Round 2: to 2000 BC
Thank you, Gnarfflinger, for that vote of confidence. "Getting the copper on-line pronto" is exactly what I'm working towards. And since the map generator emptied the loony bin for me this time, that's where the smart money's going:
Well, that's just
swell. Monty's twin sister, the religious fanatic, to my south. All I need now is the poster boy for bipolarity, Alexander, and I'll have a complete set of Civ psychos to deal with.
My Settler completed, and was rushed into the hotly-debated area near the copper. I ultimately decided to go with Betafor's suggested location:
My original location, two tiles due east, was just going to put me a little too close to Monty a little too early. And I want that copper on-line ASAP and don't want to have to wait for the borders to pop. In addition, a crucial resource outside a city's first ring is much more vulnerable to pillaging.
That city's going to reach its maximum size by mid-to-late game with those 5 useless tiles in its fat cross, but I expect to have several, much better cities by then. One of them formerly Monty's. Heh. In the meantime, once its borders pop and that rice tile comes on-line, it will do okay.
Once I finished Pottery, I decided to research Animal Husbandry. I needed it to work the cow tile in London's fat cross, and if there's horses around too, well, so much the better. My northern Woodsman II Warrior kept exploring; he found not only horses, but also another source of copper:
Yeah, too bad neither is in the greatest location. Oh, I'll eventually put cities in both locations, but boy, what a challenging map so far, resource-wise!
I met my third neighbour and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when I saw who it was:
Oh, not half as glad as I am to meet you, lumber-jaw. And it looks like Washington is far enough away that I won't run into the "close borders" complaint for awhile:
Washington isn't the only one who's expanding. Monty has already plunked down at least one more city:
As you can see, he's decided to go southwest of his capital. That suits me fine. I want to expand along the far southwest side of the continent until I run out of room, then build cities to my north and east. Before and after I take Monty's, of course.
Here's the map:
And here's a look at my two cities:
I'm building a worker in York right now, who will first get the copper on-line, then build a road back to the capital, or at least the river. The first barb Warriors have started appearing; the barb Archers and (shudder) Axemen won't be far behind. I will probably have to build that floodplain city NE of London very soon to safeguard the copper supply road.
Yes, I farmed two floodplains tiles in London's fat cross. For now. If I'm going to start whipping, I want the city to grow quickly (I need 2 pop to whip a Granary from nothing, so the city has to grow to size 4 for that). Once I have the cows "pasturized", I can put a cottage on the third flooplains tile, then cottage the other two a little after that.
The Settler will complete in 3 turns. I already have a Warrior down on that silk tile to my southeast, and I'm thinking of following Hans' "SOS" suggestion to build there. After the Settler is built...what next?
Do I go after Stonehenge? You can see that I'm researching towards the Oracle. I can probably finish Stonehenge in less than 15 turns with a little chopping. It's very appealing--I never like chopping or whipping obelisks. They seem like a waste of time to me when the 'henge is cheap. The other two cities can build settlers and units in the meantime. I know a lot of you are saying to skip it and just go after the Oracle. I could get the copper going in York and then chop the Obelisk (I won't be able to whip it without that rice tile--catch-22). But I'd much rather chop Axemen, frankly, especially with the strategy I'm thinking about...
Consider this:
- Hook up copper while continuing to found cities. When copper is on-line for each city, starting building/whipping Axemen.
- Meanwhile, Woodsman II Warriors park themselves on jungle or forest hills within Aztec territory (one per city?). Monty goes nuts trying to dislodge them while his inability to send out Workers stunts his growth.
- When I have enough Axes, they take Tenochtitlan.
Okay--pretty standard Axe rush stuff so far, right? Here's where I push the envelope a little:
- Once I have the Aztec capital, I keep building Axes...but they start heading south. As I clean up any other Aztec cities, another Axe stack goes after Isabella.
Two simultaneous Axe rushes against two AI civs. I haven't done that before; I've always fought one enemy at a time. Desired results: get rid of the psychos, and capture
two holy cities. Then...
- Pick a religion. Spread it to America, convert Washington to it.
- Build more cities, if needed, so I have at least 9.
- Found at least one more religion.
- Leave behind my warlike ways. Turn cultural builder.
- While Washington pursues a peaceful spaceship victory, I pursue a peaceful cultural victory.
Whaddya think? I may even try to get Washington to join in the fighting at some point just for the diplomatic bonus with him. Later, I'll try to pursue a defensive pact.
The reason why I'm thinking of doing the Axe rush so early and so quickly, and against
both Monty and Izzy, is to get it over and done with so I can focus on culture. It seems very likely that Madrid and Tenochtitlan will be two of the cultural cities; London may, indeed, be the third.
Going after cultural would make me feel much better about York. When pursuing a cultural win, you really only have to have three cities reach their full potential. The others just have to be good enough to support the main three. York will certainly do that, though not much else.
Thoughts?
quickly switch to axe... This is just a suggestion, any problems with this?
Yes, as a "colonial", I have a definite temptation to rewrite history there. We'll see. And yes, Doc, I'm well aware that pursuing a peaceful cultural win means forgoing the Redcoat bee-line. They're still a worthwhile goal, if only for defense, and to keep my options with Washington open. Nares, yes, the opening of the game would be similar to others, but the difference would come mid-game when I switch to peaceful builder and go after a cultural win. I haven't tried that on a shared continent before. 
