Alternative Strategies, Settling in Place, & a Rant.

[NitroJay]

One more thing, if you're able to trade someone for Code of Laws, you'll get to Devine Right easy. Just switch to pasifist government and you'll churn out twice as many GP's... Not required though to win, but eases the preasure a bit... Once you have Devine Right, it's a mad dash to be first in pop. The sooner you get Devine right, the easier the last goal is.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Pacifism is enabled by philosophy. I think you meant Castes which allows unlimited GPs.

 

[Wessel V1]

One size 12 city gives way more population than two size 6 cities. Therefore it is advised to maximize food in only a few core cities. Health is indeed the key, but also try to find locations with the most food available.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Wessel makes a very good point. Just comparing 2 recent RAND games:
1. I inherit the badly bunched up cities of Egypt as the Turks in the 600s AD, and even after conquering (the equally bunched up) France next door and had 18 cities, all size 12 or so (except for a few that I founded), my population was only 20%. Spaceship win in 1947.
2. Khmer, starting out 3000 BC in a cold land (no jungles) but I got 10 good cities all grown up to size 20= 42% population with domination in 1700 or so.

These are all large maps, but for the regular huge world map in 1200 AD nobody should have a city size 14 except for you (well, maybe Amsterdam).

 

[killerkebab]

These are all large maps, but for the regular huge world map in 1200 AD nobody should have a city size 14 except for you (well, maybe Amsterdam).

Why does Constantinople never grow very much until Turkey conquers? After all, there is a lot of food there...

 

[AnotherPacifist]

It'll grow, if Greece has the Great Wall (which it almost never does when the AI plays it). The AI is too busy whipping soldiers to defend against barbs.

 

[LegioCorvus]

Victory!

Thanks for the tips, NitroJay. Unfortunately, I haven't visited the thread since my last post, so I didn't get to use any of them, but a lot of 'em ended up being part of my winning strategy.

I had it all down, and finally got the 5 religions, when I went for the population size. That ended up being impossible with how big China got, so I decided to use the China harass I used previously when I was gunning for Confucianism. 1 warrior holds out China 'til around turn 65 when they finally get Mathematics & catapults, but 2 warriors can keep China bottled in the entire game. Look at these two beautiful, stick wielding bald warriors:



That's 1200 AD. They only allowed 3 cities to be built in China. I had to pull them back when China first got catapults, but they kept the second city from being built for a long time. One also got me China's worker early in the game, so I could get marble hooked up before my second city was even built, and later they got me a few extra workers when I started to expand after killing the elephants. I officially dedicate my victory to those two, and there will be massive parades in Delhi, yes... Delhi, the starting location city... when they return.

Here's the victory shot:



Persia ended up being a great ally. Sure, during my one game (when I tried the 1 warrior harass in China) they gave me the plague, but in my winning game not only did they trade me Monarchy & Calendar, but they captured the city north of them before getting The Great Wall. I have no idea what happened to the barbarians after that, oddly enough. China, maybe? Still, it was almost 900 AD when they got it, so it wasn't so much a game changer as a nice relief.

Last 300 years were such a breeze, despite a miserly 20% tech rate, that I ended up with the Apostolic Palace and ruling a vast Buddhist empire from Persia to Japan. Got the Parthenon in Delhi as well, mostly out of lack of anything else to build.

Now, off to China...

 

[MrBanana]

China is much easier then India,you won't need that many trys.