Hi all,
Decided to play a bit of Civ just for pleasure, and check if I still remembered how to play
So I picked Challenger to allow the AI's to build more cities for me, and to help them tech faster. Don't know if it helped much though
I managed to trade for Iron Working at least, and a couple of low level techs. The investment in the Alphabet paid back but not even remotely as much as I had hoped for...
The starting site did not look attractive, so I moved south with my settler and found a nice spot close to silk, sugar, pigs, flood plains and river grassland. Built a couple of cottages to ensure good economy. It happened to be very close to Isabella and she was generous enough to provide me with massive numbers of workers (nine so far)
The score list indicated that the map was pretty large with ~1200 land tiles, so I decided to focus on early cottages and focus on research and expansion. This will hopefully provide a strong base for domination victory without running out of money. Also, I hope the AI will build enough cities for me to reach the land limit. Perhaps it would be better to rely on loot money while conquering, but I am afraid of the maintenance costs.
Also, I enjoy the optimization and micro managing part of the early game.
My first immediate idea was to take Madrid since it looked very juicy, but just as I had rushed a bunch of Holkans, the barbarians started to show up. They came from everywhere, and the slow expansion of the AIs didn't help either (I'm used to AI cities blocking the barbs). So I abandoned my militaristic plans, and instead reverted to worker stealing (she continuously sent workers to the pigs next to my borders). In hindsight, I think it was good to leave Isabella alone (apart from DoW her six times
)
I was lucky to capture a barb city and even more lucky to defend with one Holkan against a barb axe on two occasions.
History of the Maya Empire as of 10 AD
2750 BC - Bronze Working
1925 BC - 2nd city
1550 BC - 3rd city
1350 BC - Alphabet
1000 BC - 4th city
550 BC - Barb city
State of the Maya Empire as of 10 AD
14 workers
15 military units
42 pop
44 surplus food / turn
33 hammers / turn
5 ball parks
5 health resources
4 happy resources
~70 beakers / turn @ 40%
21 tech including construction and calender (3 turns from currency)
The future of the Maya Empire
There will soon be war. I've started to build catapults, and Madrid will be first. Then I will move eastward. I want to reach Drama and Music to enable cultural expansion and still run Slavery. With whipping and hammers, I hope to build at least one unit / turn.