I played but didn't submit BOTM 200 since I got wiped out by the first barb wave, and saw Poseidon pounded equally heavily by barbs (I did replay after not submitting). Hence, I would like to be very careful with barbs this time. I started with 4 fog busting warriors watching out all directions. And for that I also started with Animal Husbandry instead of Fishing at the beginning to get to work the horse tile and grab the extra shields from the first 15 turns for a warrior. Maybe this is over-zealous fog-busting. But barbs never come to me. Zero. They all went to Zeus, who survived multiple hard punches indeed! We have to research Archery for him so that he can fend barbs off and connect to some resources. Once I tried to send a Chariot to help him, but it got killed with a 95% win-rate by an archer in its second combat .
Afterwards, beelined to IW as it has to be. Chopped jungle like crazy with 4 workers, whipped settler at population 2 I believe and I got to 4 cities without any room to expand due to Barb cities everywhere. And then I lost the chance to take out the first barb city since I didn't dare to attack with 2 swordsmen against 2 barb archers -- Sarpedon had a Chariot parked right next to the city so I'm afraid he will take it if I lose 1 battle. Then, my third swordsman arrived 1 turn later than Zeus, who managed to use 2 swords to won the battle against 2 archers. I did manage to take out the second barb city easily with 3 swords. So at 1AD I only have 5 cities, 23 pop. 4 swordsmen and 1 more coming next turn. Great Lighthouse built at Dyme, iron city working on Moai, teched to Currency with the goal of getting Construction -> CoL, and planning for a Swordsman takeover of the people of the bushes. My scouting galley found that he hasn't connected his copper yet. Maybe I would have a chance to take his land with swordsmen only?
I took the Contender save, hoping for a peaceful victory. My experience with BOTM 200 proved that a military victory against the Cyclopes team is impossible for me, while my subsequent "for fun" play with the Adventurer save proved that was an easy walk in the park. As for beating my head against the wall with the Challenger save...no thanks!
Playing as a team against the raging barbs was an interesting experience. By positioning one fog-busting warrior to the south and one to the north, I managed to avoid the barbs completely. Not one wandered into my territory! On the other hand, watching my poor teammate, Zeus, deal with them was terrifying. Wave after wave attacked his capital, while (with my dismal starting position) I was in no position to send anything to his aide. His super-archer was promoted to Combat 1, City Garrison 2 and Guerilla 2, before it dies around 2360 BC. I was afraid Zeus would be eliminated and I was wondering if there would be any point continuing that game if that happened. But somehow he survived and started expanding.
At 1 AD, I've just completed the GLH and I have four cities, including one captured from barbs, after Achilles and Sarpedon conveniently bled the defenders with their own attacks.
A long time since I played this now, and I've been away on travel for a week, but found some screenshots to juggle my memory (don't want to risk loading a save in case something bad happens).
Playing as Poseidon, and I wondered what the barb situation would be like, and if Zeus would get wiped out. It ended up very bad indeed, and there were one or two very dicey situations, because the AI apparently is crazy risky. But he survived, which I'm glad for. Otherwise that giant horde would have assaulted our little corner of the map. As others wrote above, nobody - not one single barb - came to torment us. Which really surprised me. But did take advantage of map knowledge here in sending the starting warrior south to fog bust that little area, while another early warrior went north.
In the 200 game, the barbs invaded around turn 25, so I knew roughly the timing, but still took my chance on postponing Archery (but not as long as in the 200 game, when I had no idea how utterly brutal the barbs would be). Opened with Fishing->Hunting->AH->Archery. Don't recall the first build now, but I know there was some juggling because we have 0 decent tiles to work until Fishing. Think it may have been a warrior, but am not sure. In any case, an extremely slow start due to all that jungle.
Turn 27 and the first barbs invade Zeus. Thankfully he hadn't gone exploring with the super archer, which I was genuinely worried about. He kinda did later and it ended up in a non-capital city, and also attacked barb warriors (without even combat to help out), but he did survive, and at that point Zeus was able to build more archers. Would have been really interesting to have stats on Zeus too, because he must have lost a LOT of archers while attacking barbs. He also lost several workers and two settlers. Here is a settler and worker caught nowhere.
Spoiler:
Unlike in BOTM 200, however, the barbs took an absurd long time before they busted improvements. No idea why that was, but here they have "finally" busted the pig. Shortly after this, 10 barbs are in Zeus' culture, with 5 of them ready to attack in the same turn. It went fine, but not by much.
Was a bit frustrating to see Zeus waste so many units, though. Archers kept attacking warriors or injured archers or spears in the forest, dying or getting injured, and then getting farmed afterwards by barbs in the nextdoor tile. Won't be surprised if Zeus lost 20 units in these early 60-70-80 turns. He also did this idiocy with the super-archer, but thankfully it survived (probably sheer luck).
Zeus was slow to expand, maybe he didn't fancy the largely tundra-based land around him, and therefore only has 4 cities in 1AD. I expanded on our little area first, until Zeus got decent control of the barb situation. Went north first, then two cities to the south. Had forgotten there was iron on the western tip there, which was a bit annoying (had to place a city on top of it), but at least didn't have to build a desert mine+road, which takes 9 turns or something like that. 5 cities at 1AD, and a couple of units ready to strike
Spoiler:
From what I recall, we had those Axes and 14 Horse Archers, though not all were in position to attack that turn yet. Plus 3 more coming out the next turn.
The yellow-ish borders NW is actually Hera. She very rudely stole a barb city right in front of our noses.
The scoreboard got cut off there, but it should also be noted that Achilles was already plotting war at this point, which could realistically only be against us.
I see others have successfully built the Great Lighthouse. I tried, but was too late. Only got 100-ish failgold from it (and max OF from a whip would land when it was just too late). That may have been after 1AD, though, I'm not sure.
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. I did manage to take out the second barb city easily with 3 swords. So at 1AD I only have 5 cities, 23 pop. 4 swordsmen and 1 more coming next turn. Great Lighthouse built at Dyme, iron city working on Moai, teched to Currency with the goal of getting Construction -> CoL, and planning for a Swordsman takeover of the people of the bushes. My scouting galley found that he hasn't connected his copper yet. Maybe I would have a chance to take his land with swordsmen only?
