Over the past few months, I've played a number of AW games, in addition to the Demigod Iroquois game that I've got going. I was digging through some old saves recently, and dug out this one, and thought I'd post it here, just because it was such a great start.
As I recall events, I had decided to play an AWM, pangaea, with the Romans. I like the Romans. Start with Alphabet and archers, and get cheap raxes and lots of leaders. . . works for me. Anyway, I was preparing for a relaxing evening of war, and I decided that I wanted a good start. I wasn't going to insist on a fantastic start, but I didn't want a barren tundra start, either. All I really wanted a river in view and a food bonus. Then I got this start and thought, "Gee. That looks playable."
I took BW first, so that I'd have some spears to go with my archers. It was only Monarch level, so I felt pretty comfortable that I could still get the Philosophy slingshot, especially if I beelined Philosophy after BW. And that's what I did. Imagine my surprise when, around 1450 BC, I popped an SGL! Looks like the Pyramids for me! So I built them. My empire expanded nicely, as you can imagine, and I had some wines. You can't see them, but they're under Pompeii, IIRC. Add that to the furs by Cumae, and things were shaping up nicely.
You can also see a Hittite scout SW of my empire. He never did make it out of that corner. I allowed myself initial trading, so I traded what I could with the Hittites, DOW'd them, killed their scout, and went about my merry way.
Expansion proceeded apace, and by 650 BC, as you can see, I was hard at work on the GLib and could see ivory! Wahoo! Can we say "Statue of Zeus," anyone? Oh, and there's an iron deposit up under Pisae, and you can see that I've already got some Legions built. I may have been a little slow in researching The Wheel, but I prefer swords to horses in AW. Better players than I may go for horses, but I apparently don't raise very stout horses. They just die too often for my tastes.
Also by 650 BC, I had figured out that I had two reasonable chokepoints, NE and NW of Pisae, where I could hold off any invaders. So far things were looking good! By 230 BC, things had gotten even better . . . I only had 1 chokepoint to defend. Turned out I was on a peninsula, connected to the mainland only by a thin strip of mountainous land.
As you can see from this last screenshot, I'm only 3 turns from the GLib and 1 turn from the SoZ. I got both, IIRC.
Eventually, I'll get around to finishing this game. It's very rare that I get a start as powerful as that one, so I just had to post it here.
As I recall events, I had decided to play an AWM, pangaea, with the Romans. I like the Romans. Start with Alphabet and archers, and get cheap raxes and lots of leaders. . . works for me. Anyway, I was preparing for a relaxing evening of war, and I decided that I wanted a good start. I wasn't going to insist on a fantastic start, but I didn't want a barren tundra start, either. All I really wanted a river in view and a food bonus. Then I got this start and thought, "Gee. That looks playable."
Spoiler :
I took BW first, so that I'd have some spears to go with my archers. It was only Monarch level, so I felt pretty comfortable that I could still get the Philosophy slingshot, especially if I beelined Philosophy after BW. And that's what I did. Imagine my surprise when, around 1450 BC, I popped an SGL! Looks like the Pyramids for me! So I built them. My empire expanded nicely, as you can imagine, and I had some wines. You can't see them, but they're under Pompeii, IIRC. Add that to the furs by Cumae, and things were shaping up nicely.
You can also see a Hittite scout SW of my empire. He never did make it out of that corner. I allowed myself initial trading, so I traded what I could with the Hittites, DOW'd them, killed their scout, and went about my merry way.
Spoiler :
Expansion proceeded apace, and by 650 BC, as you can see, I was hard at work on the GLib and could see ivory! Wahoo! Can we say "Statue of Zeus," anyone? Oh, and there's an iron deposit up under Pisae, and you can see that I've already got some Legions built. I may have been a little slow in researching The Wheel, but I prefer swords to horses in AW. Better players than I may go for horses, but I apparently don't raise very stout horses. They just die too often for my tastes.
Spoiler :
Also by 650 BC, I had figured out that I had two reasonable chokepoints, NE and NW of Pisae, where I could hold off any invaders. So far things were looking good! By 230 BC, things had gotten even better . . . I only had 1 chokepoint to defend. Turned out I was on a peninsula, connected to the mainland only by a thin strip of mountainous land.
As you can see from this last screenshot, I'm only 3 turns from the GLib and 1 turn from the SoZ. I got both, IIRC.
Spoiler :
Eventually, I'll get around to finishing this game. It's very rare that I get a start as powerful as that one, so I just had to post it here.
For a brief few seconds I was going to reinstall civ 
