I'm glad I didn't go for Conquest Class, because even in Open Class this game doesn't feel to hard yet...
Probably the second settler and all the other nice gimmicks, civ_steve has built into this game, help to keep up with the Sid AIs.
Settled in place and moved the second settler 2N. I had done some calculating and found, that this way both towns can become 4-turners. And so it happened. Built a worker and an outrigger and then started two early granaries. This allowed me to settle my island quickly and to send a couple of settlers overseas to found wine, gems and incense colonies. (Polynesian trade helps a lot here!)
Barb galleys were not a problem. I already knew from earlier GOTMs that the AI does not attack with galleys, if my ships are on sea or ocean, so I figured the barbs probably won't do either. I lost two outriggers while clearing a way to an intended landing spot, and I lost one Polynesian galley with a settler on it
. I had to park it on a coastal tile in order to reach the intended destination on the next turn. I retroperspective it would have been better to waste another turn than to not land that settler at all...
However the barb horsemen were a nuisance! They killed a couple of workers and a settler and at the moment put an end to my attempt to further settle the wine island to the south. There are three stacks of 30+ units each and probably a few more hidden in the fog, so I first need to switch my economy to producing units, before I can complete the settlement on that island. (At the moment I'm running kind of a farmers gambit, as the "barb situation" on my home island is pretty much under control (due to my fast expansion, I presume).
On the tech side I made a 50-turn run for Writing and the full speed to Philosophy, which I managed to get in 12 or 13 turns. Can't remember exactly, as I didn't take any notes during this game. Anyway I was quite surprised at how fast I was able to get there! While I was researching Philo, I didn't trade away Writing, as I was much too afraid to loose the race to Philo, as had happened in COTM42. I guess that was a mistake, because when I finished Philo, neither Code Of Laws nore Polytheism was available for trade, so I chose Literatur as my free tech. I had a 10-turn prebuild for the Great Library (unfortunately too many other things had to be finished first, so I wasn't able to start it earlier), which still needed like 38 turns to finish. Therefore I didn't trade Literature around until 9 turns before my GL would complete and all currently started wonders were finished. I think the fact that I didn't trade any useful things around, was a major factor in the very slow tech pace of the AI! After some initial trading I was the clear tech leader for quite a while, because every AI had to do their own research: most didn't have any contacts and the ones that had were at war with their contacts...
Anyway, after Philo+Literatur I did another full speed run for Polynesian Trading, which I completed in around 20 turns. I figured that by the time I finished the GL, most other techs would be researched by the AI, so going for Poly Trading seemed the best way to go. From now on I applied a mixed strategy: I traded tech to those AIs, which had gold or other techs, but didn't trade my techs to those that had nothing to give. The idea is to keep them backwards so much, that later, when I start some military actions, it'll be easy picking... (Knights against Spearmen is always fun... Even if they have hundreds of them.) The drawback of this strategy of course is, that my Great Library won't do me much good.
After Poly Trading was finished, still no trade opportunity for Monarchy or Republic had presented itself. Therefore I started another full-speed run for Philosophy, which would require ~30 turns. A couple of turns later Korea had Republic, but wouldn't give it to me. (I offered all I had, which was approx. 1600 gold + 100gpt.) So I decided to keep my own research going. Then in 800BC my GL finished, and the next turn I got Construction and Currency from it, the last remaining ancient techs, so I entered the Middle Ages. But now something strange happened: my research for Republic was gone!! The previous turn it had shown like 20 turns to finish, and now it was back to 30 turns, all the beakers I had collected up to that point were gone!!
Does anyone have an explanation for this?
As I was still not able to trade for it, I started Republic again, this time with all my force, as I was so mad about loosing ten turns worth of research. I build a few Libraries and employed a couple of scientists, which enabled me to reduce the number of required turns for Rep down to 22. Now I'm 9 turns from completing it. Korea has been a Republic for quite a while by now, and America recently turned Monarchy, but all the rest is still despotic. America and Korea are the only ones now, who accelerated their tech pace and gained 1-2 techs on me each. China is even with me and the rest hopelessly behind. So I think now I'm at a point where I need to decide about the future strategy: either keeping most AIs backward as long as possible and start an attempt on domination using Knights, or start gifting techs to make the best use of my Great Library and turn this into a tech game (Space or Diplomatic). One thing is for sure: I won't attack the nice Lapita people! Ithink their scientific trait is worth much more, than if I'd own these three cities myself...!
The domination plan may not be so difficult as we originally thought in the pre-game discussion, because there are still a number of unsettled islands, and with our unsinkable galleys we can be the first ones to settle them!
In the meanwhile I managed to get the required 18 towns, and my other prebuild finished the Forbidden Palace. And here is the second strange incident I have to report: the effect of the FP was alost nil!
I had counted all the shields one turn before and after finishing it, and it turned out that after finishing the FP my income increased by 3gpt and my production by 3spt! Can anyone explain that? I remember reading in SirPleb's Sid blog that the location of the FP is irrelevant in C3C, it's only important to get it fast. Therefore I built it two cities away from the capital (see red circle in my screenshot). But at the moment it looks like a wasted effort! Perhaps it'll be more effective, when the cities grow bigger?
And a third very strange thing: the game cannot be saved anymore! After my second session the game crashed, while I was trying to type a new filename into the popup box. Therefore I started accepting the suggested default name from then on. For my third session this was ok, but after my 4th and 5th sessions, it didn't create that file, even though it said "Ok"! I didn't notice this after my 4th session, so I had to start my 5th from the last autosave. But after my 5th session I opened a Windows Explorer in parallel and checked the file system before quitting C3C. I saved the game two or three times, but no file appeared anywhere in the Civ directory! In the end I found a way to avoid having to retort to autosaves: in the popup box I clicked the name of an existing file, the game asks me whether I want to overwrite it, I say yes, and then the file gets created!
Has anyone ever experienced something like this? It seems that if you use the "automatic name", the file is not created, while if you type a new name into the box, you risk a crash. May be a peculiarity of my laptop, but unfortunately I'll depend on my laptop during the entire Christmas break. I'll investigate this a bit more on my desktop using the old save files, after COTM43 is finished.
Have a nice Christmas and a happy new year everyone!
Lanzelot
http://forums.civfanatics.com/newreply.php?do=postreply&t=253330
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- it seemed like I kept having excess food, and there was always more work to be done. Besides, I didn't get Map Making until 750 BC, and that is way too long to wait for workers. My native workers turned out to be useful anyway since I could eventually merge all of them back into cities once I had sufficient slave labor.
)
nice one tao, the full republic slingshot! We have about the same research times but I would've been beaten to it by Spain and Korea in my game 
