BOTM03 First Spoiler

[AluminumKnight]

It's strange, I'm sure I rushed Toku's 1 archer with 3 of mine, but I did while the city was pop1, then founded a new city on the same spot. I didn't want to risk archers popping up there while I waited for it to grow. I guess the cultural borders were weak enough that I managed it.

You beat Toku's archer with Drill I and CG I with 3 warriors? Or do you mean his warrior? If you're really talking about an archer, congratulations, you beat the RNG. Otherwise, Toku had 2 warriors by the time I got to him, which means you'd need 6 warriors to maintain the 3:1 ratio, which is pretty safe. Since the RNG can be mean, an extra warrior or two is probably a good idea.

 

[Rashiminos]

You beat Toku's archer with Drill I and CG I with 3 warriors? Or do you mean his warrior? If you're really talking about an archer, congratulations, you beat the RNG. Otherwise, Toku had 2 warriors by the time I got to him, which means you'd need 6 warriors to maintain the 3:1 ratio, which is pretty safe. Since the RNG can be mean, an extra warrior or two is probably a good idea.

He meant his own archers.

 

[Ronnie1]

Challenger save, gauntlet challenge.

I started by moving the warrior SW with the intention of settling on the PH in the W. The plan was to build worker first while researching mining and BW. Follow the worker with a barracks and start pre-chopping forests while waiting for the copper location. I explored to the SW and then the dead end in the west. After coming back to the east I of course found Kyoto on the hill, with the 2 Archers standing guard.

When no copper showed, I decided to go straight for IW. I built warriors until I grew to size 2 and then built a settler, it was ready 1 turn before IW came in. I followed with 2 more workers. In the interim, my 1st worker pre-chopped almost all of the forests at Lisbon. I think I chopped 1 into the settler itself.

When the Iron showed up in the middle of nowhere, I was really unsure what to do. If I settled 2S of it to get the fish, I would need a border pop to get it. That would also take the time to research Myst, chop an obelisk, and then wait 15 more turns to begin building a mine, way to long. If I settle 1S, I'm on the coast, but still need Sailing to build a lighthouse (not in my immediate plans) and I lose the ONLY other decent tile (the forested PH) in the FC. So I chose to settle Oporto on the Iron and start building an Axe, figuring barbs would start showing sooner or later anyway, and it seemed like it was taking forever just to get this far. Right before the axe was finished, I decided to insert a barracks, and chopped the near forest to speed it. I then chop/mined the PH forest to finish the barracks, over flow to finish the axe and still another good over flow into a Sword. I then set Oporto to continuous build Swords until eventually changing to Cats. It is a constant size 1 city, producing 6H/t.

My workers quickly roaded Oporto to Lisbon, and Lisbon started building Swords. I chopped most all of the forsets, leaving only the grassland forests so I could continue to grow at a painfully slow pace while building swords only. I was working a grasshill mine on the river and a grassland forest at size 2 for 6H/t also. 1 of the workers started roading up the coast towards Kyoto.

I declared on Toku in 1400bc, much later than I had originally hoped for. The biggest problem I was having at this point was good intel. Kyoto was well past its second border pop, and I had no idea how many units he had there. I declared with 6 swords, 1 axe, and 2 warriors(1 medic) and moved N. When I got my first look at Kyoto, still 1 move away, I thought I was in good shape, there were only 3 archers there. But the next turn, when I was in position, he had moved 3 MORE units into the city. Now I was facing 5 archers and a warrior! I decided to walk right past while I was waiting for more swords to arrive. I started chopping forests outside the cultural borders of Lisbon, everything to speed more swords to the front. I started pillaging improvements and roads, I miss clicked and sent a warrior by himself too far NE, he was killed by an archer from the NE city. But then Toku sent 1 or 2 units to try and get past me towards Lisbon. I brought all my units back towards Kyoto. It was now defended by 4 archers and a warrior. I had 8 swords, 1 axe, and 1 warrior, I needed them all! 5 swords died, but my warrior took the city, and my reinforcements coming up from Lisbon took out the units that could have come back to cause more trouble.

I razed the other 2 Japanese cities, it took another 38 turns, but at T150/350bc, I was down to 7 remaining rivals!

On T156 I founded my 3rd city NE of Kyoto to grab the 3 seafoods, cows, and bananas. I chopped a Library here ASAP, followed by a chopped Granary, and then a chopped Lighthouse so I could run 2 scientists here for bulbing Optics!

I was roading my way towards London now, I signed an OB agreement so I could get a look at what I was facing this time. To my pleasant surprise, London was only guarded by 2 archers, and there were no reinforcements within range. Once I got 4 units at the border I Dow. It takes 2 moves to get within range, and now London has 4 DEFENDING archers!!! But it is not on a hill, and the 2 new ones were not promoted IIRC. My best sword is now C1+cover+CR1, ~65% odds, I decide to go for it. I win at 65%, 59%, 67%, and then lose of course at 74%, before taking and keeping London and its gold mine! I should have tried to grab some techs from Liz for peace at this point, as she was the only one with alphabet. But for some reason, I never even really considered it. She only had 1 other city in the jungle E of London, and I razed it on T168/80bc. 6 Rivals left!

I start moving my units towards Monty in the NE as I'm teching my way to Construction and Cats. I also have some workboats out exploring in both directions from Kyoto by now. But somehow I miss the 1 tile passage to Capac in the east.

I have run 1 unit through Monty's territory by now, and I'm gathering my swords at his SW border. Then he builds a new city right in front of me. Actually, I let him, his settler was guarded by a Jag, and I had a CR2 sword that I figured would get better odds, of course he loses at 75% odds, so I auto raze it with the next in line. Here is where I made a couple tactical errors because of poor strategic planning. I didn't build enough Axes, and I had run 1 of the the few all the way through Monty's land on the recon mission. I thought with the Jags being strength 5, that my swords would be OK, but I moved a couple out of the jungles to pillage some resources, and shock promoted Jags hammered my best City raiders. Fortunately, cats were now on the way to the front. I was not overly impressed with any of the Aztec city sites, so I started razing them 1 by 1. Monty does build a lot of units though. So at 500AD, he still has 1 city, but it should fall pretty soon!

The good things I did this game included not keeping too many cities. I have a tendency to keep ALL of them and seem to crash my economy often. I beelined military techs only, as the prescribed goal is conquest! I am only a few turns away from my GS and should have Machinery a few turns after that for bulbing Optics! I circled the starting continent with workboats, and found the 1 tile passage to Capac the second time by, so I should have decent intel when I upgrade my Triremes to Carracks and start moving east.

Things I did not do so well. I missed the passage to Capac the FIRST time by. I failed to try and grab a bunch of techs from Liz when I had the chance. I don't know what she may have given up for a mere 10 turns of peace, because I got so caught up in the CONQUEST, I totally jelled on even asking! Letting my "Hero's of the Sword" C1,cover, CR1&2 Sword die in the open at the hands of a Jaguar! I may have razed too many cities. After looking at the map some more, I maybe should have kept 1 or 2 of Monty's. I am miles behind Ribannah and the amazing start he put up!

Still sooooo much to learn!!!!!!

Research order:
T11/3725bc Mining
T30/3250bc BW
T58/2550bc IW
T68/2300bc Wheel
T76/2100bc Fishing
T87/1825bc Pottery
T105/1375bc Writing
T118/1050bc Masonry
T122/950bc Hunting
T128/800bc Animal Husbandry
T156/260bc Mathematics
T170/50bc Construction
T180/100AD Metal Casting
T187/205AD Sailing
500AD Currently close to Machinery
OOPS, just realized I still need to research Compass before I can bulb Optics

Cities at 500AD
T2/3950bc Lisbon
T62/2450bc Oporto
T112/1200bc Kyoto
T156/260bc Guimarães
T161/185bc London

 

[Obormot]

@ Conquest Challenge players

Is it worth the effort to kill off all you nearby AI at his level so early or better to keep them around for some tech trades while you beeline toward Optic? The reason is AI, even BTS, does not build enough units to be an issue for a good stack of combined arms, you can perhaps have maces in no time.

In most cases killing the Ai is a good deal, especially when it can be done at little cost.

Early conquest is much more efficent then settling. A settler costs 100 hammers, capturing a city when it is only defended by warriors or archers costs less. Even killing Toku's archers was relatively cheap: I lost two archers taking Kyoto and 2 more archers taking Osaka, that is 50 hammers per city. Plus I captured a worker, plus some improvements were already built by Toku, plus capitals are usually more productive then normal cities. And capturing London (a great city defended only by warriors) was an even better deal.

Also eliminating a civ is good even if you don't capture any cities. With 8 rivals killing one of them is equavilent to boosting Your production by 1/8=12.5%, because You'll need to produce less units later.

The tech trading benefit is not very significant when you beeline to one specific tech (Optics). And once You get Optics yoo can trade with the other continent.

A more interesting question is balancing conquest vs. research. For example after conquering Japan & England I had to decide whether I want to continue building archers to rush the Aztecs too, or stop and start building infrastructure: a library in London, the Oracle in Lisbon, some granaries & monuments. I chose the latter, because Monty was quite far away from me, and I knew that he builds lots of troops. I thought that killing him with archers will be to difficult, and there isn't much point in doing so, since there is enough time before I can research Optics anyway. After reading Ribannah's spoiler I see that maybe I was wrong.

 

[humbe]

Tried to replay to duplicate Ribannah's plan last night.. Got to bed at 5 am.. A bit tired at work today (Just to mention it yet again, I'm just using this game to learn and test, not submitting any)

I tried with the challenge save, but I could not for the life of me warrior rush the archers. Looked promising initially.. I entered his border with a single warrior stealing his worker, having 5 warriors available next to it. First turn he popped warrior guarding gems back into town. Second he attacked with the warriors to free the cow tile. Failing that he attacked my almost dead warrior with an archer, which I killed of easily the round after. With one archer left though, he wouldn't attack me.. I even tried waiting for him to build a warrior so he might have attacked with the archer, but his build, eventuallly, was an archer. I could screw up his life totally, but I couldn't seem to make a dent in his final archer. Even with 6-7 warriors, they all died. Since the archer was so much better, there was like a 0.8% or so chance to win, and the chance to make a dent in the archer to make it easier for the next warrior also seemed very slim.. How on earth do you manage to trick the last archer out of the city?

Anyways.. I restarted on contender save. This made all the difference. Attacked Japan with a 3 warriors or so to steal his worker. Seems there's not much happy penalties to such early wars, so didn't see any point in waiting. Worker helps me the most early. While waiting for Kyoto to pop to population 2, so I didn't autoraze it (thought cities with culture wasn't autorazed at size 1, but I guess that is no longer true), I sent 3 warriors onwards.. Think I ended up taking London before Kyoto, as they got another warrior while I was waiting for pop, and then I needed some extra ones myself. Those who were there was sitting around to block hammer sites. After taking both Kyoto and London I sent 6 warriors after Monty. He had just spawned a second city. New one only had one warrior defending.. I razed that (size 1 so no choice, but far away anyways) and camped his capitol. Pillaging the improvements and sitting on his biggest hammer tiles. Waited for some of my warriors to gain full health, and for him to have bad luck attacking me. When that happened, I razed his capitol. (Didn't like the location of it, and woulda been high upkeep too).

From there I started to build my economy and create some more cities. 4th city between Kyoto and London, 5th at copper/cow/2xclam further east, 6th between kyoto and 5th. Rushed Aztecs when I had built 5-6 axes. They had only had time to build a single axe when I declared and took his bronze location. Quickly razed his other city and camped capitol and took it after a while. Think I finished him around 200 AD.

At 500 AD I was a bit behind my more peaceful game in research. But my research output was considerably more, mostly thanks to London that was at such an awesome city site. The Aztec capitol was also another excellent one. Another gem up on the hill appeared too.

I was very surprised how poorly protected the various players were. It's still fairly early, but it took me quite a few turns to walk warriors to London and Monty. Met nothing but warriors fighting all of them, and many cities was defended by a lone warrior. Even after doing that, and waiting for Axes, Aztecs were still defending their 2nd city with a single UU unit and their capitol with 2 UU units, 2 archers & 1 sword. In addition they had an axe walking around. That is even though they had iron inside capitol fat cross, and copper just outside.

I built a lot of wonders. Probably more than I should, but this being noble it's so tempting. As I need to wait for optics, I guess the other continent has got longbows before I can get there, so guess I'll have to wait until at least maces/catapults before launching abroad. Good thing with carracks though, I don't really need astronomy that early, so I can have use for my Collossus longer. Seemed like this would be a good start for all victory conditions, as you need to expand to get your economy going anyways.

I also tend to eventually build all buildings I can. I can't help it even though I know it's not smart. Would be awesome if I could take a whole lot of buildings and remove them from the build options list even though I haven't built them.

A thing I am unsure of though, is how many cities to build. I was running 20-30% tech in the midst of it due to high maintenance costs, but still had decent research as I had a lot of commerce from the cities. Now it's up to 50% and rising. I can fill the continents with 20+ non-overlapping cities with decent resources, but is it worth it? Or should I just go with 10-15 cities to claim all types of resources available and just create cities in the best locations I can find?

Well.. Gotta test this out in a game I haven't played before. Creds to Ribannah for pulling this of even better on his first try

 

[Niklas]

Since there was a wish to hear about failed rushes...

I'm obviously not experienced enough at rushing. I sent 8 warriors against Tokugawa's single archer in Kyoto. They brought him from 2.0 to 1.5. Wow. Suddenly the game didn't seem so fun any more, and I don't have enough time right now to spend on completing it (indeed I don't fulfil the requirements for reading or posting in this thread, so that alone disqualifies me from submitting).

 

[JerichoHill]

Contender Save

I've played to 270 AD.

Settled NE on the coast. Warrior rushed Toko with 4 warriors vs. 1. Captured Kyoto the turn it grew.

Warrior Rushed Lizzy 3 warriors vs. 1. Took London

Warrior Rushed Monty 4 warriors vs. 1. Took his capital too.

Built the great wall so Barbs wouldn't bother me

Lost a settler to barbs (STUPID!)

CS Sling w/ Oracle

Spreading religion for border expansion.

No other rivals on my continent. It's lonely.

 

[humbe]

From all the tests I've run, you still need to be lucky to kill that fortified, promoted archer in hill city with warriors. I tried at least 3-4 times just to get a feel for how hard it is, but all of them failed miserably. Would be fun if you marked a stack to attack a city you got the real odds of winning given that you applied the whole stack. This becomes quite tedious to calculate for a human. Another thing that would have made it easier to calculate would be if you could also see odds of actually hurting the other part, and not just odds to win against it. Probably still need to be lucky to pull it of attacking with archers too.. Archers aren't that much better than warriors on the offensive. Don't really think rushing Toku on challenger here is viable if you can't manage to lure the archers out of the city, which I couldn't when I tested.

 

[Duin]

First time playing Game of the month. Have wanted to try for awhile and this seemed like a good difficulty level as I normally play monarch. I started with the contender save.

Started out settling in place and teching BW for chops. Once I realized how bad my starting position was I stole a worker and started building a barracks and spamming out warriors. Kyoto only had two warriors in it so I needed to move fast. With a bit of luck I took out Kyoto with a stack of CR 1 warriors around 2800 BC.

With Japan gone it seemed like I had a lot of space to settle into so I decided to try a peaceful game. Settled one city south of Lisbon near the fur and then put a wave of cities North of Kyoto. Built the Oracle and took Philosophy. Founded Buddhism in Kyoto and got the English to adopt as their state religion which gave me an excellent trading partner and future wall street city. At this point I realized I had a chance to found 4 religions and had 3 decent cities to try for a cultural victory. The three cities are Lisbon, Kyoto, and a city north of Kyoto with the rice and lots of river plains. Another city NE of Kyoto would become the GP farm. It had 3 seafood, bananas and cows.

I figure Monty will be a pain so I will make the city near his boundary (pig hill and rice) my production and military city. With a tech lead I don't envision too many problems holding him off. The last main city is on the peninsula near the bronze, perfect Maoi city with the single seafood for growth.

Time to start building lots of missionaries and temples and some key wonders.

 

[Simon_c]

You beat Toku's archer with Drill I and CG I with 3 warriors? Or do you mean his warrior? If you're really talking about an archer, congratulations, you beat the RNG. Otherwise, Toku had 2 warriors by the time I got to him, which means you'd need 6 warriors to maintain the 3:1 ratio, which is pretty safe. Since the RNG can be mean, an extra warrior or two is probably a good idea.

Sorry, I meant, I rushed toky with 3 warriors against his 1.

 

[jesusin]

First time playing Game of the month. Have wanted to try for awhile and this seemed like a good difficulty level as I normally play monarch. I started with the contender save.

Started out settling in place and teching BW for chops. Once I realized how bad my starting position was I stole a worker and started building a barracks and spamming out warriors. Kyoto only had two warriors in it so I needed to move fast. With a bit of luck I took out Kyoto with a stack of CR 1 warriors around 2800 BC.

With Japan gone it seemed like I had a lot of space to settle into so I decided to try a peaceful game. Settled one city south of Lisbon near the fur and then put a wave of cities North of Kyoto. Built the Oracle and took Philosophy. Founded Buddhism in Kyoto and got the English to adopt as their state religion which gave me an excellent trading partner and future wall street city. At this point I realized I had a chance to found 4 religions and had 3 decent cities to try for a cultural victory. The three cities are Lisbon, Kyoto, and a city north of Kyoto with the rice and lots of river plains. Another city NE of Kyoto would become the GP farm. It had 3 seafood, bananas and cows.

I figure Monty will be a pain so I will make the city near his boundary (pig hill and rice) my production and military city. With a tech lead I don't envision too many problems holding him off. The last main city is on the peninsula near the bronze, perfect Maoi city with the single seafood for growth.

Time to start building lots of missionaries and temples and some key wonders.

Welcome to GOTM! I hope you get as much fun here as I do.

There is something in your spoiler that surprises me. Do you really think Lisbon is a decent city for a cultural game? Why?

 

[jesusin]

Contender Save
I've played to 270 AD.
...
No other rivals on my continent. It's lonely.

Then you shouldn't be writing here, should you?

I think you are going to get info from the spoilers that is not available in your game.

 

[Nobikaigan]

Contender start, first GOTM in a long long time.
Rush the Japanese
Settle in place, start with a worker. I find Kyoto almost immediatly and steal his worker and send him back home. Kyoto has a single warrior, so I chop out a stack of 5 (6 total with my exploring warrior) and rush on in. By then he had 2 warriors, but fortune favors the bold and I am worried about him teching archery. I get lucky and dent both defenders in my initial 2 attacks, then get nice hits with my next 2 warriors, killing onw defender and seriously damaging the last one. I attack with my last 2 warriors at 88% and then 95% odds and lose both battles. Not to be defeated I go ahead and chop/whip up another 5 warriors and take Kyoto in 2800bc losing 4 of them. I had settled close to the marble at 2700bc, and popped out another city to grab the gold NW of Kyoto in 2300.
Hey Liz!!!
After this initial slowdown, I go ahead and explore finding Liz, but I am not ready to attack her until I get some better units. I get both stonehenge(2125) and oracle(1700) in my capitol, (thanks for all those forests!) grabbing CoL as my free tech. Probably could have pulled CS if I timed it better, but oh well, CoL is not bad. Of course, Conf. was founded in my crappy marble city, I really wanted the culture in one of my newer cities...oh well. I am teching IW and pop a settler out with the idea to snag the banana/pig site in the center of the landmass. When I am just about to settle for a 'high food' city IW finishes and there is Iron that can go right into my BFC!!! Plop that settler down thinking I have probably stolen Liz's only iron, and start spamming swords.
War again!
Meanwhile Gprophet builds shrine in Marble to help the $ situation, and declare on liz a bit before I am fully ready.. 2 workers unprotected Liz? Come on... War with Liz is kind of slow as she has 5-6 archers in each city and the RNG gods must love her as I lost about 10 battles that were ~90%, but swords/cats do their thing and eventually I take 4 cities and raze one, eliminating her from the game. Also take a barb city down by the copper to the E with 2 clams, and keep that one.
Economy!!!! Help!
Start spamming religion/courthouses around and by 500AD my economy is back on track and I haver built a forbidden palace, GLib. in London, and srt up the ex-barb city as a military production site. Monty is rather boxed in and HC is merely a workboat trapped by my culture.
Mistakes
I really shouldn't have made the Kyoto rush with 3:1 warriors, it is a good bet but the RNG hates me! 4:1 would have given me Kyoto much sooner.
Near the end of the war with Liz, I was starting to feel WW to the tune of 2 but I never converted to Conf. as I originally only wanted to get the gold from the shrine, and my cities were perfectly happy and growing culture from stonehenge. Probably cost me a significant amout of lost tiles and extra culture growth, as I forgot to adopt until the very last of her cities was falling...
Thoughts
At 500AD I am one turn away from teching CS. I've not been concerned with getting carracks as I feel that taking the continent and solidifying my tech/economy will rocket me ahead anyway, but I plan to get them shortly and circumnavigate! So far I am very pleased with the early game and the options for a nice victory are all open to me...
Stats
Pop 62
Cities 10 (built 4, 1 Japan, 1 barb, 4 English)
GnP 227
Mfr 71
Crops 176
Land 15.66%
Pop 26.61%

 

[Duin]

Welcome to GOTM! I hope you get as much fun here as I do.

There is something in your spoiler that surprises me. Do you really think Lisbon is a decent city for a cultural game? Why?

Thanks for the welcome I may try playing the non BtS ones though I'll be real rusty on those.

It is definitely a suboptimal city given that it has no food resources but it does have the Oracle and I think I had a couple more wonders as well. I'll farm it over and run some artist specialists. With the number of religious buildings it eventually will have it should be ok.

I've actually finished and submitted the game already so I'll let you know how it went in the next spoiler update.

 

[BakeliteRules]

Just bought BTS. No clue what all the changes are. (Vanilla is all I have played - and not well) Anyway everyone said go West so I went east!. Found
Toko worker then warrior rushed to quickly end his empire. Exploring North, I found Monty -did I say I HATE Monti! He always gives me a headache so I decided to build a few more army and take him on. I am a little slow but he is gone by 500AD, England is friendly (although I am contimplating taking her out of her misery and owning the rest rest of "MY" continent. Circumnavigated first, met everyone now using UU to get rid of Incan. Next to Monti, I HATE the Incans! (Just kidding ). I have no clue what I am going to do next or what victory condition to strive for.
Oh and Random Events are a real pain in the Budget.

 

[humbe]

Just bought BTS. No clue what all the changes are. (Vanilla is all I have played - and not well) .

Most noticable changes I can think of is improved AI, spying & corporations. There are some differences in tech tree, but not that big. And every civ has a unique building too. There's probably quite a few more subtle differences that would impact strategies though, but none that I know of. Haven't played either much yet.

 

[mabraham]

Tried to replay to duplicate Ribannah's plan last night.. Got to bed at 5 am.. A bit tired at work today (Just to mention it yet again, I'm just using this game to learn and test, not submitting any)

I tried with the challenge save, but I could not for the life of me warrior rush the archers. Looked promising initially.. I entered his border with a single warrior stealing his worker, having 5 warriors available next to it. First turn he popped warrior guarding gems back into town. Second he attacked with the warriors to free the cow tile. Failing that he attacked my almost dead warrior with an archer, which I killed of easily the round after. With one archer left though, he wouldn't attack me.. I even tried waiting for him to build a warrior so he might have attacked with the archer, but his build, eventuallly, was an archer. I could screw up his life totally, but I couldn't seem to make a dent in his final archer. Even with 6-7 warriors, they all died. Since the archer was so much better, there was like a 0.8% or so chance to win, and the chance to make a dent in the archer to make it easier for the next warrior also seemed very slim.. How on earth do you manage to trick the last archer out of the city?

I've been trying the same thing as humbe, as an experiment. With a few archers in the mix, I can take Kyoto, but nowhere near in enough time for the steamroller effort that Ribannah pulled off. I have never been successful at luring an archer out to attack my warrior-bait any time that he has a warrior in his capital. Since he won't ever attack with his last defender, that means I have always faced an archer in the final battle. This has serious consequences for the future campaign. If you can lure an archer to kill a warrior, then you will lose that warrior and maybe one more in killing it, and gain some XP on the successful warrior. However a CG+Drill I archer on a hill behind culture defenses will take a lot more than 2 warriors down when the archer is on defense. So, successfully luring is a huge gain - at least 4 warriors.

My Japanese wars are underway by 3200BC (Ribannah's Japanese victory date), but I've not built enough warriors to take losses on the first few baited defenders as well as take the last archer. My build strategy was worker (for the grasslands river hill mine), then perpetual warriors at zero food surplus on size 2 (when you get there), and my tech strategy was Mining->BW->Wheel->Fishing->whatever. Note that you can't chop any forests before 3200BC with this approach. Ribannah reported he opened with solely warriors and teched Wheel->Mining->BW, however, so I will now try that.

 

[BLubmuz]

Contender
I already submitted my game.
Settled Lisboa 1NE on the coast+river and red borders appeared.
Time to build 4 warriors (my experience on warrior rushes gave a simple rule: 4 are enough for a hill, 3 for flat) and Toku was gone, pity the city autorazed, and i has to resettle it on the same spot, but i got a free worker.
Continued to build warriors, sent 2 stacked NW of Kyoto and 1 NNW.
White borders, met Lizzy, wait for the 3rd (CR1, btw) to join, the Hindu Holy city was mine, with a worker.
Next build was a settler for Kyoto, and i was planning to build my capital on the river between Kyoto and London. I prioritized this instead of the marble and stone, so i didn't try the Oracle (mistake).
Managed the mids in London, the GLH in Kyoto (i named it BlubKyoto) and the MoM in Lisboa, no more early wonders.
Hooked iron late, so no chance to conquer some nice barb city.

Everything peaceful with Monty, he has no religions, we got OB, a bit annoyed, but nothing to worry for now.
First on CoL, founded Confu.
Met HC, yet not localized.
Barbs no more than a minor problem, RE almost nothing.
Research is suffering with all those early cities, but i assure you i recovered.

Game won? let's wait next spoiler.

@ Dynamic spirit
##*@@ì짧 you!
this prince game is a nightmare, i think you exaggerate a bit.
Without those early rushes, you was wiped after 100 turns, if the AI cares something of your pooooooooooooor land.
And this "choose religion" thing is confusing, i think it's another handicap.

 

[Htadus]

Then you shouldn't be writing here, should you?

I think you are going to get info from the spoilers that is not available in your game.

Typically would agree with the comment, but in this application JerichoHill has gone well beyond most others in that time period. What is that anyone can spoil him with? I am pretty sure he has met all the civs we all met in that time period and know the locations of hidden resources that is accessible during this time era. But in principle you are right.

@Obormot, humbe, Mabraham and Blastoidstalker.

Thank you for the responces. Thanks for the explanation Obormot. I can see how that can be helpful in a war game. I have to see if that theory will be helpfull even for a science game since at this level AI barely help.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Contender
@ Dynamic spirit
##*@@ì짧 you!
this prince game is a nightmare, i think you exaggerate a bit.
Without those early rushes, you was wiped after 100 turns, if the AI cares something of your pooooooooooooor land.
And this "choose religion" thing is confusing, i think it's another handicap.

In what way do think I exaggerated?

What makes you think you'd be 'wiped after 100 turns' without an early rush? I can't yet recall reading a spoiler in which anyone has reported even being attacked by the AI without the player attacking first, let alone getting wiped out. Toku is fairly isolationist - you can't normally get open borders with him without gifting him something first, but I've not noticed that he's prone to attacking others early unless you do something to upset him. Monty is the trigger-happy AI who's more likely to attack but he can't get to your homeland without open borders with Toku.