Alright, well, for starters:
--This is my first game on Prince.
--This is my first GOTM of any Civ game.
--This is my first game on lakes.
--I decided this would be a good opportunity for me to try to break my addiction to religion and wonders and see what I can do with "just the basics". As such I never actively tried to found a state religion.
I'm going to do this 2 ways: first I'm just gonna copy-paste my live, (mostly) unedited notes I wrote up as I was playing (it's a bit long, but bear with me here). Then I'll give my opinion, hindsight, etc. Since the cutoff is rather vague, I'll post everything from my first session (going until about 1300AD). Hopefully this wil allow people to give advice based on the facts, and not my analysis of the facts
More likely people will look at the size of this post and say "It's not worth reading something this long if it's not from Sirian" and then move along
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4000BC: The start of History.
A few thoughts on our starting location:
--Looking at it in the real game makes it *much* easier to see exactly what we have around us (compared with the preview screenshot).
--Ice up North makes it pretty clear which way we'll be expanding in the early game.
--Assuming that we leave the forests, irrigate the plains, mine the hills, and gather the resources, building our city at our present location would grant a food surplus of +3 (sheep w/ pasture) + 2 (wheat w/ irrigation) +3 (3 fresh water lakes w/ lighthouse), -3 (plains hill and plains forest) = +5. Good enough to build in place, but not great. Depending on how our immediate surroundings turn out, we'll either go for the GPP (great people pump) or make London into a "jack-of-all-trades" site, as a good backbone for our empire.
Begin production with Warrior, research agriculture.
A few turns later, we discover we have stone not too far away SW. Also to the south are many hill/plains with a convenient river connection to our capital. Will expand down that direction for our first town.
3640: Warrior built. Begin a second warrior. Testing from some other players reported a good amount of Barbarian activity early on on this type of map, so we'll have to keep that in mind.
3520: Buddhism founded IFL.
3480: Discover Agriculture. Begin research Animal Husbandry.
3320: Encounter Saladin. Apparently he was not the one to found Buddhism.
3280: Warrior completes. Begin Worker.
2760: Discover Animal Husbandry. Begin Wheel.
2680: Complete Worker. I'd like for London to be at least size 3 before I make my 1st settler, so I start on a barracks.
2640: Meet Montezuma (ugh), the founder of Buddhism (double ugh).
2600: Meet Washington. I find myself with a warrior right next to one of his helpless workers and for a moment I wonder if it would be a good idea to "borrow" him.
2560: I decide that any opportunity to hurt the AI on Prince is one that I should grab. War is declared, the worker is mine!
2480: Encounter Persia. Apparently he was friends with America. Dang.
2440: Encounter Mansa Musa. Also the worker I "liberated" from USA dies to animals. Oh well.
2360: Discover Wheel. Begin researching Hunting, since it would be nice to have Archers sooner rather than later.
2320: Hinduism founded IDL (Cyrus would convert to it next turn). Encounter Isabella. My woodsman 2 warrior defending in a forest adjacent to Washington kills an American archer.
2280: Begin Settler in London. Barracks postponed.
2080: Discover Hunting. Begin Archery.
1975: I am Elizabeth the Hopeless in the most advanced nations awards. One of my warrior-scouts dies to wild animals. Peace with America (they've suffered enough for now).
1850: Settler built. Begin Warrior.
1825: Archery. Begin Sailing (for lighthouses and so that London can connect to the river through the lake).
1800: Warrior completes. Begin Scout.
1775: York founded, instantly connects to London. I guess I don't need sailing for that after all -_- Switch to Bronze Working.
1300: Discover Bronze Working. Begin Iron Working.
1250: Complete second Worker. Begin chopping faraway trees (the ones that I'll never make cities near anyway.
920 BC: Nottingham founded. Snags Stone, Pigs, Copper and Rice.
840 BC: Discover Iron Working... and there's one right next to London!!! Enter Classical Age. Begin Mysticism (finally!)
740 BC: Discover Mysticism. Begin Masonry.
700BS: Barbarians start showing up around London and Nottingham. Soon I'll take over that barb city and add it to my fledgling empire.
660BC: Stonehenge and Oracle both built IFL. So what, who cares...
640BC: Judaism founded in Djenne.
600BC: Discover Masonry, begin Sailing.
540BC: The barbarians are really coming on strong now. Is this what it's like in all Prince games?
420 BC: Sailing discovered. Begin pottery.
360BC: Hastings founded. Olmec captured from barbarians.
320 BC: Boston has been captured by the Barbaian State
280BC: Pottery discovered. Begin Writing.
220BC: Parthenon built IFL. I see a barb axeman near Nottingham... :EEK!:
80BC: Discover Writing, begin Mathematics.
1AD: In keeping with the holiday spirit, the first great prophet is born IDL. Of course, it happened to be Moses...
Barbarians are still going strong, but haven't succeeded in killing anything except one of my workers. Meanwhile, I've decided that I really do love that dirty water, and I should go "rescue" Boston from the clutches of the Barbarian State.
It will be a good advance base from which to attack America in the future.
40AD: Mansa Musa completes the temple of Solomon. I guess Mali must be the lost tribe of Israel...
Oh, and Bahston is liberated from the Bahbarian State
It shouldn't be too hahd to hold ahnto as long as I make plenty of Culchuh
180AD: Well, I built the Great Lighthouse... but the bahbarians bastahds have retaken Bahston... We'll have to do something about that... (I promise I'll stop doing that now)
240AD: Pyramids built IFL.
290AD: discover Math, begin Meditation (!)
300AD: Christianity founded IFL !!!! Isabella would convert next turn. Meanwhile I'm still waiting on the someone to knock on my door and try to rope me in...
360AD: Discover Meditation, begin Alphabet.
Meanwhile, my quest to recover Bahston is side-tracked by the picturesque seaside resort of Tartar -- captured one turn before Saladin's chariots would have gotten it. Also, York finishes a library -- my first culture improvement of the game!
420AD: Confucianism founded IFL
540AD: Boston is finally liberated... by the Persian Empire... Go figure. First Barbarian Swordsman appears near London.
560AD: Harkuf, my first Great Merchant, is born in London. I use him to get Currency.
580AD: Washington ends our Open Borders. And he hates my guts. And I have 3 level 2/3 Swordsmen right outside Atlanta...
590AD: Atlanta captured from the Americans! But Hastings is captured by the Barbarians
620AD: Alphabet discovered. Begin Calendar.
Despite all my troubles, I have 2 huge advantages on the AI: I'm the only person to know Alphabet or Currency. I decide to go for broke and trade them for whatever I can get. At the end of the day, I've received Polytheism, Calendar, and a lot of money. Nothing extremely useful, but anything to pull even in tech will help at this point. I also made sure not to trade with the overall tech leader, so things should come out well for me. Begin research on Metal Casting.
660AD: Hanging Gardens built in London. With a little luck some Great Engineers will catch me up with the rest of the world.
700AD: Taoism founded IFL.
720AD: Peace with Washington (they gave me 180 gold). Capture another decent barbarian town. If there's one positive thing to be said about the barbarians in this game, it's that they left me some good towns to capture.
730: Barbarians capture Tartar. Memo to myself: one archer is *not* enough.
770AD: Tartar liberated (one turn before the Americans got to it!).
990AD: Christianity spreads to Ainu (my horsehockey ex-barbarian town), and I FINALLY get to convert to a state religion.
1005AD: Discover Monarchy. Begin Civil Service (my 2nd Great Merchant researches most of it for me). Revolt to Heredetary rule and Slavery.
1025AD: Discover Civil Service, enter Medieval Age, begin Monotheism (for Organized Religion)
1055AD: Complete the Colossus in London. Looks like London is becoming my Great People Center whether I like it or not.
1065AD: discover monotheism, begin machinery. Revolt to Organized Religion and Beuraucracy. More Tech trades.
1100AD: Mansa Musa has completed the Sistin Chapel. The three attached screenshots should give you a good idea of what my empire looked like at the time. (Just to check if anyone is reading this, the first person to explain how I can get my screens "in" my post instead of attached gets... a prize.)
As you can see, I've filled in most of "my territory", and as soon as I liberate Hastings (yes it's taken me this long!) the barbarian threat should be essentially over, and I can start going to war with my neighbours. I'm the same religion as Isabella and she's shaping up to be my closest ally in this game, so I'll probably try to go to war with someone close to her and get her involved in the fighting as well. I don't think I'll take on the challenge of attacking Mansa Musa just yet though...
1115AD: Hastings liberated from its 5-century-long occupation by the barbarian hordes. This effectively ends the barbarian threat once and for all. On to more interesting matters
1140AD: Chichen Itza completed IDL... 2 turns before me... Well, at least I'll be rich!
1145AD: Great Library completed IDL
1180AD: Great Merchant --> Paper
1185: Discover Machinery, begin Guilds.
1250AD: Isabella has completed Notre Dame. More tech trades. Readying an army to invade Washington. 4th place in score! (And moving up quite fast I might add!)
1290AD: Discover Paper, research Gunpowder.
1300AD: I've made up my mind... it's time to go to war with Washington, perhaps just for a short period to capture the two rotten cities he stuck in the middle of our land. But, as it's now 4am and I've been playing non-stop for the past 4 hours, I think I'll leave the war for tomorrow.
END SESSION ONE.
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My thoughts: Well, there certainly were a lot of barbarians, but I really tried to look at that as more of an opportunity than a hindrance. I tried to go capture their towns whenever possible (as some others have mentioned, they did found a few towns in some really great spots), and they did force me to keep a decent defensive force, which is probably why no one ever declared war on me in the early game. But unfortunately one of my initial "pseudo-restrictions" (that I was going to try to avoid relying on religion), ended up biting me in the ass, as it wasn't until about 1000AD that anybody bothered to spread any of the lovin' over to my corner of the world!! Needless to say, that blew. I also found myself consistantly under-tech compared with the AI. Part of this is probably due to the fact that I built almost no cottages, but then I didn't really build much of anything that lasted longer than a few turns (b/c of barbs), and I felt like I really needed my cities to grow big and give me many shields so that I could adequately fight off the barbarians. This wound up haunting me through the rest of the game (being behind in tech), so the whole cottage this is clearly something I will have to improve on for my next game.
Looking back on my early decision to capture Washington's worker: I really think it was a good short-term move, because later on in the game Washington really was never able to build up to any sort of critical mass, always lagging behind in pretty much anything, and I like to think it was in part because of that early war. Long-term, I'm not so sure, because I realized later on that nobody really liked me... and I couldn't reall tell why. Maybe it was because of that? Certainly when I first met people, a lot of them complained "-1: You declared war on our friend!" but still...
One final thing: I don't think I ever saw the AI's declare war on each other at all, until at one point in the medieval or renaissance they all decided to pile up on Montezuma and leave him with just 2 cities left. Is this normal? Did the AI's just decide that it wasn't worth going to war with all the barbs around? Then later in the game, they started declaring war... on me!!! I swear I had more people declare war on me than everyone else in my game combined! Is it always like this on prince?
In short, I think I need to play more on prince, since noble is clearly too easy, but I still ahve a lot to learn from this level AI.
To anyone still reading this post: You, my friend, are a Great American Hero.
)
the GOTM staff left it so vague.
so I decided for Currency.
I hate razed cities
)
oh well
