Ancient Ruin Ruination: (Shoshone First Strike)
1. Play as the Shoshone on a huge map.
2. Spam nothing in your city but their Pathfinder Scouts (get like 5-10)
3. Quickly upgrade as many Pathfinders as possible using the Ancient Ruins you find nearby.
4. Explore far and wide attacking isolated barbarians first when you see them if possible for a quick 1-2 levels. Then run away. Don't slow down the exploration! Choose survivalism 1&2 and vision. They are way better than the first bowman upgrades. Vision is less useful for battle but really gives you the edge on finding those last ancient ruins before anyone else
5. You'll probably want to send the first bowman back to guard your worker when you hit an end to terrain. I play with raging barbs...slows down those other scouts so you get more ruins + a great source of culture later.
6. Attack and wipe out all your neighbors before they get their empires going.
Memories of your deeds will vanish along with the witnesses.
Discussion:
You will get a composite bowman army way before anyone else has a chance at these units and the survivalism 1&2 will give them a heal-rate of 20/turn + 50% defense. You won't even need melee. The ones with vision can scout out ambushes and the scout movement will allow them to quickly escape if wounded or quickly ambush a city. I've found at this stage unless it's Deity (and even on Deity sometimes) they have nothing but weak cities (no walls) and a couple archers/warriors. Your neighbors will all be dead by turn 70. You are now free to expand, fill in the gaps at your leisure, and protect what you have from barbarians and opportunists and their UA is very well suited to all of this. The captured workers will ensure your new bloated empire is up to speed though you may have reduced growth for a couple of decades until you hook up luxuries. With any luck the AI already did this for you though so you'll probably be good. The biggest problem is gold. Two suggestions: build caravans to CS's nearby, should be plenty of routes you can protect with your bowman. Or: for a quick fix, sell of some of your extra luxuries (you'll have a lot if you conquer 2 civs) to whoever is remaining for some quick gold while you hook stuff up to your capital and stabilize your economy. This'll keep troops from disbanding. The gold from pillaging while invading and capturing will help hold you for a while too. Liberty is their perfect opener as by turn 70 you are already getting more culture from city number than opening tradition. Note that tradition's bonuses apply to cities you build whereas liberty applies to all cities. The free worker and settler are great for filling in gaps, and now you have reduced future settler costs by 50%! You'll be HUGE by turn 100.
In case you're thinking: There aren't enough Ancient Ruins! I'll let you know I played just a large-size map on big continents the other day. Building 3 early pathfinders I claimed 8 early ruins. chances are 2/3 of those will have the option to get advanced weapons so that's 5 composite bowmen minimum. THe ones that don't you can use to get some quick culture, start a free pantheon to get some passive faith, and force-grow your city. You won't even need the standard Shrine/Monument opener if all goes well, and you will probably get a religion too--you've lost nothing. People say they make for a great defensive civ, and it's true. They lose their combat bonuses outside their territory, but they are the only civ I've found that can afford a first strike where they completely wipe out a civ or two and yet still not sacrifice initial growth...
The key is the number of ruins, use every one possible for the bowman upgrade. You pathfinders will not be city-crushers without it. You'll get a few where this isn't available anyway. and with any luck this'll mean a pantheon, growth, and culture to make up for not building that early shrine/monument. Honestly, you don't need to open honor, but I like too because after wiping out your neighbors barbs will be a problem. It's nice to take advantage of this to rack up on early culture with those bowman. Plus the first military policy doesn't hurt if you're going quick conquest.
Pro-tip: when ready to surprise attack a rival civ with your new bowmen, always take the capital first. Usually easy since they haven't had time to settle more than 1 or 2 other cities. Lack of roads and infrastructure mean if the capital falls they're toast. The other cities are easy to pick off and will probably only produce 1 weak unit to counter max. DOn't forget to grab the workers before taking the last city otherwise they disappear.
