Jeez and here I was moaning about an early bout of disease! Sorry about the bad Roman breaks guys.
Open PTW
100k Culture (SGOTM whetted my appetite for cramming towns and building stuff)
Opening Moves
Three guesses where I placed Persepolis!
My initial builds were warrior, warrior, granary, settler, warrior, warrior, warrior, warrior, settler. I had everything planned out nicely after playing with Excel for about half an hour and of course it all gets thrown out the window 11 turns in when Persepolis loses a pop to disease. Luckily Persepolis was only at pop 2 and the damage was limited. A quick reconnaissance led me to getting a 2nd settler out before the factory was ready. This 2nd town, placed 4 tiles to the NE, made up for the delay by developing into a 6-turn settler factory. My main factory was up and running in 2190bc, the second in 1625bc.
My starting research was Pottery at 100%, followed by a string of 40-turn techs led by Iron Working and Mathematics. My goal was to build up cash (and all that population working on rivers, my gold built up fast!
) and trade or conquer most of the AA techs.
1000bc
Very little happened up to this point. Settlers, workers and warriors were built along with a couple temples to put the squeeze on the Roman town next to my iron. Did anyone NOT have the Romans place a town there? I settled right on top of the iron and the temple placed my border against their town in the hopes of flipping it.
1000bc stats:
Towns - 12
Pop - 24
Settlers - 2
Workers - 5
Warriors - 10
Granaries - 2
Temples - 2
Barracks - 1
Gold - 1032 +32/t
Tech - 1st tier, Math, Writing, MM, HR, Myst
Score - 213 (2nd to Rome - 239)(Japan is third with 200)
Rome
In 825bc Rome built the Pyramids and sealed their fate. In 470bc I declared on them and made quick work of their towns west of Rome. Unfortunately my stack of 14 immortals were not enough to take out the city of Rome. Those legions on the hill, combined with some bad RNG luck were devestating. A 15th immortal would have done the job. When my attack was done all that remained was 1 redlined spear. Between turns several more legions entered Rome. I decided my heavily damaged forces were not enough for the task and I retreated them out to heal. A couple turns later I researched Currency, leaving just the two techs Rome was willing to give for researching. I bit the bullet and gave them peace (for around 20 turns
) for the techs and found myself in the Middle Ages in 190bc.
Random Notes
The immortals are a nice unit, but are they slow! Due to the layout of the terrain, all my military building towns were on the west side of the nation (the east side was busy building settlers and workers) and it took 5-6 turns just to get them to front lines even with a good road system.
Early on Japan settled a town in the middle of the jungle for no apparent reason. Do they know something I don't? Hmmmm. Japan is hopelessly behind in tech (yay! no samurai!), so the town will be mine sooner or later. It'll be interesting to see what drew them there.
No horses anywhere on the continent? The Knights fanatics will not be happy.
I ended up taking my Golden Age in Despotism. I wanted to get Rome as a second core as soon as possible and I didn't want to wait for Republic. I used the GA to build libraries and temples everywhere and got a nice early start on my culture push.
That peninsula to the east got my hopes up for a bit, but of course it ended up as a long road to nowhere. My warrior enjoyed hacking his way through the steamy jungle though and sends his thanks to Ainwood.
Research
3400 - Pottery
2430 - Ceremonial Burial (Japan for Mas, Pott)
2430 - Warrior Code (Japan for Mas, Pott)
2430 - Alphabet (Rome for Mas, Pott)
2430 - The Wheel (Japan for Alph)
2270 - Iron Working (Rome for CB, Whl)
2270 - Mysticism (Japan for IW)
1650 - Writing (Rome for Myst)
1075 - Mathematics
1025 - Map Making (Japan for Math)
1025 - Horseback Riding (Rome for Math)
430 - Philosophy
350 - Literature
270 - Polytheism
190 - Currency
190 - Code of Laws (Rome for peace)
190 - Construction (Rome for peace)
Persia at 1000bc:
My minimap at 190bc: