in your favor, so an easy victory is not assured. But the game got a lot simpler for the human, since the AI still do a lot of things that have been made irrelevant to victory (culture, defense/military, land area controlled) by the selected options chosen by gamemaker, and a human will only focus on relevant things (pop, relations, tech to Mass Media).

Deckhand said:

Settler spamming. And in particular, cutting off the Incans. There is still plenty of North America to settle, but I grabbed Central America (Panama, gems) and Venezuela (marble, settled on cows) and culture flipped Columbia (HC beat me to the fish/horse/rice/marble site, but I settled cities 3 tiles away and stole the rice & marble, then flipped it). Panama founded Confucianism and Venezuela built the Oracle (CS). (AKA Boston and New York)
Tech rate way ahead. Settled on the Wine Hill and cottaging the capital. Still haven't settled the nearby flood plains (oops).

My game has featured exciting races to settle ahead of the Incans. Don't know how I am goingto win a UN vote but trying to grab as much land as possible. Maybe I should have let the Incans found more cities that I could flip. Or maybe if I get their vote, it doesn't matter that I took their land.

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You're building culture to flip cities? I don't understand why you want to grab lots of land. You said you blocked the entire north. Its pop you want, not land. One pop10 city is worth a lot more pop than 10 pop1 cities. Take the high food sites from HC if you can... you don't want HC to be #2 in pop. But look at the food in HC's lands... look at HC's pop and check the Demographics screen (in Vanilla this is made too easy!), if he isn't even close to #2, why take his land? You'll get his population's votes anyhow, won't you? (If the answer is no, then I eagerly await a post-2050AD submission from my SGOTM teammate ).

OK.... maybe I'm being too hasty. If your personal goal is to maximize your score, then it makes plenty of sense to take land at the expense of HC. I'm so fixated on fast finish dates that, well, you may even pull ahead of me in the global (score) rankings this month. Good luck!

kcd_swede said:

You're building culture to flip cities? I don't understand why you want to grab lots of land. You said you blocked the entire north. Its pop you want, not land. One pop10 city is worth a lot more pop than 10 pop1 cities. Take the high food sites from HC if you can... you don't want HC to be #2 in pop. But look at the food in HC's lands... look at HC's pop and check the Demographics screen (in Vanilla this is made too easy!), if he isn't even close to #2, why take his land? You'll get his population's votes anyhow, won't you? (If the answer is no, then I eagerly await a post-2050AD submission from my SGOTM teammate ).

OK.... maybe I'm being too hasty. If your personal goal is to maximize your score, then it makes plenty of sense to take land at the expense of HC. I'm so fixated on fast finish dates that, well, you may even pull ahead of me in the global (score) rankings this month. Good luck!

Click to expand...

Ten 1 pop city can grow to ten 10+ pop city by the time UN comes around. All the while helping to speed up science. More so with a financial leader. The idea is to make sure that HC is not the second most populus civ since most likely the intention of the evil Map maker is to give him the opportunity to be #2. Also I predict the other continenet will have cives who like each other and HC. Deckhand will likely have both a faster finish and a higher score than you.

kcd_swede said:

You're building culture to flip cities? I don't understand why you want to grab lots of land.

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I built New York and Boston to get the marble and gems. And to maximize land. I had wanted the spot where the Inca second city went. The flipping was a nice bonus do to the Oracle and Confucian Holy City. I haven't build any culture but have built "monuments" and libraries.
Yes, getting lots of land was a goal to pump up my votes. It was a major goal and one that in retrospect is suspect. I don't even need to be #1 in pop myself since I will build the UN. I predict HC will be #7.
Grabbing resources is important though. Trading extras will help with AI attitudes.

In my test games, I focused on an early CS slingshot followed by a beeline to Alphabet, an early land grab, and tech trading for all of the skipped techs (including BW and IW). Like most of you, I thought I was isolated until meeting HC on T44. This changed my tech strategy as prioritizing Alphabet no longer made sense.

I settled the capital 1 tile NW of the starting location, capturing 2 wines, rice and 3 flood plains. Had I known that settling on the wine hill would provide 2 2 3, I would have settled there. I actually stopped my game after moving the warrior to the hill and ran a WB test to see what settling on the plains wine would provide, but didn't think to test the wine hill...

My early tech path was Wheel, Pottery (for early cottages), Mining, AH (dang, no horsies in the BFC), Mysticism, Meditation, PH (for the Oracle), Writing and CoL. While waiting to finish the Oracle, I researched BW so that I could revolt to Slavery and Bureacracy on the same turn.

My build order in the capital was Worker, Warrior (while growing to size 4), Settler, Warrior (to fogbust), Warrior (for police duty in the capital), Worker, Oracle, Settler (whip).

My second city was built to capture the wheat, cow, 4 floodplains and 4 hills. This was going to be my primary GP Farm but could double as a pretty good production city as well.

I built the Oracle on T68 (1240 BC) and revolted to Bureacracy and Slavery on T69.

I was 2 turns from settling the gems city when HC settled it first! That was fine as my GP Farm, which founded Confucianism, was doing a good job of blocking "North America". My settler doubled back and settled the cow/copper site just south of the capital. This was going to be my forge, Hanging Gardens and Great Engineer city.

Confucianism spread early to HC, so we shared the same religion for almost the entire game. I didn't want to found too many other religions as I wanted most of them to be founded on the other continent, causing religous strife there.

My tech path then went IW, Alphabet, Polytheism, Literature (for National Epic and Great Library), Masonry, Monotheism and Monarchy. I purposely did not hook up Iron or Copper so that I could build cheap warriors for happiness patrol and fog busting rather than a more expensive unit (e.g archers, spears, etc.).

Happiness was beginning to be a problem, so I revolted to Heredity Rule and Organized Religion (for the hammer bonus) on T93 (550 BC).

I finally popped a Great Scientist on T100 and used him to build an Academy in the capital on T102 (325 BC). This was later than I wanted, but it took longer than anticipated to get my library finished in my second city.

I built the Great Library in my GP Farm on T115 (0 AD). This would help me pop the Great Scientists I needed to bulb as many techs as possible on the Mass Media beeline.

By this time, HC was finally friendly, so I was able to get a few techs from him, but not more than 4 (Sailing, Hunting, Currency and Archery) prior to 500 AD.

By 1 AD, I had 5 cities (7, 9, 5, 4, 1), 5 workers, 9 warriors, 1 Great Artist (from Music), 4 granaries, 3 libraries, 1 forge, 1 aquaduct (so I could build the Hanging Gardens), 1 Academy, the Oracle and the Great Library.

My GP Farm finished the National Epic on T125 (250 AD)

In my "Production" city, I hired an Engineer specialist as soon as the forge was done and built the Hanging Gardens as soon as possible (finished in T129 - 350 AD). With my GP Farm having the National Epic and the Great Library, it was going to be hard for this city to pop a GE at 100% probability with only 5 GE GPP/turn. In fact, I wanted two GEs to be able to build the UN in 1 turn, so I was going to have to get lucky at low odds in my GP Farm. We'll see what happens...

My tech path was now on a beeline to Optics, which I learned on T 128 (350 AD). My next focus was on Astronomy with a slight deviation to Education (T135 - 500 AD) so that I could build universities and Oxford in my capital.

I quickly chopped/whipped two caravels and sent them out in different directions in search of the "Old World." By 500 AD, I see a color in the fog and am 1 turn from meeting my first civ on the other continent. Let the diplomacy begin...

Xevious said:

I actually stopped mining the copper in Boston just before I finished as I realized that would invite barb axes.

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I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think barb axes can appear wether you have copper hooked up or not. It's dependent on when the barbs learn Bronze Working which is affected by how many civs know BW and how early they learn it.

Jbourne said:

Ten 1 pop city can grow to ten 10+ pop city by the time UN comes around. All the while helping to speed up science. More so with a financial leader. The idea is to make sure that HC is not the second most populus civ since most likely the intention of the evil Map maker is to give him the opportunity to be #2. Also I predict the other continenet will have cives who like each other and HC. Deckhand will likely have both a faster finish and a higher score than you.

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As to the first part: IMHO... 10 1-pop cities do the opposite of speed up science compared to 1 10-pop city. If you are going space race I can see that you have time for city growth, and to much more than make up for the delays in research in the beginning. But UN is an EARLY tech race, not a late stage tech race. City maint will kill your early tech rate if you expand too fast. By the time you fill all HC's southern lands AND all your northern lands with cities and start pushing your slider above 50% beakers, my UN will be finished for some centuries ago. If instead of leaving your own land undeveloped while taking HC's land, you expand responsibly into your own blocked off (very fine) territory... you'll be at the UN before you even fill the entire north. If speed is what you are after. I grant that for maximizing base score, at least, then taking HC's land first makes good sense.

BTW: Such wagers should best be made before the game begins, especially since you should assume I already know the outcome of at least one of the games.

Well I'll be damned.

I saved in 760Ad, then my friend comes around whilst I'm in the shower, shuts my game down, plays on liveleak. No saveage. Ganked.

Uh oh.

Hope I can do well enough in the other games this month!

Good luck to ya'll!

Deckhand said:

I built New York and Boston to get the marble and gems. And to maximize land. I had wanted the spot where the Inca second city went. The flipping was a nice bonus do to the Oracle and Confucian Holy City. I haven't build any culture but have built "monuments" and libraries.
Yes, getting lots of land was a goal to pump up my votes. It was a major goal and one that in retrospect is suspect. I don't even need to be #1 in pop myself since I will build the UN. I predict HC will be #7.
Grabbing resources is important though. Trading extras will help with AI attitudes.

Click to expand...

Ah... I see. So your strategy wasn't really different than mine, you just had different opportunities. Effortlessly flipping AI cities is almost never a bad thing.

By getting my first settler executed, your first blocking city is probably about where I had intended to put mine. Funny how two games can be so different, though. My blocking city 1N of gems had Confu shrine, yet the southernmost 3 tiles in the bfc would periodically go over to the Inca's. I built every culture-producing building I could there, and held those tiles for the most part, but not always. Flipping the Inca city was out of the question, without a major culture-bombing effort that wouldn't be worth it -- and it would have taken ages. More like I was preventing being flipped.

Pre-500AD, the only southern land available was the worthless plains-no-resource-no-seafood Cuba island, the worthless icy tundra mountanous deep south, or the unattractive 2-tile jungle isle in the west. Every time I was ready to expand, there always seemed a better site nearby. No shortage of resources, either. The grass isn't ALWAYS greener on the other side of the fence.

Also, had the incans been populous I might have prioritized blocking them from more than one side, too. But I could tell they weren't close to #2 (and that #2 wasn't close to me).

PutCashIn said:

Well I'll be damned.

I saved in 760Ad, then my friend comes around whilst I'm in the shower, shuts my game down, plays on liveleak. No saveage. Ganked.

Uh oh.

Hope I can do well enough in the other games this month!

Good luck to ya'll!

Click to expand...

Don't you have autosave at start of every turn? Default is every 4 turns but if you follow the very highly recommended procedure of changing it in your .ini file to be every turn, there should be no problem at all. Granted, if your (former? ) friend moved some units about first it could look suspicious when you reload from an autosave, so best PM the game admin and get instruction therefrom.

No I havent ever changed that auto save option, unfortunatly, to be honest I'm not too fussed, vanilla seems so limited compared to bts, and I should probably be doing assignments anyways lol!

Yeah he's still my friend hahaha!

Contender Save/Noble Difficulty

Settled Washington 2W of starting position on Turn 2/3960 BC. Two Wine, Rice, lots of riverside tiles to cottage, looks like nice site for Bureaucracy Civic. Discovered later that settling in place would have gotten Iron in the Capitol's BFC. Maybe those rumors about evil mapmakers are true after all

Other cities...
T40/2440 BC - New York 5S of Washington; riverside seaport with Copper and Cows
T61/1600 BC - Boston 2SW+2W of Washington; riverside with Copper & 4 Floodplains
T85/775 BC - Philadelphia 4N+1NW of Washington; north coast with Cow, Crab & Horses
T93/575 BC - Captured Sakae (barb city) 2SW+2W of Boston; riverside with Copper, Cow, 2 Incense & Wheat.

Significant events...
T71/1200 BC - completed The Oracle in Washington. Take Code of Laws as free tech; Confucianism founded in New York
T98/450 BC - Great Prophet born in Washington
T99/425 BC - GP light bulbs Theology; Christianity founded in Boston
T100/400 BC - Philadelphia captured by Barbarians
T114/50 BC - Philadelphia captured from Barbarians
T128/300 AD - Great Scientist born in Washington
T129/325 AD - GS builds Academy in Washington
T135/475 AD - The Great Library completed in Washington
T136/500 AD - Free Great Artist from being first to discover Music

I think I'm expanding too slowly, lost some expansion effort by having to build Axemen to retake Philly.

Missed out on the Gems and the blocking city site on the Isthmus, but Confucianism auto-spread to HC early, and Incas share my Confucianism state religion, so with this being an always peace game, that may not be an issue.

Future plans
Research Drama next and save the free Great Artist from Music to light bulb Philosophy, then try to be first to Liberalism for the free tech. If successful, I'll consider taking Astronomy as the free tech, since it is on the path to Mass Media and the UN. If unsuccessful, try and come up with Plan B

Grifftavian said:

T100/400 BC - Philadelphia captured by Barbarians

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That sucks!! Did you have a few warriors stationed around your land as fog busters? Doing this will prevent barbs from spawning. Plus, any that do spawn will typically attack your fortified fog busters rather than taking your cities. The trick is to station your units strategically to fog bust the greatest area possible...