Marathon, Islands, Small, Theodora.
This may be cheap, but here goes.
After a few playthroughs on Deity it occurred to me how to mitigate the AI's capacity to spam out units --- play on marathon. Theoretically it should all be balanced, but since the human player is going to be a better tactician and do more with less units, it is harder for the AI to make up for its tactical incompetence with its sheer volume of forces.
Then I remembered from a previous Island game how totally unable the AI was at dealing with the range promotion.
That made Theodora and the dromon the perfect Civ to pick since she is now the only civ who has access to ranged naval units before Compass.
So, I beelined to sailing and then popped out three dromon. Quickly found my nearest neighbor, Greece, and then DOW. Spent some time picking off their units and taking pot shots at the cities and then healing until they all had the range promotion.
Then I just parked my three dromon w/ range 3 tiles away and starting bombarding the city until it was down to 0. By then I had researched Optics to get my original warrior (upgraded to a spearman due to a ruin) down to the city and attacked from the sea.
Rinse wash and repeat until Greece is destroyed. Then declared war on Atilla. Had to clear out his navy first but that wasn't too hard. Then compared to Atilla, Persia was a pushover. He had a huge capital city but still couldn't deal with the range promotion.
By the time Greece, Atilla, and Persia were destroyed, I had built three additional dromon. One for exploring and two others for naval destruction. They palled around with my range promoted dromon.
I paused for a few turns to get compass and then upgraded to Galleas. Dido and Ramesses were pushovers.
Only created 3 land units. One archer to defend my capital and then two others to take out cities.
Anyway...this strikes me as a cheap way to win. But a win is a win.
It probably won't work on any speed but marathon. Perhaps it will work on Epic.
This may be cheap, but here goes.
After a few playthroughs on Deity it occurred to me how to mitigate the AI's capacity to spam out units --- play on marathon. Theoretically it should all be balanced, but since the human player is going to be a better tactician and do more with less units, it is harder for the AI to make up for its tactical incompetence with its sheer volume of forces.
Then I remembered from a previous Island game how totally unable the AI was at dealing with the range promotion.
That made Theodora and the dromon the perfect Civ to pick since she is now the only civ who has access to ranged naval units before Compass.
So, I beelined to sailing and then popped out three dromon. Quickly found my nearest neighbor, Greece, and then DOW. Spent some time picking off their units and taking pot shots at the cities and then healing until they all had the range promotion.
Then I just parked my three dromon w/ range 3 tiles away and starting bombarding the city until it was down to 0. By then I had researched Optics to get my original warrior (upgraded to a spearman due to a ruin) down to the city and attacked from the sea.
Rinse wash and repeat until Greece is destroyed. Then declared war on Atilla. Had to clear out his navy first but that wasn't too hard. Then compared to Atilla, Persia was a pushover. He had a huge capital city but still couldn't deal with the range promotion.
By the time Greece, Atilla, and Persia were destroyed, I had built three additional dromon. One for exploring and two others for naval destruction. They palled around with my range promoted dromon.
I paused for a few turns to get compass and then upgraded to Galleas. Dido and Ramesses were pushovers.
Only created 3 land units. One archer to defend my capital and then two others to take out cities.
Anyway...this strikes me as a cheap way to win. But a win is a win.
It probably won't work on any speed but marathon. Perhaps it will work on Epic.