Had a good start to this game, pushed my second settler to the prime grassland spot (lots of cows), and made contact with the Romans. Got along peacefully for a while, and managed to trade iron working from the Romans. Managed to exist with the Romans until I cut off their routes of expansion, then all heck broke lose. Caesar calls up asking for tribute, "bugger off, you blomin sod" is my reply. What follows is a 2000 year war. At the start of the war my iron road is not yet complete, so I lose a city. Ask for peace, Rome wants another city no way, rush completion of iron road and guess what, I pillage and then park two elite Hoplite's on Caesar mountain iron source. I control the only iron and horses on the islands. Hey Caesar [dance], no legions. As can be expected I manage to take, raze, approximately 50% of Rome's cities. Caesar finally calls up and asks for peace, no problem I say, three techs please, thank you very much.
During this time I have not managed to explore the world, so I have no contact except with Rome. I also have no wonders, someone always manages to get the tech and build them first, I will be playing catch up latter. During the lull, I manage to build units and finish settling most of the island. Contact Caesar, sees that he has techs that I do not, "what comes around, goes around", I call up and demand tribute. Caesars reply was similar to mine, but I take two cites and get a tech with the peace treaty. Worked so well, I do this again a few turns latter.
A short time latter the English show up, they are way ahead in techs (5). I manage to purchase a tech and communication from the English. Contact everyone else and determine that I am way behind in tech, so I start generating cash. Takes a quite a few turns, but by the 1200's I have managed to catch up. I have even managed to get a few techs first and make some cash be selling them off. Well everything is going well, until I tell a Indian pikemen that has been hanging around to hit the road. War breaks out all over, I manage to get a number of other Civ's to declare war on the Indians, and peace breaks out again in a short time. During this time I have managed to build Universal Suffrage and start Theory of Evolution. Once again war breaks out (and I have no idea why, but just about everyone declares against me) and this time it's nasty. The Romans send troops across the border, the Chinese and English are harassing my coastline, and the French are landing cavalry. No one will talk to my envoys, and war weariness is hammering me, so I switch to communism. This works for a while (crack that whip), but my science output is lousy, and I really want electronics. So after making peace with everyone except the Chinese, I switch to democracy. This seems to work, but I have to jack up the luxuries until the Chinese decide to talk to me (about 5 turns after the switch).
So this is where I am at, I have a hard push to get electronics to get Hoover Dam, then I plan to start ramping up production to a level that I will feel comfortable taking on a few Civ's at a time.
I wasn´t huge enough to get into the elections and so I had to wait until I was able to finish the spaceship.
Sad, isn´t it.
