iamnleth
Warlord
The longer I think about it, the more I like I agree with Snaaty (for those who don't know, one of the few members of this forum that advocate early archery on high levels).
I had my doubts about it before, but when I started up a game as Elizabeth (immortal) and curiously entered the world builder (trying to get a general idea of how rare horse/copper are), I was shocked to find out that neither of them were within 25 tiles of my capital (Justinian was lucky enough to have copper and horses in his BFC). Granted, I had iron in my BFC, but researching iron working this early is out of the way unless you're surrounded by a large swath of jungle. In this situation, you would have to research archery to expand.
Anyway, it's a bit hard to grab copper or horses before the barbs start showing up around 1500 BC. If you research bronze working and find that there's no copper anywhere near you, you'd virtually have to go archery before you could expand, wouldn't you? considering that the barbs will enter your territory once your second city is up, animal husbandry probably couldn't be researched/hooked up before the barbs become eager to kill and pillage. I don't think that a city with even two warriors is going to last long given the agression of the barbarians on immortal, but perhaps I'm wrong? Another point to consider is that getting those early fog-busters out is very beneficial. You can possibly avoid contact with many barbarians that you would've had to deal with had you been waiting on your worker to road/mine copper!
Taking all of that in, my experience with the higher levels is none, and thus my knowledge limited. I need enlightenment!
I had my doubts about it before, but when I started up a game as Elizabeth (immortal) and curiously entered the world builder (trying to get a general idea of how rare horse/copper are), I was shocked to find out that neither of them were within 25 tiles of my capital (Justinian was lucky enough to have copper and horses in his BFC). Granted, I had iron in my BFC, but researching iron working this early is out of the way unless you're surrounded by a large swath of jungle. In this situation, you would have to research archery to expand.
Anyway, it's a bit hard to grab copper or horses before the barbs start showing up around 1500 BC. If you research bronze working and find that there's no copper anywhere near you, you'd virtually have to go archery before you could expand, wouldn't you? considering that the barbs will enter your territory once your second city is up, animal husbandry probably couldn't be researched/hooked up before the barbs become eager to kill and pillage. I don't think that a city with even two warriors is going to last long given the agression of the barbarians on immortal, but perhaps I'm wrong? Another point to consider is that getting those early fog-busters out is very beneficial. You can possibly avoid contact with many barbarians that you would've had to deal with had you been waiting on your worker to road/mine copper!
Taking all of that in, my experience with the higher levels is none, and thus my knowledge limited. I need enlightenment!