Spiritual Justinian goes deity

There is some room to expand but don't count on getting 10 cities or so. Scouting will reveal phants and it's possible to get there first.

cos of the copper location!
Turned out ~5 warriors was enough to go without archery, but i wouldn't advice you try that at home
Looks kind of stable now, i was pondering to settle a copper city or not (where the settler is now on the hill, decided it will be ok for later and easily connected.

I also went without archery this time building some extra warriors.It's risky but i've also watched some AZ video's now and it is sometimes possible to get away with it . I actually started this map to see if i could get away with it,decided on posting as i played further into it as it highlights some pangaea issues. Here i saw many ai units running around so not a big barb spawn i guessed. Fortified on a forest a warrior will be attacked most of the time and it has a chance of slightly > 50 % of winning against an archer, need a some backup warriors to (hopefully) take the archer out in case of a loss.... Not always possible because archers can get out relatively unharmed due to first strike. Actually i went pottery first to get fp's up then mining (got a mine just in time to get some warriors out fast)->writing->BW. So i found out about copper rather late.

Looks like you're in a sound position, now find those phants Mylene.

The roaming AI units i had too yip. Archery is really a pain without hunting, having the wheel made the decision a bit easier to gamble on barbs.

I did mining first for the hills (forest growth 1E, chopped it in this screen already )
Then BW, far from an easy decision but i figured AH can wait cos i wanted to work the gold for a while and pigs when the most important research is done.
Without archery i wanted at least emergency chops and a free switch to slavery

Settling copper first was no option with Charly so close, could have stolen the gold spot..to quote @AZ: look how fast that jerk is expanding, disgusting!
Looks like an interesting map, i will play on when i got the time ~~

I understand BW first. Probably best anyway, you start later on library but you can whip/chop it out and it adds some safety. I don't research writing as early as this normally (i do try to start on pottery though with fp's near, just hate farming them.). I wanted to see what it would lead to. My first idea was to do a sort of Landknechtness engineering bulb again getting there sooner than in earlier attempts, then i found phants opening up additional possibilities....

I actually didn't play it so well as i was only interested at first in seeing how soon i could get to construction/HBR and how soon i could get a sizeable army together.

I went Ag->pottery->mining->writing from the start. Not necessarily best but i when i started this game i was just trying out a strat where i would go to writing asap. Got there 2440 BC, founded my second city Thessalonica the same turn in the SW between gold and corn. Teched BW next then set slider to 0% for some turns. 1720 BC library was finished in the capital while Thessalonica is working on a settler. 1480 i discovered math, i could have gone HBR first as it is a better trade chip but i gathered that i was so early that i wouldn't be able to trade for alpha anyway. Also i was willing to do without alpha, to trade it for HBR you need to research some turns into. In the mean time math helps with chopping. 1440 I founded Adrianople between copper and pig. I lose the pig to Holy roman culture shortly after. This actually helped me since Charles improved it for me and i got it back right after border pop from monument. Didn't have AH myself at this moment . Went masonry->construction after math to start on cats early. Got construction 900 BC, no one has alpha yet. Begin chopping/whipping cats overflowing to axes in some cases. Nicaea was founded 800 BC in the east between sheep/gold/phants. Could finally trade for alpha around 600 BC. HBR in 500 BC as i start on stables in capital and Thessalonica. Declare on Huyna in the south 250 BC with 10 cats 7 phants and ~5 metal units. Holy Rome already declared on Huyna 425 BC, a thing i actually missed when playing the game .

Since i played it quickly up to this point i actually made quite a lot of mistakes...I really should have scouted Huyna's land first , forgot about that as i focused on timing whips and chops (got that right at least, all forests are gone).Now i have to guess where his cities are. I met Mehmed rather late and there's still 1 AI missing. I guess these Ais are in the far west and that they can't go through borders easily. I should have sent a scout to the west in the early game, costs nothing and would have netted 2 trading partners early. Finally i should have switched judaism already to appease Ragnar but i missed HR being at war already and i didn't want to switch against his reli. I did give Ragnar techs earlier to get him to pleased. Couldn't ask for gold this turn and the previous one.

So i didn't play it so well but my war starts well as i lose one cat capturing Machu Picchu.

This is actually my third attempt on this map so it was played with some advanced knowledge of the map.

I went ag>pottery>mining>AH>BW>writing. I went animals before BW because I wanted to get the gold cities up and running asap and they all have animals for food. I didn't bother with much barb defense and just went heavy on the warriors in the beginning. After writing I went for math, then HBR>masonry>construction. I was eventually able to trade math for alpha then backfill a little bit.

Here's a shot of my initial stack:


Definitely not the best elephant attack date. In the screenshot you can also see HC's stack in his city. He does have elephants too but I still think I can take him on.

Here's a shot of my empire:


The tech situation:

I see, compared to my game you spent much more effort to settle good spots and keep your tech rate up and it shows. It also means your attak starts 11 turns later assuming you declare this turn and that will hurt , i didn't face lb's in the beginning of my assault, worse Huyna is close to engineering. I see your construction date is 450 BC which is ok but you probably began chopping (maybe also pre-chopping) then. With the empire built as you did you might have gone without the rush. Then again with 7 cities you have a good base to get more units so in the end i think you're good here. Interesting to see how it pans out from here.

What do you do if barbs enter area offensive mode? That will happen if they don't get a barb city spawned. In that case they will skip sentry warriors to beeline straight for the capital.

Warriors are not a big problem, they can be tackled by other warriors. Also on a map like this if you survive 2400 BC- +/- 1600 BC you don't need a counter anymore AI will eat almost every roaming barb.

Crucial time is usually the turn barbs are allowed to invade city territory. All those barbs that roamed aimlessly about before come out of the woods/tundra at once and on maps where there's a lot of spawning ground you can see hordes of 5-10 archers accompanied by warriors coming from different directions. Far less on this map i took on ~2 archers + some warriors iirc, have to look at the kill stats to be sure.

The war against HC went pretty well. I lost more troops than I probably needed to but whatever. I thought that after taking his capital he would easily capitulate but he was stubborn about it. The next turn he called up an AP vote to end the war so I decided to take philo and some gold for peace. The turn after he of course peace vassals to Mehmed. I redeclared on HC a few turns later after Mehmed/HC declared on Charley and took what cities I could before Charely took the rest. I eventually made peace with Mehmed by giving him some gold. Now the whole west side of the world is at war with each other. Also it seems like a war between me and Ragnar is inevitable. I have my stack of elephants/cats/trebs near his border and I'm about to start pumping out some cataphracts. I'm checking out his territory now and his military doesn't look too scary. I should be able to take him on.

The tech situation doesn't look too bad at the moment. I was barely able to lib nationalism and used those techs to catch up a liittle bit. I think the plan is the head for cannons then communism.

Some screenshots:

South:


Middle:


North:


The tech situation:

I've noticed you all picked Huayna as a 1st target. Why is that ?
I made an attempt on this map last week (to 4-500BC) and waged a war of opportunity vs Charlie instead. I failed miserably, though : researching Alphabet then HBR does not seem to work so well on Deity and maybe in general (note to self ). I was 10 turns late or so to catch him without metal.

I understand that once Charlie connects his metal, he's likely to be a tougher opponnent than the Incan, being PRO and actually building units.
Also, Huayna is a better techer, so he's likely to get to key defensive techs sooner.
Both of those reasons make Huayna a slightly better war target, right ?
Huayna could also bribe someone in the war with more ease than Charlie if he is left alone too long. Is this the relevant reason ?

However, the longer Huayna is left alone, the more wonders he'll build, which is not the case of Charlie. It would also leave him more time to shrine Cuzco. Was the city shrined by the time you captured it ?
Talking about the shrine, Huayna borders many more AIs than Charlie who is kind of isolated, on this map. Picking Huayna as a 2nd target leaves him some time to spam missionaries and make his religion the dominant one. Taking out Charlie first also supports that.

My a priori, here, is that if you're going HBR/Construction, you'll be able to take out those 2 AIs but maybe it is not sensible ? In which case letting the Incan civ "mature" isn't so appealing ?

I guess I'll retry it for myself but I'm still interested in your thought processes

Taking out both targets out is not realistic, on deity you really should be happy if you can one take one out with only cats. By that time the other one will have engineering. Fighting a civ with engineering with cats is a huge pain, better regroup with the ~10-12 cities you have and plan for a second war later. The simple reason to take on Huyna is that he's not protective and less of a spammer than Charles. So i set spoints on Huyna early. Charles was the score leader pretty soon in the game, can't see his power rating but i guess it's way above Huyna's.

Looks good. When did Huyna get engineering?

I'm not used to deity in general but I find tech timings and troop numbers the hardest things to evaluate. I'll have to try more deity warring for myself if I want to get a good feel for those, though. So, yes, I guess you're right : taking out two targets may be unrealistic.
I tend to be a greedy player but to each difficulty its own kind of greed

I'll see as I play how the next attempt goes.