Emperor - English - EARTH. My finest hour...

[ptt196]

I played EARTH on Emperor as English. No cheating whatsoever.
Man that was difficult. You can't expand like normal and when you do you are always at a disadvantage. I divided and conquered as you can see from the graph.

IMO this is the hardest EARTH civ to play. Attached is a final graph. You can kind of tell how the game developed.

Cheers!

 

[Posidonius]

I played EARTH on Emperor as English. No cheating whatsoever.
Man that was difficult. You can't expand like normal and when you do you are always at a disadvantage. I divided and conquered as you can see from the graph.

IMO this is the hardest EARTH civ to play. Attached is a final graph. You can kind of tell how the game developed. Cheers!

Your opinion is spot-on, England on Earth is suicide because you're never alone in Europe. Congratulations, looks like knocking out the Aztecs was your real turning point.

 

[ptt196]

Your opinion is spot-on, England on Earth is suicide because you're never alone in Europe. Congratulations, looks like knocking out the Aztecs was your real turning point.

Yeah that gave me the Americas as a base of operations to attack the Russians.
Good thing to because they were by this point uncontested and massive. The really lucky thing was that the Russians were actually late to the game (the Romans had been conquered early) and Moscow was where present day Kenya is. Since it was close to the coast I sent an invasion fleet over there and THAT was the move that really got me the game.

 

[Lord.L.]

I don't thing that this is so hard. You just should go to the America, not Europe. Americans and Aztec are easy to conquer, then you should invade Africa or develop your cities in America and end up launching SS. This is IMO much faster than conquest in this case.

 

[llywelynii]

@ General
There'll be more at this thread about other players (including ptt) playing civilizations on the Earth map at Emperor difficulty.

@ England specifically
It's the slowest and most isolated start, setting you behind in the race to railroads, industrialization, and tanks. It's the dullest start since, even with an early democracy and the Colossus, staying on Britain for the whole game will cause you to lose the space race. You have no real choice about making a beeline towards Wheel and Mapmaking asap. That leaves you sitting around for ages as your not terribly productive home builds your trireme, some chariots to establish a beachhead on a hostile continent, and settlers. In an unlucky game, you can even get mauled by randomly-generated pirate barbarians.

Your only real decisions early on are (A) whether to move your settler north to have a single city for Britain or to stay at London and build a second city for Scotland; and (B) whether to colonize the Americas or pull a Constantine and invade Europe. It's a safer route to head towards the Americas, but it's definitely possible to overrun France, Germany, and/or Rome with two or three veteran chariots if you attack before the walls go up. You could even luck out and capture some AI-constructed wonders. The real risk is that you're in a game with Russia and they've spawned enough units that you can't get a real foothold until you've left to build up a base in the Americas after all; in that case, you've wasted a thousand years or so and can end up too far behind in tech against the Aztecs, Zulus, or Australians. If you do establish yourself on the Continent, a city in Scotland makes an excellent settler factory, producing new units just around the same time the city size ticks back up to 3.

Depending on how easy you want to make it, you might restart a few times until Scotland has coal, Cornwall can turn into deer-filled woods, or both.

Worth mentioning that, like with Arabia in a Babylonian game, British settlements in Greenland and Scandinavia are very productive w/r/t research arrows even though they're not terribly useful otherwise.

@ Ptt's game
Looks like you lucked out, with the Zulus getting stomped fairly early on. Earth's Russia can be a painful spawny mess early on, but it seems much less common for them to switch to a republic and put up a real contest later in the game. (Ymmv, though: unless I'm in the Americas, I tend to be sure to stomp all over Russia as soon as possible, giving them little chance to even make it to the late game.)

 

[Lord.L.]

America is much safer than the Europe. Americans and Aztecs are not aggressive unlike Russians, Zulus, Mongols and others you can meet in Europe. A lot of nations there that want to tear themselves apart and English is uninvited guest here.

 

[Lord.L.]

English IMO is not the hardest civ because they start in bad but safe place. Nobody will attack London since you are not invading Europe. The hardest ones are Romans, Greeks, French and Germans because of their vulnerability.

 

[Volcanon]

You won't be able to aggro your neighbour early because you'll have to bee-line for mapmaking. In a 7 civ game Europe will start with at least one civ so you won't be able to do very much.
And you won't be able to lay down a carpet of cities until much later than every other civ.

If you want a civ with a moat play American or Aztec. Either you have one neighbour who is not that aggressive or nobody.

 

[Lord.L.]

You won't be able to aggro your neighbour early because you'll have to bee-line for mapmaking. In a 7 civ game Europe will start with at least one civ so you won't be able to do very much.
And you won't be able to lay down a carpet of cities until much later than every other civ.

If you want a civ with a moat play American or Aztec. Either you have one neighbour who is not that aggressive or nobody.

English is just harder version of those. You can just go to America and settle here. Then capture Aztecs and Americans and you are safe! Just have democracy/republic and research to have a spaceship! Or wipe out everyone with tanks if you want an epic final battle.

 

[Theov]

Wow that moment Moscow fell.
What version of Civ1 do you play?

 

[Lord.L.]

Wow that moment Moscow fell.
What version of Civ1 do you play?

What are you talking about???

 

[tuga2112]

What are you talking about???

i think he means
dos ? win ? amiga ? etc etc. civ1 was released in multiple platforms, personally i always played dos, but i think theres some differences in the code between them.
also within dos versions some are newer than others. the latest version doesnt allow the %^ cheat mode for intance where earlier ones allow cheat more (i think its actually a QA feature from a development point of view and never intended as a cheat mode.)

 

[Theov]

What are you talking about???

See the OP and see the Russians fall off a cliff in ~1250AD when Moscow was destroyed.

I meant which version of Civ are you playing. WinCiv or Dos?

 

[Lord.L.]

I'm playing dos 475.01

 

[Volcanon]

If you go over the atlantic to america in these games do you found cities in iceland and greenland, or just push on to the east coast and cross your fingers the Aztec are friendly (and have techs to trade) until you amass a bunch of chariots to take their cities?

Being able to pop huts in north america would be good too, I suppose.

Do you make two cities in Britain or just one?

 

[Lord.L.]

I usually found cities in plains on the very east of continent, build barracks and attack Americans and then Aztecs. Don't build cities in iceland because they don't produce enough for attacking even with huts (they are still random, for example if you get legion it's not very useful). Usually build two cities in Britain and two in Greenland. I'm thinking about attacking America and North Africa both but still never tried.

 

[Lord.L.]

Done 420 BC. Russians and Zulus were a bit problematic, especially Moscow surrounded with walls. But it's a lot better than ptt196's 1850AD. Got 174% rating.

 

[ptt196]

Done 420 BC. Russians and Zulus were a bit problematic, especially Moscow surrounded with walls. But it's a lot better than ptt196's 1850AD. Got 174% rating.

So what was your strategy? How did you expand?

 

[ptt196]

See the OP and see the Russians fall off a cliff in ~1250AD when Moscow was destroyed.

I meant which version of Civ are you playing. WinCiv or Dos?

DOS verzion on DOSBOX.

Yeah I was fortunate that Moscow was near the east coast of Africa. Took a ton of frigates to transport the crew (mostly knights/diplomats/cannons), and alot of years to get them all the way around all together. I also feigned an attack on west africa 2 turns before, so they moved a bunch of their guys in that direction before I landed with a ton of units next to Moscow later. Once I started that civil war it was just a matter of time.
Cleaned up Africa of the Russians but then had to slog through EurAsia and the Zulu mess. They founded so many massive cities. Thank god I had tanks by that point.

 

[Lord.L.]

Actually, nothing really complex Built cities on 1 tile distance (smallpox). Invaded America ASAP but didn't stayed just there for a long time. Bought trireme and chariots in London and invaded Europe. Captured all of the Russian cities exept for Moscow (damn walls). Then had a long war with Zulus.
I can give everybody here some advises for beating such a challenge:
1) Smallpox is the best strategy ever.
2) Use America for power base, but don't waste too much time there.
3) Don't buy chariots directly but buy temple and switch.
4) If you have money BUY CHARIOTS!!!
5) Have Veteran chariots. It helps a lot.
6) Don't wait. When you have 5-6 cities attack the Europe immediately. This should happen on about 2000 BC. So you have 100 turns for colonization.
7) Don't research too much. Writing, MapMaking, Wheel and Creremonial burial. A couple of time ago I said that tech route is faster. I have changed my opinion completely. Also, knights suck.
8) Know about the major respawning spots. Nothern Asia, West Africa, Australia, India, South America. Check these places when defeat a civ. If you play Earth map a lot you will notice that AI respawns in mostly the same places I listed before. But there may be some exclusions.

Good luck. It may take some attempts to do, I have been trying for a very, very long time. But I still think that English is not the hardest civ. You can always choose when to attack and you will not have a major war any earlier.