GOTM 26 Spoiler I - End of Ancient Age, Full Map of Starting Continent.

Spoiler Warning:

If you are playing GOTM26: Asian Melee, and you plan on submitting it, then before you read the rest of this thread, then you should:

1. Have reached the end of the ancient age (ie be researching at least one of the middle-age techs).
2. Have visibility of the entire starting continent.
3. ...which follows that you should have contact with all civs - or their remains - on the starting continent.

If you haven't fulfilled all these criteria, then you are only cheating yourself...

...and the other 100+ people who are playing...

Please also follow the standard guidelines of not giving away details of the middle-ages nor any of the rest of the world (if you want to post a mini-map, please edit out any of the rest of the world map). Plus, state in your posts what version you are playing, and what class.


Points of interest for this spoiler: Where did you settle first (forming the capital?) What did you do with your treasure chests? What 'easter eggs' did you find / make happen? For 'open' players, which save did you use?

Should be interesting!

Ptw 1.14f Open

I started with the "dyes"-download and settled my capitol one sqare north-west of the northern starting position, so it could reach the wheat and also have access to the sea/lake. I saved the treasure chests for the granary (Terra Cotta 100% research)

The other settler i walked up to the other city and founded a nice little settler-factory south-west of my capitol (it reached both the cow and the wheat on the grassland). As usual i buildt a RCP in a distanse of 5 (and later on at a distanse of 8, tha i never got to finish).

My placement ment i got little space, but i managed to finish my initial ring of 6 cities and build 4 cities at a distanse of 8 before it got to crowded (managed to snatch 4 of the gems to east as well ).

Because i was in the middle i quickly got i touch with the other civs and by wheelen and dealing i managed to stay in the techrace throughout this era.

I also started an early war against the Baekje with the Kazars on my side (i needed more space), this turned out to be succesful. After that i turned my swordsmen and horsemen at the Koreans and boldly asked the Mongols for assistanse (man does the AI stink with the UU). After quite a few turns the Koreans were left with 5 cities all on tundra, and I was almost on par with the tech leaders on the continent (Ghandi).

After this i just sat tight and waitet for the middle ages and my Riders. Pop rushing a few temples and building horsemen for later upgrades.

PTW 1.27 Open

I picked the start with dyes quite randomly as both starts looked equal and I could not even determine which one was in the south and which the central location.
All the goodies ended up in the central start location. I sent the warrior on the mountain and he revealed wheat and cow (tasty), so there is no question where my capital goes. Settler moved SW,W for the capital to get both wheat and cow in the immidiate city radius.
The 2. settler moved onto the spice as he cannot found first anyway.

Beijing was founded in 3900 BC as well as Shanghai in the south. I was thinking about marching settler No 2 towards Beijing but then remembered the raging barbs and thought better of it. There were 2 wasted turns for both settlers but I hope that the location of Beijing is superior enough to catch up quickly. (What are the funny looking buildings that appeared near Beijing??)
The first tech to be researched at full is Terra cotta.
I had a lot of barbs prancing around Beijing. The Khazars made an early appearance in 3800BC marching 7 warriors towards undefended Beijing. Thankfully they moved on to fight barbs. But this made me use a chest to produce a quick 2. warrior in Beijing.
All the barbs and AI running around the capital severely hampered early exploration as I did not want to take huge risks with an undefended city.

By 3400BC I knew the Baekje, Khazars and Goguryeo, all of which came calling rather than me finding them. This game has by far the slowest exploration ever and a very nailbiting start with loads of barbs and AI troops loitering around my capital.

My 2. chest is spent towards a barracks in Beijing (while waiting for pottery to be researched) and the 3. went to help the granary along.

In 3250BC terra cotta was researched, math was next at 10%.
Between 3150BC and 2800BC I met Korea, Takeda and Rajaputana.
In 2470BC at last the first settler rolled of the production line in Beijing, he was sent S towards the horse and founded Canton in 2350BC. Going west towards the wheat would have been a better 2. city but I really wanted to make sure to get the horses and the Khazars were close by in the south. Beijing could now function as 4 turn settler factory (sizes 4 - 6).
In Shangai meanwhile all production was being whipped or supported by forest chops. Population is much easier to come by here than shields due to corruption.
The gambit with math paid off and netted me calligraphy, iron culture,map making, taoist myst and maps.
The space to settle ran out quite quickly and I also lost 3 citizens in Beijing to disease which made it even harder to keep up in the land grab.
So I started to prepare for war in 1475 BC by producing warriors for a sword upgrade.
The target are the Khazars. They have only 2 cities. The iron came online in 1100BC.

The known world at 1100BC:


The fledgling Han empire at 1100BC:


I declare war on Khazars in 1050BC and approach Chimkent with 9 swords, 1 archer, 1 spear. 2 swords, 1 horse make their way slowly towards Balkhash. The goal is to take Chimkent in an effort to connect Shanhai with the empire. Balkhash is well situated for us too and has gems.
I capture Chimkent (has Collosus) without loss in 1000BC. I now also know all overseas civs, they must have bought my contact. This triggers a nice trading round which gets me construction, confucianism and civil service.

Balkhash is far trickier to capture, we loose 4 swords and it takes until 800BC before Balkash falls.
The next objective is to take the Baekje cities between the 2 cores (Beijing - Shanghai).
We have an average military compared with the Baekje. The Goguryeo attack the Baekje in 650BC and I jump onto the band wagon and declare as well and capture Ch'onan next turn.
The Baekje retaliate by capturing Chimkent from me. I retake it (570BC) and take Chin-do (510BC). Yosu puts up a heroic defence and together with some awfull RNG that cost me 5 swords and it is still in the hands of the Baekje. There are also Baekje troops approaching y southern cities. I might have bitten too big a chunk out of the cake and in 490BC make a peace treaty for Mokp'o, shamaism, literature, 103gp, TM. Thus the medivial ages start.

The Han in 490BC:



My next objectives are:
Revolution to republic ASAP (republic still 19 turns away)
Decide where to put FP and start building
Capture at least Taejon from the Baekje to connect my empire.

PTW 1.27 Predator

I moved both settlers 2 turns before settling. I made my capital in the N next to the cow and the wheat. I built warrior warrior settler granary and then had a 4-turn settler factory. This actually worked a bit slower than 4 turns as I kept forgetting to switch the worked tiles around properly.

The N start was fairly productive but became very crowded quite quickly. An industrious Civ is very welcome. I built rings at 4 and 7, but didn't have room to finish. There was much more room in the south where I built 3 cities. These were all hopelessly corrupt but I had great hopes for a palace jump and had partly hand built a forbidden palace in the North ready for this (completed 875bc), when the treacherous Khazars sneak attacked my southern cities in 1200bc. The next turn they razed 2 of them and captured the third. Therefore the second settler was a complete waste in my hands. The khazars had been wandering around with a huge stack for several turns before so maybe I could have bought them off. I will be intrigued as to how other fared in this respect.

At 1000bc I had 13 cities, obviously all in the north, with almost no room left to expand. The Koreans and Baekje had been at war for ages, with many battles fought in my lands. Several Civs attacked the khazars after they attacked me, but this was too late to save my southern settlements.

The only benefit I accrued from the southern settler was that early contacts were fairly easy to make. I managed to nearly keep up with tech in the qsc timeframe with lots of trades, and that was the most encouraging aspect of my start. I fell a bit behind after that.

No early wars for me apart from the Khazar debacle. Another attack would have finished me off.

I am looking forward to seeing how the Mongols deal with their special units. They were pretty ineffectual for me in gotm25, so I think they will be a dead loss for the AI.

Open Civ1.29f

I decided it didn't make any sense to create a scenario where the selection of a SAV determined win or lose. So I just took the first one...dyes...the northern and more central location as it turns out.

In my now 6-week Civ3 career, I haven't seen a Treasure Chest and didn't know if they could be moved around like a unit...discovered they could though it didn't want to go up the mountain. Took them S,E,N for no discovery of note. Warrior to the mountain et voila...Cattle and Wheat.

In the south just took the worker to the mountain et voila again. So I'm going to take screen dumps and print the positions to plot strataegy. I Ctrl-G to get a grid and POOF! A boxy thing with which I'm unfamiliar appears. Trojan Horse? Goodies? A prehistoric A-Bomb? After puzzling for too long I thought of a fortress, which I had read about, but never seen one. Cranked up CivEdit (Alt-Tab), plunked a fortress on a map and that mystery was solved.

Now, where to site the capital. I get this glimmer...fortress...Great Wall? I'm not very familiar with China so I go look at the globe and there's the Great Wall right by Peking (!). That's good enough for me...the capital is gonna be by the Great Wall. And I'll bet the Mongols are gonna be to the west.


Then I remember all the best players look at the fog for any hints. Sure enough, that could be a cow NNW. The more I look, the more certain I am it's a cow. So back to the paper. I can get a 5-7 Warrior/Settler Factory with both cows and wheat. But a better prospect looks to be the 4-6 4-turn Settler Pump with a 4-turn Warrior/Worker Pump using the second cow and Flood Plains. Besides if it isn't a cow, I could waste time getting settled waiting a turn or so to find out. And the 4-turn W/W Pump sets right back up if the Flood Plain goes bad on you. So every 4 turns a settler, a warrior and a worker. My replays of botched openings have all done very well with that symmetry. Also found the cow in the south looking at the fog.

I spent actually hours on this opening position. Ended up settling Beijing (!) in forest SW of mountain and Shanghai SE of mountain. The Shanghai location was not optimum due to a thorough lack of understanding a few game concepts. I actually thought I was gonna set up a settler factory in the south...HAH!

The seemingly randomly appearing Great Wall was fun. Also spotted a volcano across the water, but it was gone later. As a minimum the Great Wall seemed a prehistoric freeway.

I decided to do a QSC-like log. Don't know if it qualifies QSC or not. I haven't been able to discern what the submission rules actually are. It did force me to slow down and think a little more about what I was doing.

Build sequence for Beijing-warrior, settler, granary(with chests), worker. Used a spreadsheet to work out a reasonable worker sequence to mesh with the builds. Got the 4-turn settler factory set up (Granary in 2750BC). Being built the granary-less 1st settler in 3100BC. This fellow founded Canton 3.0N and set up as a 4-turn Warrior/Worker factory.

South was a struggle. I hit on the idea of chopping forests to generate shields, then re-foresting with my Industrious workers and chopping them again. Pumped out workers to do this until I tried to re-forest...OOPS, need a MA tech for that. One of these days I'll figure out what they don't tell you in the manual so I can play effectively. Ended up with 3 cities in the south and a half dozen swords at 1000BC. Never had to guts to have at those stacks of Googs who kept sauntering by.

The capital area was set up with RCP 3/3.5 and 6/6.5. Noting the pressure from other civ fairly soon, I settled the outer ring first to block and then filled in. Had a fun time with a Korean settler herding him around trying to (successfully) keep him out of my build pattern.

Couldn't keep the Mongols out of the ring, though, and they settled next to my Iron Colony in the south (another learning experience), so they are the first target.

Generally, scouted, met folks, traded around initial techs, had a Writing trade and a MapReading trade, renegotiated peace some after I got the Power lead. Tried to slow down tech by not trading with backwards civs and not gifting them. Haven't figured out yet how to control the tech rate. Reseached Pottery at max, then 40- turn Math but switched to 40-turn Shamanism after Mysticism became available. Then Monarchy at max. Thrashed a little with this, but didn't waste too much.

At 1000BC I had:

Towns 18
Workers 29, 5 foreign
Warriors 19
Swords 19
Junk 1
Settler 1
Pop 46
Gold 1065
Missing Construction and Currency (and Monarchy, Republic)
Score 584
Monarchy in 13 turns

The world at 1000BC:



Right at 1000BC I declared on the Mongols and destroyed one town and captured another at turns end.

After Monarchy and the interminable 6-turn Anarchy I kept waiting for the AI to come up with the last two techs, but the last didn't show until 570BC and I waited until 470BC to trade for it and enter MA. The timing on this wasn't that bad as I wasn't fully developed. The plan is to use the Riders to dominate the world since I've never been in IA much less modern age and the space race would be a joke for me. BTW, how do you get those nice 2 and 3 turn Anarchies I keep reading about?

I'll be interested to see what the elite do at the second site. I have a QSC timeline which documents plenty of confusion if someone would care to tell me how to hook it up.

Added pic...12/10/03

Civ3 v1.29 Predator

I pretty much started the game doing the same thigs Shevek did...

Originally posted by Shevek
I picked the start with dyes quite randomly as both starts looked equal and I could not even determine which one was in the south and which the central location.
All the goodies ended up in the central start location. I sent the warrior on the mountain and he revealed wheat and cow (tasty), so there is no question where my capital goes. Settler moved SW,W for the capital to get both wheat and cow in the immidiate city radius.
The 2. settler moved onto the spice as he cannot found first anyway.

Beijing was founded in 3900 BC as well as Shanghai in the south. I was thinking about marching settler No 2 towards Beijing but then remembered the raging barbs and thought better of it. There were 2 wasted turns for both settlers but I hope that the location of Beijing is superior enough to catch up quickly. (What are the funny looking buildings that appeared near Beijing??)
The first tech to be researched at full is Terra cotta.

Click to expand...

After this I build some warriors in Beijing and then a granary, that I completed in 2850BC and it become a settler factory. Shanghai, the town in the south, produced some settlers using
After Terra Cotta I researched at full speed Mysticism, Confucianism, Civil Service and The Republic, that I got in 1025BC (3 turns revolution).
I also finished the Forbidden Palace in 1100BC. I immediately abandoned Beijing and the palace jumped to Shanghai . I got contact with the other continent in 975BC and entered the Middle Ages i nthis turn.

Well, might as well put my spoiler in....

I started with the dyes save on PTW Open. I chose the dyes simply because the starting position looked to be more in the middle of the map, which I thought would give me more room. Initial moves were to move treasure & warrior to explore the surrounds (looking for a better capital location), and the warrior's move to the mountain showed the wheat and cow - a potential 4/5 settler factory location. So, it took a couple of turns extra, but I moved the settler.

I noticed easter-egg number 1: The "strange buildings" (fortresses), which separated the Han from the Mongols: the Great Wall!

I then contrived easter egg number 2: Founding a second city so far away was going to be a disbenefit (in my opinion). Because it was so far away, it would have high corruption early-on. So I took a risk and started "the Long March".

I got very lucky in early trades. I found the mongols and the orange guys (can't remember their names) on the same turn. I swapped one tech with the mongols (with some loose change), and three with the organge guys. More importantly, the mongols had three workers for sale!. The 3 techs I got from the orange were swapped for the workers (again with some loose change), and I then had four workers for my capital. This trade also gve me terra cotta, so I disbanded the treasure to rush teh granary.

I'm not great at settler factories, and for this one I felt I was 1 bonus grassland short of a four-turn factory. However, with four workers, the shortfall was made-up by chopping forests. I was hoping to uncover another bonus grassland, but it was not to be. However, after about 4 4-turn settlers, I then continued with 5-turn settlers.

The other cities would build a warrior for defence, then start barracks whilst I researched for horse-riding. I wasn't that worried about barbs, because there were a lot of mongols and orange guys that seemed to me to be barb-farming, and keeping them nicely offmy back....

I built a sizeable horseman army, and attacked the mongols, before they could hook up any horses themselves. This battle went very well, and I eliminated them from the main continent, although they still had another city 'somewhere'

The next target was the pink Baekje. Again, they had little in the way of an army, so they were falling pretty quickly. An added bonus was that they have built the Great Library. As I'm not sure of the exact time frame that I started my conquest of them (I carried on playing right through), I'll save that bit for the next spoiler....

Conquest (first GOTM) Conquests-as-PTW 1.27

I can't help it.

I confess, I'm a reflexive builder/perfectionst.

Not ideal for a deity game as a militaristic civ, but there you go.

All started well; I made the city in the north my 'Northern Capital' (Bei Jing), and the southern city moved a little until it was 'on the sea' (Shang Hai). Beijing prospered as a settler factory, until the northwest corner of the continent east from the Mongol steppe, North of the Baekje forest, and south of the Korean Tundra was all Chinese.

Kept pace through tech-trading until 2/3 through ancient. Attacked Korea taking 2 cities including Seoul. Then things started going wrong. Horribly wrong.

My defeat (game not posted as it's still in progress, but it's all over bar the shouting) came when an alliance of Mongols and Gorgys welded together by the machinations of the arch-warmonger, a man known only as 'Gandhi', launched a massive attack across my overstretched southern border, simultaneous to massive elephants smashing through the two southern cities. The armies of the middle kingdom fought bravely but ultimately futilely.

(sigh) It was fun while it lasted, though.

Vanilla Civ-Conquest Class

Been playing civ for awhile now, but only started gotms this past month. I sucked at global competition mainly by saving-reloading.

Repentance at hand!

Capital--spice settler group phalanx moved onto mountain and moved chests around abit to get better view. settled on hill next to start.

2nd settler moved one tile to the W to reach wheat and dyes.

Contact first with Khazars then Mongols from phalanx view on top southern great wall mountain. Then baekje, groguryeo and takeda. Later India then Korea.

Expanded pretty quickly despite Indian encroachment, built quick granary in capital and temple in shanghai.

Attacked groguryeo first using upgraded swords and couple of horses. Then baekje and got GL. free chivalry and upgraded to riders.

This is where my demise started. I got impatient with my riders and attacked khazars simultaneously on two fronts, chimkent and balkash on hill next to gem mountain. lost 6 of 10 riders in initial assault, civs annoyed with me after 3 wars and bad rep.

Khazars succumb to Han might.

Effect though: Dragging and looong war got left behind in tech race in MA and started to get beat when India, Mongols, Korea, Takeda all have nationalism except me. upgraded to muskets but no use, borders very porous.

Yet to finish.

Question to Civ vets out there...do you finish a game that's bound to lose? Do I submit?

I'm ahead at firaxis score though by at least 40 points over India, but the galaxy is faaaar, faaaaaaaaar awaaaay......

Originally posted by twyxted
Vanilla Civ-Conquest Class
Question to Civ vets out there...do you finish a game that's bound to lose? Do I submit?

Click to expand...

DEFINITELY!

PTW Open Class

Well I took the southern start for my goodies but made the northern settler my capital. I wanted that treasure for my southern unproductive city. In the north I moved NE to get on the coast and the southern city I moved to the SE hill for defence and to get the forest chop for shields. Used the treasure to rush three quick warriers in the south produced another two in the north and I quickly made contact with all civs on the continent. Through trading I keep up in tech throughout the ancient age.

At start of middle ages I have 9 cities in the north fairly close together and 3 in the south with a bit of room for expansion. I am 20 turns from completing the forbidden parlace in a city next to Beijing ready for a palace jump.

It is 800BC so I'm a bit slower than others tech wise.

Not had any wars yet - I'm just too weak, I have rights of passage with everyone to dissuade them from attacking me.

My next stratagy will be to pump out as many warriers as possible, hook up iron and upragade (I have about 900 gold ready and my republic is bringing in 50 per turn) ready for a war with (probably) the Baekje.

I definatly don't think I did the right thing settling my seccond city stright away - it would have been better to risk the move north although early contacts helped me keep ahead with tech and trading.

PTW v1.27 Predator

highdesert wow! That’s an impressive start, which will give you a good result in the end.

I like this game a lot even if I managed to miss some very important features. I built my cities just at the starting position Beijing in the North and Shanghai in the South (if only I knew Chinese it would have been easier). I didn’t even realized that I missed about two locations for a settler factory until I read how much you guys have accomplished. No settler factory meant no granaries for me so I built barracks and lots of warriors. My build around Beijing was a RCP 4/4.5 with no space for a second ring. Shanghai built a warrior, a worker and two settlers helped by forestry operations. I ended up with 13 cities in 1000BC of which 3 in the South.

I met the civs on the starting continent fairly quickly and the ones from the other landmass(es) came to visit. I leveraged my techs pretty good, not trading for Masonry a long time. I had no research whatsoever until I got (Taoist) Mysticism. I then started a 40turn Shamanism, which failed after 39 turns. I probably could have traded it for Republic if I had a monopoly. Still traded everything else except Currency, which I bought.

I planned a warmongering approach, taking the Baejke first (in alliance with the Khazars). The first city I took provided me with an elite unit, which was lost two turns later when the city flipped to the Khazars !!!. This slowed me a bit but still managed to take the Baejke Capital (with Pyramids), and then another city with incense. At that point I have linked my southern empire with my northern one (circa 800BC). But one of the promising Southern cities flipped to the pinky Baejke and they killed 4 population by rushing defences. The next pink city was razed in retaliation and after taking the last city in the south the forces returned.

Meanwhile the Mongols and the Chinese declared war to the Khazars and took their capitol and the city that flipped from me. While I took the two pink cities in the jungle, the Mongols took the last Khazar city. But I also got my first leader at circa 600 BC, which was sent to build the FP in Shanghai. Now I turned towards the Koreans for a short war to sort out borders (I want to take two cities from them). Mongols are next but we still have a RoP now.

Originally posted by Bremp
Civ3 v1.29 Predator

After Terra Cotta I researched at full speed Mysticism, Confucianism, Civil Service and The Republic, that I got in 1025BC

Click to expand...

Great start. Did you really research all that by yourself.

Did anyone else apart from me get their wesker colony wiped out.

Congratulations to HighDesert: a shockingly great effort for someone playing Civ3 for 6 weeks. Why didn't you play before?

This thread is getting me down. Everyone is far too good at the game.

Originally posted by HighDesert
South was a struggle. I hit on the idea of chopping forests to generate shields, then re-foresting with my Industrious workers and chopping them again.

Click to expand...

That doesn't work. Reforested forests don't generate shields if cut down again.

1.27 Predator

I founded capital on more central location (dyes) NW from start point. I missed the cow, and didn't build granary. Without that cow there wasn't enough shields for settler factory. I cranked warriors from beginning, and started war vs Baekja with Korean on my side. On spices location I chopped trees and built settlers and workers. I was able to get my earliest FP in third city 1400BC by starting The Pyramids as a prebuild. After that I abandoned capital and it succesfull jumped to South. 1000BC I had 13 cities (9 founded and 4 captured from Baekja.)

I'm not only one to amazed by Bremp's lighting tech speed researching. I had similar path. First full speed Terra Cotta and Taois Mysticism. 2390BC trade with Koreans: Taoist mysticism, Masonry, Iron Culture, contact with Rajaputana and Cogury for Calligraphy. Then full speed Confucianism and Civil Service at 1500BC. Then The Republic minimum speed, I coudn't research it below 35 turns. In 1000BC I had another 20 turns left for The Republic. Thanks to suicide galley I contacted others 1225BC. Chinese entered to MA 1025BC, and had tech parity and beyond 1000 gold. Excluding Koreans who got free MA tech.

PTW1.21f

Workers scouted to the mountains and found nice settler factory place in the north. Used 4/7 RCP build. I decided to go for military victory. This was my longest AA ever playtime wise. I checked every turn trading status and got 13 foreign workers to slow down their advancement.

Takeda sneak attacked me in about 1300BC. I made a mistake building a town 2 tiles apart them (there was sea between) so the attack was evident but I did not realize it until too late. I wasn't ready for fighting and was scared of other Deity opponents so I setup costly MAs against Takeda so that they would not dogpile on me.

1000BC stats:
16 towns, one destroyed by Takeda
16+13 workers
28 warriors
3 horsemen
1 junk
1088 gold
AA techs excepts governments, currency and construction

Got contact with outside opponents in around 1000BC. They were even more backward but they soon had Monarchy for which I traded for. Don't remember when I reached Middle Ages but it was before 600BC.

I got my first Great Leader in 975BC (in my first elite fight!) which was used to build Forbidden Palace in south.

[Civ3 v1.29, Open]

Like most others, I settled my capital in the north. The chests showed the cow, wheat and flood plains, so I took 2 turns to move towards them. The south settler moved up on the hill and waited for Beijing to be founded:



I built a granary and set up the settler factory. In Canton I immediately started on a FP prebuild. Shanghai in the south grew population for the palace jump to succeed.

In 1475 bc I got my first map:



The FP was completed in 1250 bc, and the palace jumped to Shanghai in 1075 bc. In hindsight this didn't turn out particularly well. I has serious problems with flipping in the north, and the south only had room for 4-5 cities without war.

Contact with the other continent happened in 850 bc, and I moved into the MA in 690 bc, 1 turn after the AI. I revolted into monarchy (5 turns).

My AA wars were mainly against the Mongols, whose main cities I captured. They still have one in the north and one in the south.

Open

Well, my first QSC for a few games

Here's my (abbreviated) log, sorry there' no screenshots but I didn't take them as I went and don't want to be reloading old saves just at the moment.


Well I chose the Dyes start hoping it would be the Northern position. I moved the Warrior onto the mountain, saw the Wheat & Cattle, thought long and hard then decided to move the Settler W, SW to the forest between the Wheat and Cattle.

In the South I took advantage of the Northern Settler move to move this Settler 2E (after moving the worker onto the mountain).

Both my starting cities were founded in 3900BC and started producing a Warrior. In the meantime I had used the Northern Warrior & treasure Chests to scout out the local area. Research was set to Alphabet @20%.

My first contact was the Mongols in 3800BC. I bought Terra Cotta & a Slave for Masonry + 27gp. The very next turn a stack of seven Khazars showed up but luckily they were friendly I bought Alphabet, the Wheel & Burial Rituals from the Khazars for Martial Arts, Masonry, 79gp + 1gpt. I traded the Wheel back to the Mongols for a couple of Slaves. In 3700BC I sold Terra Cotta to the Khazars for 80gp as they were about to make contact with the Mongols. 3700BC also saw the start of a Granary in Bejing.

3650BC brought the Gogury to light in the South. They were far behinf in tech and only had 10gp so no trading took place.

In 3450BC I brokered Bronze Working from the Gogury to the Mongols.

3400BC and Bejing's first border expansion. The Baekje show up, level in tech and broke. I used all 3 Chests to finish the Granary in Bejing and immediately start on the first of many Settlers.

3150BC my first Settler is raring to go, only to find that the Takeda had planted a city that impinged on his target. What with this and the number and closeness of the other AI I decided to try something I've seen somewhere on CFC. I move my Settler 2E intending to settle there and do the same with the next 3 Settlers (2N, 2S and 2W) using these cities purely for military & worker production aiming to abandon them in the Middle Ages.

3000BC Canton founded. In the South a Worker is chopping forest to speed Shanghai's first Settler.

2670BC Buy Bajutsu from Takeda for Masonry & Burial Rituals. Sell on Bajutsu to Khazars for 131gp. Baekje & Takeda start Pyramids.

2590BC Buy Iron Culture from Mongols for Bajutsu + 279gp. We have Iron NE of Bejing

2550BC Baekje have Calligraphy Sell Alphabet to Takeda for 48gp. Sell Bajutsu to Goguryeo for 83gp. Buy Calligraphy from Baekje for 1138gp + 3gpt. Swap Contact with Takeda for Goguryeo's contact with Rajaputanis. Sell Bajutsu to Raja for 84gp. Buy contact with Korea from Mongols for 71gp. Sell Wheel to Korea for 60gp. Switch research to Literature. Bejing produces another Settler.

2510BC Shanghai produces Settler. Tsingtao founded (2S Bejing).

2350BC Xinjian founded (in the South).

2310BC Bejing burps another settler.

2230BC Chengdu founded (2W Bejing). Buy Mysticism from Mongols and sell Calligraphy to Khazars.

2110BC Bejing gives another Settler.

2070BC Nanking founded (2N Bejing)

1910BC Bejing Settler who will head East to the coast & Horses.

At this time I'm thinking about connecting the Iron & upgrading some vet Warriors and kicking some Mongol butt. I decide to wait until Horses & Iron are connected and I've produced 4 Horse before starting the war.

1830 Baekje & Mongols have Map Making. In a furious trading round I go from 150gp (+14gpt) to 272gp (+4gpt) picking up full (known) WM & Map Making for a total cost of 78gp.

1750BC Tientsin founded on the coast (near Horse) and immediately starts Junk.

1725BC Bejing produces Settler then switches to Worker production as we're out of space for more cities. The Mongols will definitely be our first target as they are in our way.

1650BC Discover I set the Workers on the Iron Mountain to mine not road #%@*! Confucianism is available but too expensive to buy.

1575BC Bejing pops Worker and starts Barracks in our final prep for war.

1525BC Declare war on the Mongols & immediately capture 2 Workers.

1500BC Ta-Tu autorazed. Kill a couple of Mongol Warriors for no losses. A horde of Gogury show up near Shanghai (in the South)

1475BC North: Almarikh is auto razed for the loss of a Sword. Kill 2 Mongol Archers losing another Sword. South: Gogury declare war and Spear (Xinjian) kills 2 attacking Warriors.

1450BC North: troops consolidate & heal, Bejing produces Settler for the cleared land). South: Xinjian rushes Spear, disband worker in Shanghai & rush Spear. Vet Spear (Xinjian) kills 2 attackers and promotes. He then promptly dies to another attacker. Reg Warrior (Xinjian) kills last attacker (for the moment).

1425BC North: Vet Sword kills Settler/Otomo and captures 2 Slaves. Vet Sword kills Spear and Hoyd is autorazed. Sell Peace to Mongols for Confucianism, Civil Service, WM, Darhan (W coast), Kazan + 11gp (broke). A nice short sharp war that gave me some space to settle, 2 techs and 2 towns for the loss of 2 Swords

1400BC Junk sets sail from Tientsin heading East. More Gogury appear in the South. Spear (Xinjian) kills 2 Archers and promotes. In the North I'm preparing for an assault on Chimkent in order to open up a route to the South.

1350BC Elite Spear (Xinjian) kills Archer but dies to next Archer. Reg Spear (Xinjian) kills 2 attackers & promotes. Full WM obtained.

1325BC Sell Peace Treaty to Gogury for WM + 28gp (just as I thought Xinjian would fall).

1300BC Declare war on Khazars and advance on Ghimkent.

1275BC Full contacts

1250BC Take Ghimkent for the loss of a Sword.

1225BC Get my first GL (K'uang-yin) and decide to save him for Forbidden Palace in Shanghai

1200BC Sell Peace to Khazars for WM (all they had). Now I can send K'uang-yin South to Shanghai.

1025BC Forbidden Palace built in Shanghai

975BC Buy Construction from Baekje for 517gp to enter the Middle Ages!

I really enjoyed this start, although it took a lot of playing time. I had two short sharp wars of my choosing, both fought with Swords & Horses and I managed to fend off the Gogury in the South to keep Shanghai & Xinjian. There's more but that'll have to wait for the next spoiler


Ted

Originally posted by TedJackson
Open


1525BC Declare war on the Mongols & immediately capture 2 Workers.

1500BC Ta-Tu autorazed. Kill a couple of Mongol Warriors for no losses. A horde of Gogury show up near Shanghai (in the South)

1475BC North: Almarikh is auto razed for the loss of a Sword. Kill 2 Mongol Archers losing another Sword. South: Gogury declare war and Spear (Xinjian) kills 2 attacking Warriors.



Ted

Click to expand...

I'm very impressed by these early wars. I was far too weak to attempt this, but would be keen to try it out in future. How strong was your army at the time? The AI had huge stacks of troops in my game. There were about 15 bad guys in the Khazar horde that took my southern cities, although that was a bit later on (1200bc). If you do find the time a screenshot or save would be interesting.

The Mongols were long on quantity but short on quality

I had about 10-12 Swords total and 4 Horses - I hadn't even managed to upgrade all my Warriors

I attacked only their cities that were close to my land and were thus only weakly defended.

Probably the most important factors were the speed at which I attacked (I declared in 1525BC, achieved my goal - 3 cities razed for expansion space - and got a good peace deal in 1425BC) and the targets. I was getting Peace before the Mongols could even think about mounting a counter-attack

I'll try to set up for the GotM on another machine and transfer the saves for some screenies tomorrow.


Ted