In the pre game I said I will hide from AI until I had 4 units and go looking for it. By the time I was done with the worker and the first warrior, I knew I am going to need archers for the rush. So change tech path to archers after Poly and Agri. Then to Sailing, BW, Wheel, Pottary, AH and Meditation.
Using
Gosha190 spoiler trick, We settled south of start and found the second gem available for mining. I freaked when a jungle spread to Dye before the worker was done but RNG was nice till the worker started mining the Gem.
Our original warrior traveled to the NW corner and did a clockwise loop. WHen he got to the rice to the south, we saw the green border (Sal? found out not later)and quickly pulled the warrior away. Still was not sure if we were isolated or not. He went west and saw the white border - Biz or Liz -good peace lovers. Built two more warriors before we were able to build archers. Built 4 archers and two Galleys with chops and rushing (I do not like this method but it is very effective).
Turn 83 Ethiopia was eliminated, lost two archers attacking by sea against one warrior. The worker who built all those roads were lost forever. The City was size 6. Rushed a worker asap. The loan archer in the boat went to white border. He picked up two warriors and another archer enroute. Capture a worker building a mine on copper
. Turn 93 London was captured with one archer loss to two warriors, but English had another city toward Ethiopia. Turn 101 York was captured but forgot to raze. Economy dived but i never noticed because of the gold captured.
By this time we built a city on the Horses on the easter island and were building Chariots. Had planned to build the SH and the Oracle in the capital for culture points but Hatty built the SH. Capital would go on to build the Oracle for MC and ToA. London and Aksum would be the other two culture cities. London built GLH, Coloosus and chopped/pop rushed Mids on turn 210 (4 turns past 500AD). Aksum built the Palace in turn 182 and had generated two scientist. One for Math and other for Philo.
We lost Confusionism to the unknown AI. I am guessing it is Izzy or Mansa since they got two religions so far. We have Buddhism, Hindu, Chritianity and Taoism. We will have Islam one way or the other. At the stopping point, we are not even close to Islam yet.
After finishing English, we sent pillaging parties to each of the other three civs and badly damaged their tiles. During this time we started building HArchers. On turn 211 Egypt was out of the game with the help of 3 Cats, 3axes and 3 HA. She had 3 workers and a settler in the city the turn we attacked but the three workers disappeared next turn when we captured the city. Oh well. At least got one.
Found a real good production site near Aksum ion turn 182 and set up a Heroic Epic and has 1 instructor there and building double promoted axes every two turns. It still have some growing to do.
I feel the game is now winable for my style of playing but have not started the second session yet since I about 80% of times mess up the second session. I am also not happy with the fact I did not research IW untill too late and thought DS had made it a real challenge. One of the cities I razed was built on Iron but i never knew.
BTW small raiding parties of 3 units started showing up near Aksum as early as 500BC. But by 500 AD larger stacks showd up. I think if I did not send out raiding parties, the stacks would have showed up much earlier. My early economy was financed by pillaging and I can not believe I never tried this before.
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) and didnt give it as much attention as i should i guess, i may try it again just for the fun of it.
). Any ways when my chariot took it after it came out of anarchy, I did not get the option to raze it. I guess I had built too much culture in it by then.
