I settle where we started. No sense moving onto the cow or away from the fresh water, and no sense wandering aimlessly in the vague hope of, erm, less-green pastures. Besides, all these mountains and jungle tiles will be a Very Good Thing(TM) in the distant future.
First order of business is to pick a research path. My usual plan for non-expansionist civs is to research pottery at max rate so a granary can be built quickly. That won't work well in this case. We, um, have exactly one good tile. ONE. The lake is the only other tile with two food, until we clear some of this jungle. There is one spice on hand. That will be the first tile to clear, right after irrigating the cattle. Now... irrigating the cattle means 1 shield there, 1 from the center tile, none from the lake. Um, at size 2 that means 2 spt? This is going to be a hard start. I'll play about forty turns, I think. And as I was saying, no use going for the granary and a high early population for settler pumping, when we don't have the tiles to work. We need more workers, and yet with raging barbarians we can't do farmer's gambit (especially not with mischeivous PTW barbs) so we MUST get more settlers out without waiting on a granary! Then factor in the lack of river trade bonuses and the best bet for research is to run along on minsci from the get-go, then come back and use deficit research later to clean up the cheap techs. Since we are commercial, we start with alphabet, so I set out for writing with one beaker.
Ooh, check out the F11 opponent list! What is this? Sickly orange-yellow-green day? Sheesh!
OK, there's a goody hut near the capital. I start training a warrior, which at 2spt completes in 3750BC. Off I go to pop the hut! It's only Monarch level, so I figure even worst case, it being on a mountain and all, we'll end up with our first elite warrior!
Egads, out come a bevy of yokels... well, at least we'll get this out of the way quickly. I brace for the attack, then watch in dismay as all the barbarians scatter to the winds, running off in different directions instead of attacking!
One of them is beelining for Rome and is now standing right next to it... on a mountain! I do NOT want to move our worker and disrupt his work if I can avoid it, and since this one barb is next to both Rome and the worker, I couldn't even move the worker into the empty city. Oh my goodness what a mess this is. Knowing that it's monarch (not Deity -- I'd NEVER pop a hut like that on Deity) I go ahead and attack the offending barb unit. We lose a hp, they lose a hp, we lose another hp, then they are beaten. Whew! Then one of the two other barbs comes back into view and I retreat our wounded heroes into the city.
Using one of two hills in range, instead of using the lake at size 2, I am able to pull 3spt for two rounds and complete our second warriors a turn early, at cost of growing a turn slower, which will provide cover for our battered unit and also protect our now-finished cattle. I move our worker onto the spices. Here you see the results after the diciest opening eight turns I have ever played.
With the situation now, um, half-reasonably secure, I train a second worker, wait for our wounded unit to heal, then set out to eliminate the other two pests. This is achieved quickly, seeing one of our units promote to vet status.
Hmm, that's a lot of jungle. That river to the south looks promising, though. Might be some better land down that way. More spices to the east. (I must say, one of the worst things to have happen in Always War is to get shut out of the lux trade. My only attempt at AW on Emperor saw me with only ONE lux until the industrial age, which left my happiness situation hurting all game long). Perhaps we'll have a monopoly on the spices here, which will at least deny any of them to the AI's. We'll see.
I sent our vet warrior (after healing) northward. Our regular I sent westward. Not planning to scout too far (don't want to meet our neighbors just yet) but if there were any neighbors close I wanted to know about it. Also need to survey the land to see where to put our settler. After training a second worker, I start on the settler.
Our northward scout finds coast just a few more tiles to the north. Hmm, that's not good. We have coast on two sides of Rome? This looks like we're on the northwest corner of our home landmass. Our north scout turns east and follows the coast, sure is a lot of jungle out here. Our westward scout reaches the west coast and follows it south. He finds another goody hut, pops it, out come more yokels and these also scatter to the winds. Eek! Rome is undefended, and our settler has no escort! I end up sending the settler north. (Maybe shouldn't have popped the hut, but... if it had been something good... Oh well, too late now). I manage to get all the barbs in the south to attack our warrior down there, but it takes a few rounds. During that time, our north scout has followed the coast on around to an EAST coast and is now following that south. Um... no sign of neighbors yet, we may be alone on this rock.
That is the third and final barb warrior in the south. He did not attack this turn, but he did the next, clearing the way for the next settler to check out the river. In the mean time, I vow to pop no more huts! Our warriors scout out what turns out to be the rest of our small jungle continent (Epic 20 Deja vu!) and find there is one patch of fertile land in the south along the river, including another cow and some gold deposits. I send our second settler southeast to meet up with our units down there. The veteran heads north, back up toward the other spices. There's a lake in the area, where I believe we ought to found our fourth city. With no AI's around, we need to spread out over our land mass quickly, to prevent barb camps (raging barbs!) from popping up all over and these new more intelligent barbs from killing workers, settlers, or disrupting our jungle-clearing progress.
After training our third settler and sending him out, he spots barbs in the north, two tiles away, from a mountain position. The settler is unescorted, but our vet is on his way, and now I train a third warrior out of Rome. This... is the most odd "always war" game start I've played. We're in always war mode with the freakin barbarians! (What is it about playing Rome that just gives me fits with barbarians?? Anybody remember Epic Four?!) I mean, yeah, I knew I picked raging barbs, but I didn't think we'd pull nothing but barb hostiles out of all the huts we found! Oh well.
I manage to keep our settler away from the wandering barbarian, as our vet kills a second wanderer, then finds and clears the camp.
Our vet then tracks down that last wandering pest and finishes him off, as our fourth city is founded and pottery almost done researching. (Writing came in at min sci). After pottery, we need to research bronze working and ceremonial burial, then apparently we need mapmaking to get off this rock and find some opponents. (If we don't get into any ancient action, we won't get any ancient leaders, if you know what I mean. And then what?? Sheesh).
With barbs raging all over, unescorted settlers hurring to spread out and reduce barb activity (and make something decent out of our pathetic start position) I went ahead and played fifty turns. That's the same amount I played to start the last Infantry game, so I guess everything is on track.
Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that popping that second hut turned out hostiles, causing me to send our first new settler north. He ended up in a good spot on the coast with whales in range, plus has already trained two workers and is churning out more. (We need at least four packs of three workers each clearing these jungles in our core), as the delay on the south city let me scout the area first, thus allowing me to pick the ideal spot for Antium, instead of stumbling into the fog and settling a poor location just to protect the settler.
I took time to plot and draw up a dotmap. This was a tough exercise, as the lands did not lend to easy planning. I came up with a scheme to maximize use of our coast. With no fast units, poor starting lands, and a large map, um, this game is likely to last into the modern age, which will mean putting those new commercial docks into use, and perhaps even benefitting from offshore platforms. We may have to make the most of this rock to win.
In my scouting pattern, I assumed that was all coast north of Rome, but I see now there's a chance it may not be. The tile directly north of the gray dot could be a choke point leading to more land. Next player or two needs to get a unit up there to find out (don't use a worker, so wait until we have a unit to spare).
Assuming for the moment that we are alone on a small continent (this thing isn't big enough for an FP, not on a large map) then we have some planning to do. If we are alone, I think we should spread out with max settlers asap, and high worker count, run a bit of a farmer situation until we have our core on the move.
I am training a regular archer at Antium. There are two possibilities with the barbarians: 1) They will NOT have camps appear within two tiles of visible borders, meaning the only spot left on the map where a camp might pop up is the light blue dot. 2) They can have their camps appear within two tiles of visible borders, meaning they have many spots left where they could appear. Now I tend to think it's the former, which means a camp WILL pop up on light blue dot and soon (could even be there already), and we'll have to deal with it. But as soon as we settle red dot or light blue dot, then that would end the threat of barbs appearing anywhere on our homeland, IF case 1 is correct. In any event, Antium is the most exposed city, so use it for any immediate military needs while Rome finishes its granary and starts churning settlers.
Now here's a concept about escorting settlers. The only threat at the moment is barbs, so have the escorts out in front of the settlers. In these jungles, no barb horsies could run around and nab a settler by surprise. Remember that camps cannot pop up in revealed lands, and will not pop up in any lands being watched by military units. So even if Case 2 is the situation, we can end the barb threat with some more settlements, plus garrison units in unsettled areas to keep watch. (Don't waste our workers on outposts in our homeland!) DO NOT let settlers get ambushed, but manage that in a way that is also not timid about delaying the growth curve to be overly protective. Our Cumae settler was almost pestered by wandering barbs, but I had a unit in the general area who took care of it, for example. Also, we do NOT want to let any towns get raided, as we would lose huge amounts of gold at this point, so do be cautious about protecting our towns until the barb menace is contained.
Until we get more jungles cleared, we want to prioritize sites that will have at least one two-food tile on hand, to train their own workers every ten turns. This means pink dot in the north is a high priority, with that fish, and the ability to combine workers with Cumae to clear out all the spices. Light blue dot also has a fish, and may be the TOP priority, especially if Case 1 is correct about the barbs, as that would end the barb threat. Red, green and white dots should be last, as those have only single-food tiles in range. Gray dot may also be in that category, but we don't know.
Our isolation, lack of early battle, and nasty terrain could all be handicaps and detriments, but we ought to be able to make some lemon juice here. There are some advantages, too, like the need for AI's to have mapmaking before they can even threaten us at all, plus their inability to "send their whole force" at us. They will only be able to send trickles at first. That gives us a window of opportunity to run light on military -- heh, in an always war game! My decision to run minsci from the outset has us in a decent position. I suggest we research bronze and ceremonial at max sci, then mapmaking at min sci, then iron working at max. We may want to self-build the Lighthouse, possibly at Veii once it has a temple (to pull in those whales). Normally, researching the wheel would be an urgent priority, but not in this case. (We can't use the horses!) Once we get a little further along, we can revisit the research plan. In the mean time, priorities include containing the barbarians, training workers, and training settlers.
Has there ever been an always war game played with NO opponents on the starting landmass?? I don't recall seeing one. Our leader situation in the early game may be... desperate. We will just have to make the best of it.
Inf2 - 1750BC
ROSTER:
Sirian
Falsfire <<< UP NOW
Griselda << On Deck
Hotrod
Good luck!
- Sirian
:shotgun:
... Alrighty then. We'll go with a short roster.
)
again. 
) and so on. I certainly wouldn't take it as any knock on this game, which looks very interesting, or the Always War concept itself. 
I encourage you to read the thread for LOTR1 where some of the best players here were pushed to their limit trying to defend a large front against 5 Monarch AI opponents. Or better yet, try your hand at Emperor Always War yourself and see how it goes. 
Those moments are rare and must be savored while in season, as he will quickly find his footing the moment he starts gaining experience in any given area. 
I was sad to see the game find few responses, and moreso, the sad face by Sirian.
