Rodnok
Prince
Well, I decided that the Start as Minors isnt worth it. Feels too much like real-time strategy games from 90s with all that fighting and no diplo (No one wanted to establish peace even with Writing, although I was bored to play some longer time after that). AI cant even mount any decent attack.
So I browsed again through the list of the civilizations and came up with Charlemagne for my next try - philosophical&aggressive is a pretty good combination, landsknechts can use copper too and rathauses could significantly help with my financial problems. No tech difusion this time, no tribal villages. Ruthless AI again (which is a step above aggressive AI, so this is used automatically). I went for BW immediately and discovered a source of copper right under my capital! Not to mention it was plains/hill and gold/plains/hill was right next to it. Even though I moved my initial settler there away from the river it was huge. I didn't need Wheel yet, so I went for Great Wall "as usually" to get that Philosophical bonus on track. And I decided to use the Agressive trait to max, so I researched Iron Working then and started to build swordsmen to conquer barbarian cities. 2 workers chopped like mad to build The Wall and then The Army of Mordor. Funny that the capital had size 1 for a veeery long time.
I think I conquered 3 barb cities, found 1 more myself. Viking had attacked me, but I defeated him and got another city . During the Alphabet research a Spy was born and I helped my newly born former-barb friend Mansa against Justinian's hordes - he would be very strong otherwise with me on his "next to kill" list. So I had mostly spearmen in Mali cities to kill his horses.
I believe the game would be playable, not a winning position yet, but still very interesting. But when we finally got Alphabet a disaster came... no one wanted to trade techs with me! I got one deal (Writing partially and Archery) before but then everyone says "we would have nothing to gain" even though I have something nice... Even my great friend Mansa who is usually mad about tech trading...
Then I took some break and then... I tried it again with someone else . Discovered Iroquis in the list. They have a bad UU (well, a better scout has its uses, but some fighting guys would be nicer) but a very interesting building. Barracks which allows to employ 2 spies and produce 1 culture! And it is available immediately. So I dont have to build Great wall or research for Mysticism.
They got two leaders: Logan (organized&protective) and Hiawatha (spiritual&organized). Although I like spiritual leaders and protective trait isnt anything great, here I felt I will really need Logan. Organized is good too for little less financial burden initially and a stability bonus. So I took Logan with the same settings as before (I just turned off Choose religions). His starting techs Agriculture and Hunting give a nice hint where to pursue my research and there wasnt much forest available anyway. So no initial chopping this time! I went for Archery, AH, Mining (for gold in my third city), Pottery,Writing and Alphabet. And the same situation has happened again. Ho Chi Minh (a former barbarian, we even had a brief war) was willing to make one trade for Alphabet, but everyone else is just saying "we would have nothing to gain". Even though they lack Writing or Alphabet...
I am not sure if it should be like that on Deity, but it seems I am done here. Its impossible to research everything yourself (even with some stealing with spies), when AI trades and it would be boring anyway. Maybe I will give it one more last try without Ruthless AI (or even without Aggressive one), to discover what is causing this. But Marathon games are pretty long, it will take a lot of time to get to Alphabet again (and quicker speeds are much harder). I also suspect turning off the Tech diffusion might be the cause... as Jared had some tech trades in his Deity game.
Played in the last 0.9.10 build. Iroquis position is bad as the Khmer attack there all the time from their corner, but I played it to survive till Alphabet. As its currently impossible to upload attachments here, I placed the saved games there, if anyone wants to peek:
http://kondor21.sweb.cz/rodnok_deity.zip
So I browsed again through the list of the civilizations and came up with Charlemagne for my next try - philosophical&aggressive is a pretty good combination, landsknechts can use copper too and rathauses could significantly help with my financial problems. No tech difusion this time, no tribal villages. Ruthless AI again (which is a step above aggressive AI, so this is used automatically). I went for BW immediately and discovered a source of copper right under my capital! Not to mention it was plains/hill and gold/plains/hill was right next to it. Even though I moved my initial settler there away from the river it was huge. I didn't need Wheel yet, so I went for Great Wall "as usually" to get that Philosophical bonus on track. And I decided to use the Agressive trait to max, so I researched Iron Working then and started to build swordsmen to conquer barbarian cities. 2 workers chopped like mad to build The Wall and then The Army of Mordor. Funny that the capital had size 1 for a veeery long time.
I think I conquered 3 barb cities, found 1 more myself. Viking had attacked me, but I defeated him and got another city . During the Alphabet research a Spy was born and I helped my newly born former-barb friend Mansa against Justinian's hordes - he would be very strong otherwise with me on his "next to kill" list. So I had mostly spearmen in Mali cities to kill his horses.
I believe the game would be playable, not a winning position yet, but still very interesting. But when we finally got Alphabet a disaster came... no one wanted to trade techs with me! I got one deal (Writing partially and Archery) before but then everyone says "we would have nothing to gain" even though I have something nice... Even my great friend Mansa who is usually mad about tech trading...
Then I took some break and then... I tried it again with someone else . Discovered Iroquis in the list. They have a bad UU (well, a better scout has its uses, but some fighting guys would be nicer) but a very interesting building. Barracks which allows to employ 2 spies and produce 1 culture! And it is available immediately. So I dont have to build Great wall or research for Mysticism.
They got two leaders: Logan (organized&protective) and Hiawatha (spiritual&organized). Although I like spiritual leaders and protective trait isnt anything great, here I felt I will really need Logan. Organized is good too for little less financial burden initially and a stability bonus. So I took Logan with the same settings as before (I just turned off Choose religions). His starting techs Agriculture and Hunting give a nice hint where to pursue my research and there wasnt much forest available anyway. So no initial chopping this time! I went for Archery, AH, Mining (for gold in my third city), Pottery,Writing and Alphabet. And the same situation has happened again. Ho Chi Minh (a former barbarian, we even had a brief war) was willing to make one trade for Alphabet, but everyone else is just saying "we would have nothing to gain". Even though they lack Writing or Alphabet...
I am not sure if it should be like that on Deity, but it seems I am done here. Its impossible to research everything yourself (even with some stealing with spies), when AI trades and it would be boring anyway. Maybe I will give it one more last try without Ruthless AI (or even without Aggressive one), to discover what is causing this. But Marathon games are pretty long, it will take a lot of time to get to Alphabet again (and quicker speeds are much harder). I also suspect turning off the Tech diffusion might be the cause... as Jared had some tech trades in his Deity game.
Played in the last 0.9.10 build. Iroquis position is bad as the Khmer attack there all the time from their corner, but I played it to survive till Alphabet. As its currently impossible to upload attachments here, I placed the saved games there, if anyone wants to peek:
http://kondor21.sweb.cz/rodnok_deity.zip