Earth 1000 AD, How To Get A Perfect Start

[svv]

Ok, here's a few tips for starting with England. It's all spoilers, so you might want to give it a try on your own first.

Spoiler :

Starting out, somebody you're in contact with (I can't remember who) has a health resource available. Trade for it right away; you'll need it later and they'll trade it to someone else if you don't get it right away.

In England, leave 1 longbow in London, 2 in the next northernmost city, and the rest in the most northern city. You'll be getting a Viking invasion next turn. Also move the knights to the northernmost city.

Put one worker and a settler on a galley and have it sail to the mediterannean (get open borders with Isabella when you contact her).

You have a Knight and a Crossbowman on a Galley ready to join the Crusade to take Jerusalem. Just say no; too many counterattacks from the Arabs and the Byzantines. Instead unload your galley near Cairo and take that next turn. There should be just one archer guarding it, and a free worker there. Your knight should be able to take it easily. It's a great city to make your GP farm with all of the flood plains, and Pyramids already there. Health will be a problem later, so get health resources when you can. Later, try to build an aqueduct and the Hanging Gardens for more great engineer points (the Byzantines already have Hagia Sophia in Constantinople). If you can get a great engineer out of London or anywhere else, send him down to Cairo to help with wonder building there.

After your galley drops your troops off in England, send him to around Gibralter to meet up with your galley coming down from England. You will need to escort that galley, as there is a Byzantine galley wandering around the Mediterranean trying to kill you.

Before you end the first turn, make sure none of your cities, especially London, has any specialists running except engineers (London has a forge, even though you don't have the tech yet, so you can hire an engineer there). Also make sure all the England cities are building something (depending on the level, you might get oracle or the great library if you start building it in London). I start with granaries in cities that don't have them.

At the second turn you'll have Vikings raiding England. Your Knights will have about a 67 percent chance of killing the swordsmen in favorable terrain, so make your own decision about whether to do that. Otherwise, wait for the Vikings to attack your Longbows in your cities (they have almost no chance to kill the longbows).

After you clear out the Vikings, they won't bother you much anymore (except for taking out fishing boats). Move your other settler to the northermost part of the Britain and found a city there. When you get a chance, you can send a few units over to Ireland to take out the barbarians there; I wouldn't bother with going after land in Scandanavia, as the terrain there isn't great.

When your galley from England meets up with your Galley from the Mediterranean, send them both to the Cairo area. You can found another city further up the Nile, and there's also a barbarian city up there to take if you want. Send the galleys back to England to pick up military reinforcements and any great engineers you may have spawned.

Around the time you get Redcoats, send some of them to America. You may need to do this earlier if you're at a higher level to beat the other European powers to it. Hopefully the Aztecs will have founded several cities you can take, and unless you are at a really high level they should be way behind you in tech.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

The default difficulty levels are actually quite equal in difficulty, perhaps on the easy side, if you're playing on the default difficulties. But the Incans are another matter.

I lost the first time playing the Incans using the peaceful development strategy. Lost by time, unfortunately, due to AI incompetence. This time having a lot of success with doing something else with the Incans: bash the Aztecs. Chopping forests for workers and settlers beats any number of cities you place in the jungles, and once I have biology, I'll settle in the Canadian tundra.

If you're playing Warlords, you may think that Incans have it a lot easier with terraces, but that is more than compensated by other civs with other unique buildings, which actually kick into play as you start in the early medieval times. Plus, there's better AI. Mansa Musa is not actually that hard either, just play them like you would play the Aztecs, but expand South instead. A little secret is, after you settled Africa, expand East, to India. Don't annoy Saladin or the European nations.

 

[Wodan]

This thread inspired me to try it as Japan. Pretty fun, actually. I took the barb city in Korea, which is quite tasty with resources. I made friends with China and stayed that way the whole game. Went the Astronomy route, and settled Seattle. Conquered Monty's homeland (and razed Chichen Itza to found a city on a better spot), and capitulated Monty (he still had cities at the sites of Chicago and Cleveland). Then, I went for the barb cities in the eastern US. That's where I stand now. Next will probably be South America. I have more workers than I know what to do with, so cottaging the jungles will be easy.

Somebody posted about all the pacific islands.... I settled the Philippines but in my mind most of the rest of the islands aren't worth it. (I think there's another halfway good spot or two... Indonesia or something. They have resources, but they're resources Japan already has.) Most are single tiles, with a single fish or something. That makes them, at best, a 9 tile commerce producer. To get that, you have to invest an early settler, plus suffer the empire-wide increases to maintenance etc. Yes, in the long run it would be worth it but again, at best, I would suggest doing this in the modern era as an afterthought.

Wodan

 

[Amao]

The default difficulty levels are actually quite equal in difficulty, perhaps on the easy side, if you're playing on the default difficulties. But the Incans are another matter.

However, it's not quite equal to AIs. Most AIs, if not all of them, are fixed with the default difficulties. So, English is always the tech power house, because Liz got chieftain level and financial trait. And, most likely, Saladin doesn't have any chance to lead in tech because he got diety(?) level punishment.

Well, I'm playing it on Warlord with BetterAI and does some customization like make vikings real vikings, remove the minor civs, and make them playable. Just played Basil, found he's too powerful as for human player, so many knights, close to many key cities (2 holy cities, cario for government switching, bagdad for watermill spamming).

BTW, I found Grenadier rush is more powerful than Cavalry. With Cannons following right behind.

 

[Amao]

This thread inspired me to try it as Japan. Pretty fun, actually. I took the barb city in Korea, which is quite tasty with resources. I made friends with China and stayed that way the whole game. Went the Astronomy route, and settled Seattle. Conquered Monty's homeland (and razed Chichen Itza to found a city on a better spot), and capitulated Monty (he still had cities at the sites of Chicago and Cleveland). Then, I went for the barb cities in the eastern US. That's where I stand now. Next will probably be South America. I have more workers than I know what to do with, so cottaging the jungles will be easy.

Somebody posted about all the pacific islands.... I settled the Philippines but in my mind most of the rest of the islands aren't worth it. (I think there's another halfway good spot or two... Indonesia or something. They have resources, but they're resources Japan already has.) Most are single tiles, with a single fish or something. That makes them, at best, a 9 tile commerce producer. To get that, you have to invest an early settler, plus suffer the empire-wide increases to maintenance etc. Yes, in the long run it would be worth it but again, at best, I would suggest doing this in the modern era as an afterthought.

Wodan

For east Asian civs, you should try to grab Seberia asap and chop building your cities. Maybe you should wipe out Mongals in the process.

I used to think the same for the 9-tile-city, however, i found more and more options to overcome it.

1 If you get The Sistine Chapel, any specialist has two more culture!
2 If you are running caste system, you can always assign any number of artist!
3 If you have neither, but you got Music, you can build culture!

So, as long as you have any of these choices, you are free to grow to 21-tile-city w/o building any culture buildings, unless your cites are too crowded and/or you are having a culture war with your neighbours. Still thinking those islands are useless?

 

[Wodan]

For east Asian civs, you should try to grab Seberia asap and chop building your cities.

Why? There are much better city sites available. There are little to no resources up there to speak of, and the ability to feed and grow your cities is marginal. A farmed tundra breaks even and loses on commerce generation (the city maintenance and added empire maintenance makes that city a losing proposition, even with State Property).

The main value of Siberia in my mind is the added score the terrain gives you (if you're going for a timed victory).

1 If you get The Sistine Chapel, any specialist has two more culture!

So? Unless you're going for a timed victory, I can't see it matters.

2 If you are running caste system, you can always assign any number of artist!

But you can only feed 2 of them.

3 If you have neither, but you got Music, you can build culture!

So? Unless you're going for a timed victory, I can't see it matters.

So, as long as you have any of these choices, you are free to grow to 21-tile-city w/o building any culture buildings, unless your cites are too crowded and/or you are having a culture war with your neighbours. Still thinking those islands are useless?

I never said they were useless. I said that they require an initial investment that is better used elsewhere and don't really pay off until the late game.

Wodan

 

[Heeringas]

In Vanilla I tried Saladin (I didn´t finnish, but I was in very good posession in 1600AD. Saladin is easy. Land is great, lots of resources, spiral minaret and shrines and PYRAMIDS.
Jerusalem and Cordoba are in danger in first round. so start changing Police state, vasselage and whip longbowmens for Jerusalem Cordoba and Baghdad in first round (takes 2 pops) and put another longbow in que. Your first Defenders are ready before Crusaiders attack. I played in Deity and my Longbows won, well ,crusaidian Knights pillaged some land, but I was able to keep all my cities. Then I made nothing but military and after Europian attacks weren´t that strong anymore, I took Byzantine. In Other side, India is no counter, It´s easy to take fastly...

 

[svv]

I always figured the best way to play Saladin would be to get control of Jerusalem, and then convert to Christianity and make peace with all the European Powers. Then you could easily wail on the Byzantines, Indians, Mongols, and Malinese.

 

[svv]

Just for grins I started that strategy for Saladin, and it works pretty well. Everybody will make peace with you as soon as they talk to you. You'll want to spread Christianity around ASAP, probably by building a monestary in Jersualem.

Meanwhile, make Cairo your GP farm. You'll still cottage rather than farm the flood plains, because growth will still be plenty fast. Build a forge, aqueduct, national epic and hanging gardens there, and have your tech research beeline to steel so you can build Ironworks there. You'll have more great engineers than you know what to do with. Also in the rest of your empire you can build cannon and grenediers.

Make Baghad your research center. Again, cottage all the flood plains.

Make Jerusalem your religion/money city. Farm everything you can, and build grocer/bank/wall street when you can. The bad part is that there's not much food potential there, so you'll have few merchant specialists. But you'll still have plenty of money coming in if you spread Christianity and Judaism around.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I just don't understand why Russia got such a low difficulty level though. Just chop cities, spam horse archers, knights and later cossacks, and conquer Europe and Siberia. And why did the Incans get "Noble"? They're actually really hard.

 

[svv]

Just went to about 1750 in a game as Frederick. It was fairly easy; I upped the difficulty to Noble and played a real sloppy game, but had no trouble. Don't know why the difficulty is set so low for him. More under the spoiler cover.

Spoiler :

You start out with a few knights in Germany, which should be good for taking out the barbarian cities, and the Arab and Viking cities bordering your territory. Take the knigts to Danzig first, then the other barbarian city, then (after you get a catapult) to the Viking city in Denmark. I kept Syracuse and Danzig, but razed the Viking city in Denmark (so that my capital could have the pigs under it) and the other barbarian city (too close to other cities).

You could send your crossbowman in Rome down to Syracuse to try to take out that archer. You'll have about a 35% chance, but if that doesn't work you can bring down the other archer from Rome and try again, probably with a better than even chance. You can send the archer back to Rome after Syracuse reverts to your control, and put the extra crossbowman from Salzburg in Syracuse.

Your capital has a forge, so you can hire an engineer there, and should do so. Don't run specialists anywhere else until you can get forges set up and hire engineers, so that all your GPs will be engineers.

I started building a catapault in the capital, and a work boat in Rome (Arab and Byzantine Galleys will take your fishing boats out). Build a library and barracks in Salzburg; you may wish to build Heroic Epic there.

Research metal casting at first for forges, and build forges and hire engineers in most of your cities. Then beeline steel so you can build grenediers and cannon, and the Ironworks.

As I recommended with Lizzy, don't have your Crusades ship unload by Jerusalem. Instead unload by Cairo and have your knight take it (protected by only one archer) next turn. Free Pyramids! Make this your GP farm. Try to build hanging gardens, (later) Ironworks, and any other wonders you can here (use great engineers to build all wonders; you should have plenty).

After it unloads, send the galley up to protect the claims East of Rome; the Arab and Byzantine galleys won't take it on if you have a galley protecting it. Later, you can use that galley to ferry great engineers down to Cairo for building things there.

You'll want to change your civics, but shouldn't do so until after you get Cairo, so you can adopt representation. You should also adopt slavery, and use the whip liberally for production. I would have also changed to Theocracy (this is primarily a fighting game), but that would involve an extra turn of anarchy, and it didn't seem worth it at that point.

You can try to build great library or oracle, but I wouldn't bother. Just maintain good relations with France/England/Spain/Russia, and trade techs with them. England will probably be way ahead in tech for awhile, but that's ok as they don't tend to expand their empire much.

Build City Raider catapults and go after the Byzantines. You may have to suicide some but it will be worth it. Take your knights along, but the Byzantines have pikes so most of the work will have to be done by catapults. Constantinople will be a pretty good prize; it has Hagia Sophia in it, and in my game they had also built Sistine Chapel there.

After you get done with the Byzantines, keep going to go after Saladin's best cities: Jerusalem (of course), Baghdad, Mecca, maybe those two other cities on the Arabian penninsula. Build Jewish and Christian monestaries to spread those reliigons around. In Jerusalem, build bank, grocer, Globe Theatre and Wall Street, and you've got it made with the money rolling in. You can also turn Bagdad into a great research center (cottage most of the tiles here).

 

[svv]

A couple thoughts on playing Izzy and Louis:

Izzy:

Spoiler :

Unlike the other European powers, you don't have a crusader ship waiting by Jerusalem. You do, however, have a heck of a lot of knights waiting in Spain. Take out Cordoba RIGHT AWAY. Don't wait a turn to get on the other side of the river, because Saladin will upgrade and/or add to his garrison there. Also in the first turn, put a couple of knights on the galley and take them down toward Tunis. Try to take that out as soon as they can land South of Tunis (so they don't have to rivercross when attacking).

I'd keep Tunis for the marble, but keep going East on the North African Coast to take out Tripoli (I'd raze it) and Cairo. I'd keep Cairo (Pyramids here) and start farming it to make it your GP farm.

You could try to build Great Library in one of your cities, but depending on the level Louis will probably beat you to it. You could try Oracle instead, as you'll be getting marble when you take Tunis and it comes out of rebellion. Otherwise, try to crank out catapults in your cities in Spain. Use your Galley to ferry them (as well as your knights that attacked Cordoba) over to Africa. They can try to catch up with the knights as they heal. Take a couple of archery units over as garrison units as well. After getting Cairo, you should have enough units to march on Jerusalem - I think I had 4 knights and 2 catapults at that point, and I took Jerusalem after bringing down the defenses with the catapults and then suiciding the catapults.

Louis

Spoiler :

As with Lizzy and Freddy, you're better off taking your dudes away from the Crusades, and istead landing them near Cairo to try to take that out second turn.

Meanwhile, you have a bunch of knights and other units kicking their heals in France. You could try to take on Freddy or Izzy, but I think the best thing to do at least initially is move them down to take out Saladin's cities in North Africa. Get open borders with Freddy and move them down Italy. After your galley drops off your troops by Cairo, it can help ferry the others from Italy to Africa. I'd keep Tunis and Cairo (make Cairo your GP farm, build a forge, National Epic and as many wonders as possible there - especially engineer wonders. Use great engineers to build other wonders. I'd raze Tripoli. After that's all captured, you can assemble your troops in Cairo to see if you can take on Jerusalem.

Taking Tunis will get you marble, which will help you build the great library in Paris. Being industrious you have a great shot at getting it first, and it will help a lot in your continuing culture war with London and Bremen. You might build Hermitage there too when you get the chance. You could also try oracle in one of your other cities.

 

[culdeus]

Has anyone ever gotten a cultural victory on any level with any leader? Is it mathematically possible?

 

[Amao]

Has anyone ever gotten a cultural victory on any level with any leader? Is it mathematically possible?

Possible with Corps in BtS, i guess.

 

[Angst]

^^ Has always been possible. It only requires a boring game + a lot of micromanagement.