Challenger with Raging Barbs.
I believe that I played past 1 AD in my first session, so, do not worry about swapping out my game. It has been an enjoyable game; thank you!
Great Wall on Turn 40. After that, although I had to play catch-up, it was just like any other game.
Thankfully, it seems that all of the AIs had their capitals reasonably far away from us. Although that fact perhaps meant dealing with more Barbs, initially, it also meant that:
- there was more room for peaceful expansion once The Great Wall had been built
- there were at least 3 nearby Barb Cities to conquer with War Chariots/Axemen
1 AD Statistics:
8 Cities; 23 Population Points
It doesn't sound like much, but throw in the facts that I have 8 Granaries and 10 Apostolic-Palace Buildings, with plenty of Happiness and Healthiness to grow into, and the situation is looking quite positive
Have Metal Casting and Calendar; am about about to learn Code of Laws
All of the Religions except for Islam have been founded
Boudica declared war on Cyrus
Alex declared war on Hannibal
Hammurabi has 10+ Units in my territory, but they appear to just be going for a Barb City which I have yet to capture
Barb Galleys are proving troublesome and have sunk a couple of my Galleys, but I have a Trireme about to be completed
Probably the most interesting part is the what happened during the first turns, while getting to The Great Wall.
Thanks to tips from Fippy and LowtherCastle, I built Warriors without building a Worker. Once Masonry was unlocked, I built The Great Wall.
The only Hills River square initially visible meant burning the Gold by settling on top of it, with no guarantee of even getting a Food Resource. Yet, with the predicted Barb onslaught expected to happen on Turn 13, I wasn't about to worry about getting the "perfect 20-square-big-fat-cross capital." Survival was what was important, and having a River meant having better City Defence power from some angles of attack.
The fact that the PH Riv Gold square gave +1 Hammer and +1 Commerce was quite nice, but not absolutely necessary.
The other important part was that there were several Forsted squares to work. A Forested Deer would have been ideal, but seeing at least 2 G For squares and 2 P For squares from the initial screenshot meant that it was feasible to grow to Size 4 and then have a decent amount of Hammers for building a Wonder: 7 Hammers per turn without the Plains Hills square, 8 Hammers per turn with it. At 150 Hammers, that would be 22 Turns without the Plains Hills square or 19 Turns with it. Thus, the +1 Hammer was nice, but not as important as having those Forested squares. The Barbs could temporary block access to a Forest, but the Barbs could not Pillage a Forest.
Similarly, the +1 Commerce from the Gold was nice, but it does get dwarfed by the 8 Commerce from a Palace.
Indeed, it was nice that I also had two 3-Food squares for initial growth (G Corn and G Sheep), but they weren't strictly necessary. They may have sped up the path to The Great Wall by a couple of turns, as they meant that I could start working 4 Forests at-a-time a bit sooner.
Surely, I could beat the AIs to a Wonder if I beelined it, and thus it just came down to surviving the Barbs.
One trick to note is that when Barbs begin "area amassing" and then they receive the trigger to rush you, they quickly create a hole just behind of where they were, allowing new Barbs to spawn. Barbs with random movement typically prevent other Barbs from spawning (since Barb Units also act as spawn-buster Units), but such a hole of Barb-Abandoned Territory would give the opportunity for more Barbs to spawn.
I wanted to have a spawn-buster in that "hole" region, so that when the inevitable Barb rush came, new ones wouldn't be appearing in their wake, which is really what is likely to kill you off.
I suppose that leaving the capital undefended could have killed you off, too.
I managed to get 2 spawn-busters out into reasonable "hole-blocking" positions, and kept 2 Warriors in the capital.
Some Barbs funnelled toward the capital, but only a few at a time, thanks to the "hole-blocking" spawn-busters. No more than 2 Barbs attacked my capital on the same turn as each other.
Also, having the Ocean to the south and a couple of Lakes to the north-west aided a lot. Otherwise, I probably would have needed a 3rd City-Defending Warrior before starting on The Great Wall.
I'm last in score with 787; Persia is leading with 1245 and 11 cities. The Mayans are really hogging the Wonders(!) but have the fewest cities. I missed out on the marble site to the north but did manage to snag the gold/pigs site to its east. Also lost the isthmus site out west to Boudica but I think I've confined her to no farther than that. Plan is to capture another few cities from Hammy, take a breather to get Engineering, then finish him off with trebs. Maybe then go after Pacal if he's not too far ahead in tech??
