A slump on emperor with Montezuma.

[Divaythsarmour]

It feels like I'm in the midst of a serious slump. On emperor, I've won with Shaka, Bismark, Saladin, Gandhi, Catherine, Tokugawa and Alexander. Out of that group, Catherine was definitely the hardest. I must have played a dozen games before managing a victory with her.

Now I'm having similar problems with Montezuma. I just can't get any kind of synergy going. I had one game that had some potential. I took advantage of the quick healing to promote one warrior army up to blitz and take one city. That eventually allowed me to contain Napoleon on a small peninsula (with only one city of his own). The rest of my expansion was peaceful, but I stopped at around 7 cities. In retrospect, I should have (and could have) kept expanding.

My basic plan was to take advantage of the 50% gold production bonus. That may have worked better if I had expanded more, or managed to build the right wonders in the right places. Another thing that I suffered from was low population in the gold cities. I should have been pumping out settlers somewhere else to increase those populations.

There does seem to be an element of "all or nothing" in regards to feeling successful in this game. When it's not going well at the beginning, it certainly isn't going to get any better as you proceed.

Anyway, I won't give up. I do like the challenge.

 

[Kadazzle]

If I were you, I'd got for a Horseman rush. The auto-healing makes it so much easier to rush an enemy capital or two, it's unbelievable. After that, expand until you can't expand no more.

 

[Hertsh]

If I were you, I'd got for a Horseman rush. The auto-healing makes it so much easier to rush an enemy capital or two, it's unbelievable. After that, expand until you can't expand no more.

This you would do by putting your capital on two science tiles from the very beginning to research Horseback riding. After you've research HBR you go for production in your city and pump out three horsemen. Move around your horsemen as soon as they are produced to get in some gold (and if lucky also a free horseman from a barb hut). Then combine your first three horsemen into an army and rush opponents with it.

Good luck.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

its ben my exerience that if the enemy is smart enough to have a defending warrior army, you have the luck that its not yet fortified. But you have to rush it to make sure! helps.

 

[Divaythsarmour]

Thanks a lot you guys! I did have a victory last night and I did use the horseman army strategy. I quickly found two AIs and just harrassed them all through the ancient and medieval eras. It allowed me to expand all the way up to and then around them. By the time I reached the modern era it was simply a matter the majority of production in my sitites over to gold. I was raking it in so fast I could purchase building, tanks, anything I wanted.