Earth18 More Mansa Musa Madness

[Quoth the Raven]

Noble. Turn 100. Building the Great Wall is key on raging barbarians. You have to do it fast before Louis does.

fishing
ag
popped hunting
husbandry
masonry
archery

After that it doesn't matter.
Note: I self impose the restriction of not using slavery to make it more challenging without giving the AI a bunch of bonuses by going up in difficulty.

 

[Harv]

Noble. Turn 100. Building the Great Wall is key on raging barbarians. You have to do it fast before Louis does.

fishing
ag
popped hunting
husbandry
masonry
archery

After that it doesn't matter.
Note: I self impose the restriction of not using slavery to make it more challenging without giving the AI a bunch of bonuses by going up in difficulty.

I cannot look at your save for about 8 more hours. Given that you researched Fishing first, then I believe you chose the same site I chose and called Carthage. See Gummy's comments about the Barbarians. Also see the save he posted. The sites he chose for the first two cities are very easily defended. There is a big mountain to the south of the Carthage site. This means there are only two ways to approach Carthage. You can guard this with a single Skirmisher. Against a Barbarian Warrior, you have a 99.6% probability of winning for 2xp. The other site is what I call Tangier or Casablanca. It also features a mountain and there is really only one way to approach it.

One Skirmisher guarding the approach to Casablanca. It can be Size 3 with 11 hammers and 5 commerce, including the trade route to Carthage. With a Warrior defender, we can increase this to Size 4 and 12 hammers and 6 commerce and a 3 food surplus, which will go towards whipping. At 11 hammers, you are getting another Skirmisher every..... 3.36 turns, so there is never one far away. Another Skirmisher guards the way to Carthage. The rest light a path towards Egypt.

Fishing - You are correct about grabbing that first. I did not take the time to work out which is better and guessed wrong. It looks like in the same turn I got my first Worker, I could have had a Fish tile instead. When I clean up my opening, I will fix it. The next thing I will have to figure out is how to get the second city sooner.

When I fix my run, I should go a lot slower, because I am making very basic mistakes and I do not see this until a bunch of turns have been played. Then I look back at stuff I could have done better. I kind of on the Kano start. It did teach me quite a bit about busting barbarian spawns.

The Great Wall is nice - However, the Nile River is nicer.
Added - The issue comes back to what to do after you build the Great Wall. Do you attack Egypt? Do you attack Europe? All of these have had much more time to prepare. Do you settle Sub-Saharan Africa which is junk and will take a long time to develop? (This was my experience. I got to the AD's and wondered why we are not pulling ahead.)

Self-imposed restriction - How about no attacking AI until 1000BC? The AI does not start with extra tech and Archers like in the Emperor start, but they do have time to prepare for a human invasion. (No - I do not intend to play this anymore on this thread.)

 

[Gumbolt]

Quoth has 5 cities but its T100 and I see only one cottage. Many cities below size 2. I see Madrid defended by 5-6 warriors and 2 archers and You have to ask why not attack them or Egyptians? Capture the Great Wall as French or Egyptians will build it.

 

[Harv]

Gannibal of Carthage - Part 1 - 4000 BC to 1450 BC - The Bronze Age Collapse of the Egyptian Empire

So after beating the idea of the Kano / Timbuktu to a pulp and wondering why we are so far behind, we finally decided to migrate our settler northward in search of better land. I have heard stories that when the Sahara Savannah dried up, that's exactly what the neolithic people did. Some migrated northwards. Some migrated eastwards and became the Egyptians. Some migrated southwards and became a variety of people including the Songhai.

We have an origin in Sub-Saharan Africa and in honor of our move towards Carthage, I chose the name Gannibal.

We founded Carthage on Turn 4, about 100 years late at 3900 BC.

Spoiler :

We started a Worker and started research on Fishing. We came from so far away from the coast and now we have to learn new ways of gathering food - and commerce. The tech tree so far went as follows:
T14 - Fishing
T30 - Agriculture
T47 - Animal Husbandry
T54 - Hunting
T62 - Archery
T75 - Bronze Working
T82 - Pottery
T92 - Sailing
T102 - Writing

Our Warrior was stubborn, just like the OP - and did not want to migrate northwards to settle Carthage and insisted on settling Kano and Timbuktu. He went wandering in the jungle in search of treasures:
T4 - 64gp from the Village next to Carthage
T6 - 33gp from Lake Chad
T18 - Map from Central Africa
T21 - Scout from Kenya
T25 - 46gp from Ethiopia
T37 - 49gp from Zululand
We got 6/6 Huts for a grand total of 192gp and a free Scout. Given that we started with a Warrior and given the tribal village loot table, this is huge. In terms of equivalent research, I suppose this is about equivalent to a free 10-point technology such as Animal Husbandry. The free technology might have been better if we benefit from it right away, but it is a mixed bag. The nice thing about the gold is we can direct it how we like.

The Warrior was able to get the Medic 1 promotion, but had a rough time making it back to the relatively safe lands on the Mediterranean coast. Eventually he was able to hide in the forests in the Nile Delta, but the Barbarian Warriors came after him like it was personal. Eventually we sacrificed the Scout in order to save our Medic 1 Warrior.

RIP free scout, Turn 85.

T4 - Carthage founded:
T26 - Work Boat
T35 - Worker
T41 - Size 2
T43 - Wheat Farm complete
T48 - Warrior
T52 - Size 4, Sheep Farm complete
T53 - Warrior 3
T64 - Settler 2
T69 - Skirmisher 1
T70 - Size 5
T76 - Barracks - Skirmisher 2 was somewhere around here
T77 - Size 4
T78 - Skirmisher 4
T83 - Skirmisher 5
T88 - Size 5, Skirmisher 8
T93 - Skirmisher 10
T93 - Granary
T94 - Skirmisher 11
T97 - Size 4

T66 - Tangier founded
T71 - Sheep Pasture
T73 - Size 2
T77 - Skirmisher 3
T79 - Mine complete
T83 - Skirmisher 6
T86 - Mine complete - Size 4
T87 - Skirmisher 7
T90 - Skirmisher 9
T95 - Granary
T96 - Size 3

Spoiler :

Leaders we met:
T3 - Caesar of Rome
T4 - Isabella of Spain
We decided to spy on Rome for a few turns, accumulating 20 points. Most likely this does not matter.
T9 - Hatty of Egypt (RIP)
After that, we put all espionage points against her, because that was the direction we were headed. Eventually we were able to see what she was researching, therefore a good picture of what tech she was acquiring.
T26 - Saladin of Arabia
T80 - Alexander of Greece
That would be 5/14 leaders on the main continent - We are pretty isolated, of course.

Religion is as follows:
T13 - Buddhism somewhere (We actually know this to be India.)
T16 - Islam by Saladin
T82 - Christianity by Izzy
T101 - We caved to pressure between Saladin and Egypt and converted to Islam. We are, of course, Mansa Musa. One day, we might take a very famous pilgrimage to Mecca.

Events as well as I found them:
T43 - Waters of Life near Mecca. Did I say something about a pilgrimage?
T46 - Roman melee units have Tower Shields. If the Rome / Carthage rivalry gets hot, then their Legions might be terrible even against our Skirmishers. If we are attacking, it is very unlikely that this will be with Skirmishers. We have to check on how Rome is defended. We can also try to check Spain.
T85 - Bandits wreck Roman farmlands.
T94 - Slave revolt in Rome. They started lucky, but right now they are not catching a break. They do have those iconic tower shields.
T95 - Vermin in the Granary in Carthage, just two turns after building it!

World Wonders:
T75 - Stonehenge by Hatty
T86 - Great Wall - hopefully by someone who least needs it. That gives us an excuse to acquire it.
I think I got them all.

Here was an early look at the barbarian invasion. We had to move a Skirmisher quickly to eliminate it.

Spoiler :

Now, on to important stuff. On Turn 97, 1575BC we DOW'd Hatty and invaded. We took an extra turn to cross the Nile River. At Size 1, it did not look like they were in any position to whip up any Archers, and we had a pretty big invasion force. Meanwhile, their only Archer sallied out of Memphis to take out some Barbarians, only to get whacked by another one. The AI really should have seen that coming and waited inside the city, which is what archers do best.

In the Battle of Thebes, the Ra-Nubt Gods were against us. We lost two Skirmishers against two Warriors. With the weakened defenders, the rest of the battle was short work. With the fall of Thebes, we also captured Stonehenge.

Spoiler :

After that, Memphis was not far behind.

Spoiler :

So the Egyptians are down and we will soon have full control of the Nile River. Barbarians are incoming, but we still have about 9 Skirmishers to deal with that. They have not yet arrived with Archers. By the time they show up with Axes, we will have Chariots.

I put down Horseback Riding, but we have some options:
Masonry quickly will allow us access to that stone tile which will be good for production.
Iron Working for metal. There is a nearby spot to settle for iron.
Horseback Riding for..... what direction would we be attacking? We do have a nearby available resource.
I think Iron Working with Spears, Axes, and Swords offers the most flexibility.

Carthage and Tangier went builder mode, because I figured 11 Skirmishers should be enough.

Added: I just took another look at Rome. They have already discovered Iron and have started building their units. They have also discovered a gem mine!

 

[Qactus]

I gave this one a go to turn 88 with your original settings (except choose religions) and did the following:
- Settled on turn 6 south of Egypt, went Hunting-AH-Archery
- Retrieved four huts that gave 2x gold, a Scout and a good chunk of AH which I had been researching.
- Attacked Egypt with Skirmishers a few turns before they learned Archery (could see research) and conquered Thebes (which is awesome) and Memphis (which is less so).
- Continued towards Greece and took Athens. Persia also nice, but had Archers already.
- Teching Sailing to connect cities and get foreign traderoutes. And a galley will help!
- 4 cities, 4 workers, 4 warriors, 9 Skirmishers
- Stupidly lost the stone quarry when I only paid attention to the war, which is bad since I don't know Masonry and thus can't rebuild it.
- Decided against Mysticism and relying on Libraries for border pops, which is sloooow...
- Attacking Alex a little bit later would have worked out better, providing another city instead of a worker from the retreated settling party (at the risk of him getting Archery though). But I had already declared and entered his territory when I saw the settler, so couldn't really count on that anyway.

What would be next?
- Rome is too strong for now, but France should be checked out and Paris could probably be taken with the remaining Skirmishers, even if they have Archers. It should be the location of the Great Wall and Stonehenge, which would both help.
- Choose between Horse Archers and Elepult for the next conquest. I would lean towards Elepult, settling maybe two more cities in Turkey, while consolidating the empire, getting more of those FIN cottages up, getting some failgold going, etc.

Spoiler Screens :

 

[Gumbolt]

Nice Qactus. 2 AI capitals and 2 great wonders for this map.

Rome will get Praets. Should still be some good targets that HA should be able to handle. Even Skirmishers are good for a bit. Persians normally good to take out as they will expand. Europe is stuck on 1-2 cities.

Below Eygptians is not a bad option. You grab a lot of flood plains with your capitals culture. Even with a 6 turn disadvantage this map is easily winnable.

 

[Qactus]

Thanks Gumbolt. Played on for another 15 turns to see if a) I could really secure Paris and its wonders with the remaining force and b) block off Rome now that Greek culture was gone.
Both goals worked fine enough. Paris was size 6 with one Archer, a Chariot and a bunch of Warriors, all behind 60% defense, but without a wall which I had feared. And maybe Louis was not in Slavery, so while the Archer took a couple of my Skirmishers, he didn't produce a second one and that sealed the short history of France.
Rome did settle towards me north of Athens, but my Settler whipped from Thebes settled Djenne in Turkey with another nice spot there now secured to be backfilled.
Now it looks really nice

 

[Gumbolt]

Hadn't noticed the wonders were in Paris. Prolly should of loaded the save. Like i said Egyptians or French would spam wonders. It's what they do and both had stone. One of the few reasons to leave one alone. SKirmishers on a map like this are under rated as AI are slow to start. Over time they gradually get their act together.

 

[Harv]

I did not know taking out Alex could be done that early, because of how the land is shaped. It looks like it took 6 turns to get from entering their territory to being at their gate and another 5 turns from Memphis.
Turn 88.

 

[Gumbolt]

Harv open your mind and try attacking AI. AI start here with warriors so early rushes are very possible. Especially with skirmishers which are over powered for what they are. str4 with extra first strikes.

 

[Qactus]

I did not know taking out Alex could be done that early, because of how the land is shaped. It looks like it took 6 turns to get from entering their territory to being at their gate and another 5 turns from Memphis.
Turn 88.

Yeah, there was no pause really, except only the most necessary healing (with a medic). This also allows fresh units to catch up. Here's a timeline of events if that helps:

Spoiler :

Initial DoW was with the first 5 Skirmishers I think. Chopped three forests into Skirmishers, decided against Barracks (not 100% sure if that was the right call)

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Stop trying to rush down Europe! They have no space to expand and will fall behind as the game goes on.

Game settings, same as yours.

Spoiler :

Settle next to Egypt. Tech order: hunting, archery, mining, bronze working, masonry. Do not worker steal, let the Egyptian worker put some worker-turns on the stone before you attack. This way you can finish The Great Wall before France.

Spoiler :

Don't try to settle Africa. Instead attack Arabia, Persia, and India, in that order. Dyes, incense, spices, sugar, wine, rice. Open a trade route for silk too!

Spoiler :

I then attack Greece until they capitulate, and then give all the cities back. I need a vassal for gifting useless cities to keep maintenance costs under control. If I just raze them then my future enemies will fill in the gap.

Spoiler :

Your next targets are Russia and then Mongolia. Then start building galleons while you sweep Japan and China off the Eurasian mainland. With the galleons, go and subjugate the Aztecs. The Aztecs are backwards but they will have a lot of land. Race to conquer them before they get astronomy

Then you can go for Europe and whatever's left at your leisure.

 

[Harv]

- Stupidly lost the stone quarry when I only paid attention to the war, which is bad since I don't know Masonry and thus can't rebuild it.

There is a thought I have been developing over the past few months that applies to real life as much as it applies to Civ. That is, there is a limit to the number of details we can track at the same time. So in your case, you are focusing on the war (probably against Alex) and you did not check if there were improvements to be pillaged.

In my case, I had an incident in the very start of the game where I researched Fishing and my micro plan was to work the marble for 3 turns, then switch to the quarry for 9 turns. On Turn 17 I make the switch. When I did a replay, because I wanted to micro more the espionage (start spying on Hatty on Turn 9) then I forgot that I had to make the switch I mentioned. Early in the game, I find this possible, because there are only a few things to track, but it takes me a very long time and if I make minor changes, then I can easily make mistakes. Later in the game, this simply becomes impossible and that is where I should shift away from micro.

I believe this number is about 5. That is the number of fingers on a hand. For example, if I have a shopping list, then I can keep track of it if the number of items is 4 or 5 - and slightly larger if it is built into a routine. So we get around this by building some kind of system. The alphabet I use has 26 letters. We can remember them all, because about 3000 years ago, somebody came up with a mnemonic, and therefore we have alphabetical order. If I have a shopping list with a small number of items, then I might remember them all if I remember the number of items that I am supposed to get. This is easier if it is routine.

Anyway, you showed 4 cities and 2 dead AI players on Turn 88.

My last save shows 4 cities and 1 dead AI player on Turn 102, for a 14 turn difference. Some time is lost in the distance between Carthage and Thebes, but you had 11 tiles to travel getting from Memphis to Athens and Gummy achieved the same thing I did on Turn 95 for a 7 turn difference. So that means I did something that slowed the start of my attack by about 5 turns. (The other 2 turns were spent attacking Memphis.) The other 7 turns might be things such as building a settler and researching fishing and building a work boat.

The T102 save is stronger than any of the T108 saves I posted earlier. The idea I have from here is:

Horseback Riding - We have access to the horse resource in about 15 turns. A question is if we should research Masonry first. We have a stone resource and an option to work on the Pyramids for fail gold if we need it. Skipping Masonry means we farm up the stone resource for later and have a tile with extra production.

Change direction 180 degrees and hit Spain.
I think Greece is just too far away and the land route is rough. I do not know how many archers he can whip up between entering his territory and arriving at the capital.
Rome is an impossible target right now. They have iron very early. Spain is backwards from researching all the early religious stuff.
We will need Galleys to get there. A question is how many.
2 will mean we drop 4 units on one turn and 4 on the next.
3 will mean we drop 6 units on one turn and 6 on the next. I will check my map and verify the drop locations.
I lean towards 3 galleys and dropping 6 units.

 

[Qactus]

...
My last save shows 4 cities and 1 dead AI player on Turn 102, for a 14 turn difference. Some time is lost in the distance between Carthage and Thebes, but you had 11 tiles to travel getting from Memphis to Athens and Gummy achieved the same thing I did on Turn 95 for a 7 turn difference. So that means I did something that slowed the start of my attack by about 5 turns. (The other 2 turns were spent attacking Memphis.) The other 7 turns might be things such as building a settler and researching fishing and building a work boat...

Maybe a better way to look at peaceful vs. aggressive play is comparing hammer investments and not so much turns.
A Skirmisher costs 37 and I have lost six of them, so 222 .
In the savegame I have six cities and six workers, of which everything apart from the capital, the first worker and one settler was captured:
So that would be 4 cities (at 149 cost for a settler) and 5 workers (90 each). These amount to 1046 "conquered" hammers.
This does not even take into account
- captured wonders (here: TGW and SH)
- "stored" hammers, i.e. Paris was captured at size 6 and can say 2-pop whip a granary 1 turn after pacifying for another 90 .

The whole thing is exacerbated here by the quirks of the scenario, which gives the AI just warriors regardless of difficulty level, which makes early aggression so extremely efficient.

 

[Harv]

Back into the Time Machine

For a while, I played around with my last T102 save, trying to figure out how to manage the onslaught of the Raging Barbarian Hordes and rebuild the economy and launch an attack on Europe all at the same time. The next mistake I made was researching Masonry before Horseback Riding, because it only gains 2 hammers per turn for a quarry when a farm or cottage would do just fine and we do not need stone right now - and I could get to HBR in about 15 turns instead of 20. After that, I would still need a bunch of turns to build up a horde of Horse Archers. What turn is it now? Then I had an idea......

Is it possible to start attacking Europe first?
Is my Carthage site the best spot for launching this?

I counted the yields on a city site on the hills 1W of Carthage. It loses the Fish, but it picks up two Plains Hills, which are useful as mines to get rid of production. Then I checked out my Tangier site. It does not have fresh water, but that does not matter. It still has 3 food sources and 3 mineable plains hills.

Credit @Quoth the Raven for demonstrating this as a viable Mansa start location! Now the next problem I was pondering was - What should we name this city? I looked around Wikipedia and decided to call our capital city Lixus. Maybe somebody in the community has better ideas for naming cities.

So the new plan is to build a couple of Galleys and some Skirmishers and attack Madrid in as few turns as reasonably possible. Here is my start:

Spoiler :

The huts seemed to be very generous when we sent our Warrior out exploring. Gold is nice, but I had 145gp from two huts and the third hut in Kenya popped Bronze Working and that went past my idea of a valid play attempt. I sent the Warrior to Carthage instead and popped Hunting. This is also directly in the research path and knocks a bunch of turns off. So I deliberately changed my path so that we pop only one hut and get almost nothing beneficial.

Actually, there was a benefit: We kept our warrior nearby to guard Lixus instead of exploring and worrying about getting killed.

Spoiler :

T4 Lixus founded
T12 Border pop 2
T22 Worker 1
T30 Wheat Farm
T34 Size 2
T37 Mine 1
T40 Work Boat 1
T41 Crab Boats
T42 Size 3
T44 Mine 2
T48 Size 4
T52 Sheep Pasture
T54 Road to Sheep
T55 Barracks
T60 Warrior 2 - I really did not build a unit until Turn 60!
T61 Wine Mine - After this, the Worker had not much to do, so was building a bunch of roads to make it easier for units to get around and protect the area.
T62 Skirmisher 1
T65 Skirmisher 2
T67 Skirmisher 3
T70 Skirmisher 4
T72 Skirmisher 5
T75 Skirmisher 6
T80 Galley 1 - Unit cost 1
T85 Galley 2 - Unit cost 2
T87 Skirmisher 7
T90 Skirmisher 8
T92 Skirmisher 9

Here is what the city looked like:

Spoiler :

Two things I noticed:
One is I decided to stop using the wheat tile in favor of the mine to keep the city size constant. We are basically trading 4 food for 4 hammers and throwing away the extra food by working the sheep instead of the wheat.
The other thing I noticed is on Turn 79 there was a size 3 border pop, bringing the elephants into play. We could have moved the worker there to set up a camp and I forgot about it. So we have been playing at least 16 turns missing one point of happy cap. This would have put the wheat tile back in play, yielding a net surplus of 2 food, 1 hammer, and 1 commerce. We can maintain the balance by alternating with an ocean tile to get a net yield of 0.5 hammers and 2 commerce. Multiply this by 16 turns and the net cost is 8 hammers and 16 commerce. As an alternative, the additional point of happy cap could have been used for a whip, putting the wheat back into play and converting 42 food into 45 hammers. However, I do not know if this would have started the invasion any sooner than we did.
Leaving the wheat open like that makes me wonder if we would have gained anything by settling a city around Carthage, right on the Marble. The cost is a settler for 149 hammers, between 3 and 4 Skirmishers. Getting some items back in city management, the cost is closer to 3 and we have to recover that from the second city. We also have to defend this city. A nice thing about the location on the marble is it guards the sheep.
Given that we had our final mine on Turn 61, we were starving for a while on worker turns and would have founded the city pretty late.

Research as as follows:
T20 Agriculture
T30 Fishing
T47 Animal Husbandry
T53 Hunting
T60 Archery
T74 Sailing
T92 Bronze Working
We are averaging about 13 Turns per Tech.

World Wonders:
T80 The Great Wall
T83 Stonehenge
These Wonders are not where we expect them to be - and Christianity got founded, but not in Spain.

Turn 92 - 1700BC - We declared war on Spain and started the invasion:

Spoiler :

We captured Madrid 2 turns later. I will look at maps and try to decide what to rename it.

Turn 94 and 2 Cities is not as good a result as the other saves that were posted here, but we have started to bust into Europe. We lost one Skirmisher in the action. Looking at the odds, that means we won 5 out of 6 major battles, all showing about 85% probability of victory. The final battle was trivial, against a warrior with 8hp remaining.

Izzy did not like us spying on her like that. She made it not worth our time. Is there another place we should be directing our efforts?

7 out of 8 Skirmishers survived the war on the Iberian Peninsula. 4 of them have the Shock promotion and one more is eligible for a promotion and will probably get the Medic promotion. This is still quite a force - close to the same size as the force that invaded Egypt in the last game.

It will take a few turns to put Madrid (or whatever we name it) in order. Then we will have access to Silver and Horses - and the elephants when we fix our micro. Our happy cap will be 6/7 and we can do a few turns of building to take advantage of that. Or we can continue to produce 2 Skirmishers every 5 turns and push them into Europe.

I do not believe Rome is a valid target right now. They have 3 cities and nothing in Sicily. So it is very likely they have found the Copper and they have Axes. They might not have Iron yet and we have no way to check that. So leaving them alone guarantees them their Legions. Looking at the territory, except for the two extra cities Rome has settled, and we have not yet settled Carthage, it looks like we are setting up a classic Rome versus Carthage scenario - and we know what happened.

Gaul probably is a target. France still has one city. At Turn 94, I do not think they have iron. So they will have Warriors, Archers, and Chariots. I will check if there is a good naval route, but I think we have to take the slow land route, marching about 8 Skirmishers - or more if we delay some more turns.

England will be a target! The question is how long it takes us to get there.

What do you think of this run?

 

[LincolnOfRome]

Agriculture -> AH -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Hunting -> Archery -> Mysticism -> Writing -> Alphabet

I settled in Carthage and built my second city in Tangiers. I scouted out the Egyptians and they were being massacred by barbarians. When I learned archery, I spammed skirmishers. It only took 5 skirmishers and two warriors to take Thebes in 1300 BC. I lost 2 of my 5 skirmishers. Memphis fell to barbarians the next turn. One or two barbarians attacked my cities. They were easily dispatched by skirmishers. I haven't learned bronze working yet because archery was good for my first rush. I will hook up the horses near Thebes. It look like the barbarians pillaged just about everything there.

My goal now is to learn alphabet and see what I can get for it.

 

[Harv]

Agriculture -> AH -> Fishing -> Pottery -> Hunting -> Archery -> Mysticism -> Writing -> Alphabet

I settled in Carthage and built my second city in Tangiers. I scouted out the Egyptians and they were being massacred by barbarians. When I learned archery, I spammed skirmishers. It only took 5 skirmishers and two warriors to take Thebes in 1300 BC. I lost 2 of my 5 skirmishers. Memphis fell to barbarians the next turn. One or two barbarians attacked my cities. They were easily dispatched by skirmishers. I haven't learned bronze working yet because archery was good for my first rush. I will hook up the horses near Thebes. It look like the barbarians pillaged just about everything there.

My goal now is to learn alphabet and see what I can get for it.

First of all, if you want to post saves and pictures, you are very much welcome to. I think I posted a grand total of 6 different starts.

1. There are three locations I can think of for Carthage. Where did you settle Carthage?
a. The forest plains 1W of the Sheep as shown in Gummy's save. This is very typical, because it has 3 food sources. This is where I believe you settled Carthage.
b. The forest plains hills 2W of the Sheep. This location loses the fish and gains 2 plains hills mines.
c. The marble 1S of the sheep.

2. Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Fishing. How do you feel about Fishing first?
I count 23 turns to build the Worker and 8 turns to move to the wheat and build a farm for a total of 31 turns.
Fishing takes 10 turns and the work boat takes 12 turns and the move takes one turn.
So instead of a Wheat Farm (5f1h1c) on Turn 35, we have a Fishing Boats (5f0h3c) on Turn 27.
The micro is start worker, then build the boat with 9 turns on the forest and 3 turns on the marble. Then finish the worker using the fish tile.
The worker is complete 8 turns later, on 35 instead of 27. The wheat farm is complete on turn 43 instead of 35. This is detailed in Post#24.

3. Pottery. Why did you research Pottery so early?
Hunting, Archery gets you to Archery a few turns earlier. You said you spammed skirmishers right away, so you could have been a skirmisher ahead.

4. Mysticism. Why did you research Mysticism?
A monument in Tangier is worth 1.2 skirmishers. Are you planning to build monuments in Egypt? Did they have any religion?
Skipping Mysticism gets you writing and alphabet a few turns earlier.

ADDED: I did not see Sailing in your list. You said you were going to hook up the horses.

How do you like the Raging Barbarians in the scenario? Gummy correctly pointed out that they wreck some AI and they are killing my game, but I find them amusing. If there is unclaimed land, then there are hordes of barbarians coming. It's non-stop.
---------------------

Interesting about the last save I posted - In Tangiers, we only have 3 tiles to defend.
We do not need a host of skirmishers to defend Egypt. The Raging Barbarians are their problem. Most likely, they only have Archers and War Chariots to deal with it. So they lack the full variety in their arsenal.
The Iberian Peninsula is isolated. We do not have to worry about Barbarians at all.

 

[Gumbolt]

@Harv

I probably would of settled 2 cities before going naval assault. Guess you can try and take Paris now. Albeit 1-2 more Skirmishers might be good.

Just keep spamming and chopping Skirmishers and consider galley to move towards London if defences are weak.

 

[Harv]

Take 6, Part 2 - 1650 to 1125 BC - The Bronze Age Collapse hits Western Europe

We took a few turns to regroup. We set our espionage to Hatty. She seems to like it. We renamed our captured city Celtiberia. From looking at maps, I did not know what else to call it. We loaded an extra Warrior to send there. We renamed the Workers we captured to show where we got them from.

T99 we were done with regrouping. It is time to march on the French. They do not belong in this time period and must be removed. T100 we declared war and marched in with 7 Skirmishers and a Warrior.

Spoiler :

T103 we captured Paris.

Spoiler :

We renamed it Parisii, after a local Celtic tribe. Orleans will be an expensive thorn in the side. One option is to let them live, but they will continue to be an expensive thorn in the side. So we moved troops to surround it. We are biting the arrow, so to speak.

Turn 108 - We finally attack Orleans. It grew to Size 2, but it has not built anything new. It had 5 defenders - 2 Archers, 2 Chariots, and 1 Warrior. It was an expensive thorn in the side.

Spoiler :

The fighting was fierce. When the dust settled, we had a decision to make. There are resources and a pig resource to share with Parisii. There is also a lot of Roman culture nearby. In the end, we decided that it was not worth keeping and we torched it.

RIP Louis. Was this Louis XIV or XVI?

Finally T115 we made our assault on London and captured it handily.

Spoiler :

Lixus Production
T95 Skirmisher 10
T97 Skirmisher 11
T98 Size 6
T100 Chariot 1
T102 Granary
T104 Skirmisher 12
T106 Elephant Camp complete
T108 Skirmisher 13
T109 Wine Farm
T110 Skirmisher 14
T114 Lighthouse

T98 Celtiberia Pacified
T98 Road complete linking the Silver
T101 Warrior 3
T106 Barracks
T110 Granary
T112 Barracks

T108 Parisii pacified
T110 Barracks

Technology
T100 Pottery
T108 Writing

We built a total of 4 Skirmishers. Their fates are:
1 - 15/17 C2 Shock
2 - KIA Orleans 12/17 C2 Shock
3 - 12/17 Shock KIA Orleans
4 - KIA Paris
5 - KIA Madrid
6 - George Patton - Medic Gannibal - C1 Medic 3 Morale
7 - 9/10 Shock 9/10 C2
8 - KIA Paris
9 - KIA Orleans
10 - 12/10 Cover
11 - 6/5 C1
12 - 4/2
13 - 3/2 New - Protecting Lixus
14 - 3/2 New - Protecting Lixus
We lost 5 Skirmishers. We have 9 Skirmishers remaining. 8
EDIT: Edited for replay.

So Turn 115, 1125BC and still stuck at 4 Cities. London will not be pacified until 975BC.

If we want to be builders, then we captured the British Isles and we are Financial. We can build 5 Cities on the British Isles. In that case, we should have kept Orleans. Then we would have 9 cities - or 10 if we decide to build Carthage. However, we burned Orleans to the ground. That implies we will be choosing a new victim and so late in the game (T115) it is harder to find easy targets for Skirmishers.

Germany has 5 cities and Copper and probably Iron. I do not intend to attack in that direction.
Rome has 4 Cities, and Copper and probably Iron. They are a hard target right now. We opened borders with them.
That leaves Egypt. 3 Cities. No metals. With a couple of boats we might catch them by surprise, just like the Sea Peoples.
We have not met Greece, so do not know how many cities they have. They might have their iron. They might not.
We still have Greece to check out. I do not know how many cities they have built.

Between Horseback Riding and Iron Working, I chose Iron Working as the next technology. This is because we invaded Western Europe and the Earth18 map is blessed with lots of Iron resources. We have nearby access to 3 or 4.

 

[Gumbolt]

IW is not great as the ai always trade this. Where hbr gives phants. Praets are str 8. Swords str 6. Rome culture will be very annoying here. Ideally you want catapults sooner than later. Plus more cities in Africa.

Nice job taking out French and English. No barb issues in Europe. Germans next? Does Rome have Praets?