My first GOTM, having a lot of fun. I have been a casual on and off civ IV players for years, normally playing peaceful noble games out-teching AIs and abandoning them early, when my domination became evident, so this is very new to me. I was trying to channel "Warrior Queen Hattie", built a bunch of WCs and harassed neighbors, but with limited success. The first Isabella's city I got was settled on Stone, no food resources, so I just razed it. Got another HRE city far away ad decided to keep it due to nice resources and pop, but forgot about distance maintenance, so it was ruining me costing 12g per turn in maintenance but gifting it felt wrong. Now I got couple more cities just before 1AD, several still in revolt, 1-2 pop. I have only 10 cities together with around 43 pop, definitely not that great. Expansion is definitely my weakness, I settled in place and settled 2 helper cities before T50, than try to got more workers and cities by conquest with limited success, and finally started to built my own workers.
What are best strategies on map that crowded? Should I raze that Stone city? Cannot image how Lymond can have 13 cities @200BC and among them 6 self-settled?
The only part I feel I did quite well was teching, I prioritized research and just got maces just before 1AD
Got also Oracles and Mids, I decided Mids are priority for SPI but then it looked like I can get Oracle relatively safely, so I went for it. Great Lighthouse was built by Vicky, I'll try to conquer it, since my economy is in a bad shape, might be a better deal than researching currency, at least more fun.
I hope that now that I have maces I will catch up, although my production capabilities are limited and I hate whipping, which anyway is more painful now in bigger cities and impossible to whip maces in pop 2s.
How many workers & cities do you guys have? what are you teching? I have not decided for a victory type yet and playing it up by the ear. I feel like I know what to do until about turn 50 (2 helper cities, maximally efficient use of a worker(s)), but getting lost later. Here, I went for the Mids and war techs, trying to not get bankrupt and adapt to the map (Calendar). I was normally playing with tech trading turned off, so not sure what I sure research and what is a chance of getting from AI.
Anyway, I may have trouble finishing this game, just managed to install McBuffy couple days ago, so was rushing through the early turns. Any feedback/suggestions welcome, I hope to become a better player and learn new ways to play civ.