Emperor Ragnar - Play with me.

[Ghpstage]

Ahhh what happened there!?

You need a lot more workers and you could do with improving how your using them too, right now they seem scattered, disorganised and are building far too many roads.
Your coastal cities started connected due to sailing, is there any need to waste precious worker turns roading to them right away?
You could make use of the rivers and sailing routes to cut back on the total roading you need, for example the worker roading the deer next to Oslo will connect the city just by building that one road, no need for more and the worker east of Odense needn't build a road where he is, a road on the tile 1 W of his position would be enough.

Building choices could do with work,

• Apache needs a monument drastically, it doesn't need a trading post, and the nearby worker could chop off the grassland hill to help that.
• Several cities would have got their monuments much faster by whipping, right now Oslo and Lodose are both working unimproved tiles they could whip away.
• Where are your Libraries? 0 at 500AD is a something you really don't want to make a habit of! And its also the leading cause of no Great People by 500AD, which is a very big problem.
• Remember that warriors are a much cheaper garrison unit than archers, the saved hammers could be spent on other important things.

I think that your settling of backfill cities has been rushed, and their locations are a bit odd. Odense and Lindholm for example have no food at all, and Ribe only has the corn that Tonsberg vitally needs. There was just no point settling these cities before you have CS to feed them, it just drove maintenance up. Lindholm should probably have never been settled, or 1S if it was as even with CS it'll still be foodless.

As for where to go from here,
You need Currency desperately, luckily you can get it in 2 turns. First beg Darius for his 60 gold then bump your slider up some and build research in more cities.
Once you have Currency you will want to keep an eye out for chances to sell resources for GPT, beg off all the pleased/friendly AIs every 30 turns or so and look for chances to trade Currency for other useful techs. You can stop building research and get back to building the important things, granaries, workers, libraries etc and the capital will want a market. CoL and CS are priority techs now, but Divine Right as always will prove a horrible mistake.
It should still be very winnable with so much land, but your not going to be in a position to war for quite some time.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

Good points. Code of Laws and Civil Service are good priorities. I hope I can be ready for war around the time Guilds come in. Yes, I already said that the Russians and Japanese were sending settlers through the cracks. I was forced to settle those cities earlier than I would have liked. I try to use roads to either connect resources or leave a way for my troops to get around in case I am attacked, though there are perhaps too many exceptions.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

I played a bit further. I built quite few workers and now all my land is covered with roads irrigation, cottages, I usually leave some forests behind for sawmills, health, and national forest wonder. I built the Statue of Zeus in Tonesburg, Versailles in Jelling, and the University of Sankore in Nideros. I got beat with he Spiral Minaret unfortunately. I did not get the liberalism prize.

When optics arrived, I set ships around to explore the world. I met the inhabitants of the other hemisphere. The Byzantines and Mongols occupy the northern continent and the the Chinese live on the Southern. I was the first to determine that the world was round.

The Mali sought my protection as a vassal state:

Spoiler :

 

[Ghpstage]

Being so big should secure a victory here.
Make sure you get open borders from Mao ASAP or astro may not be worth much!

Divine Right really is one of the games worst techs, its deceptively expensive, the religion is almost always too late for anything but culture, the wonders are pretty marginal and other techs of the era offer far more. You would have been much better off going for Printing Press!

I usually leave some forests behind for sawmills, health, and national forest wonder.

If you end up in a situation where they are being worked long before you can get RP your much better off chopping and building an improvement instead. Forest tiles are only marginally better than other unimproved ones.

I hope I can be ready for war around the time Guilds come in.

That wasn't really going to happen, and Knights are usually a poor choice for war. Try Cuirassiers instead, they can cut empires apart insanely fast and come around great production and economic techs.

I try to use roads to either connect resources or leave a way for my troops to get around in case I am attacked, though there are perhaps too many exceptions.

Theres actually almost no chance of you getting attacked looking at the 500AD save, Persia will almost certainly attack Tokugawa, with the second most likely being Russia.
You don't actually need to road to every resource immediately, ones you have no need for, or can't trade away for a decent price can be delayed, as is the case for your Iron, corn and sheep.
The reason I brought up worker micro is that there is such a large amount of work to get done, and a serious shortfall in workers at 500AD. If you intend to Rex to such massive sizes above Monarch then worker micro will play a significant role, along with specialists and whipping.

Something you definately want to avoid in future games is only having had 2 great people by 1500AD, especially if you want to try Emperor. Effective great person generation is one of the big keys to higher levels. A good start is to get a Library early and running scientists to get a first GS by 1AD and having either this, or another city continue to run scientists till your main GP farm is set up. Remember to build the National Epic!

Heres my attempt at 1535AD
I need lots more workers too now!

 

[LincolnOfRome]

Nice job,

I see you have Toku and Peter begging for mercy. I'll see if I can do the same.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

Alrighty, Darius is now my vassal as well. We're taking it to Toku now. I pretty much have free reign on this continent, so I am building ships for an overseas invasion as well.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

I think this image says it:

"The Last Samurai"

This is the last samurai in the last Japanese city. By the current save the Korean and Japanese civilizations have been eliminated. I will have to wipe out Peter next. I have great people popping up quite often. The Statue of Liberty is great for a large Civ. The National Park with a lot of trees is always cool too.

I plan on seeking a domination victory. It looks like Mao should be a good target for an overseas invasion. If I can get both Russia and one of the overseas guys to capitulate, that should be enough for the 65%, since 50% of of a vassal's land counts. Any help would be appreciated.

I have attached the most recent save.

 

[Ghpstage]

The only thing to watch out for is that Mao has a Monopoly on fission and is well liked. He's a few techs away from building Nukes, but seeing him build the Manhatten project shouldn't come as a suprise and theres a very real chance of him trading it around....

Apart from that you want Flight. Fighters make a huge impact on wars due to their ranged bombardment, significant damage against ground targets and ability to teleport, Carriers make intercontinental invasions much easier and Airports help immensly in that regard too.
Other techs like Superconductors don't help at all and Rockery is only dsignificant if you have Fission.

It appears that you could easily beat Peter by attacking right now, but it would have been nice to have an Airship to check where his military is concentrated and how big his stack is!

On your earlier wars, why did you slow you Cavalry down with all those 1 move units?
Against pre-rifling civs, massed Cuirassiers/Cavalry needs no support. Even against Rifles, Airships are usually all the support they need. A few Beserkers and Rifles could just follow to garrison afterwards, sod bringing Cannons/Artillery
Try out some airships sometime, they are very useful units!

I'm at 1660AD now, have just finished taking the continent and am preparing to invade one of the others, most likely the northern one.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

Nice! Thanks for playing along. You took the continent a bit earlier than I did. I rolled into Peter myself with a bunch of armor. He didn't put up much of a fight. Justinian asked me to join him in taking out the Mongols. I said yes, and a few turns later, the AP forced peace. I'm getting ready to load up the transports now, but I am not sure who to wipe out.

Yes, I didn't really need the one move units, though the artillery was nice in weakiening the stacks of muskets. I did run some all cavalry stacks as well though.

Here is my 1907 save. I could win a few ways now. I even have some cities building spaceship components. I incorporated Sid's Sushi and Creative Constructions.

Part of my invasion force:

 

[LincolnOfRome]

The only thing to watch out for is that Mao has a Monopoly on fission and is well liked. He's a few techs away from building Nukes, but seeing him build the Manhatten project shouldn't come as a suprise and theres a very real chance of him trading it around....

I can see him trading it to Justinian. I am hated by the rest of the world because of my Vassals. I'll go after Mao anyway. I will try to keep him from completing the Manhatten project with spies and such. I have most of my spy points on him.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

I'm at 1660AD now, have just finished taking the continent and am preparing to invade one of the others, most likely the northern one.

I'd love to hear how it turned out for you. Did you finish this one?

As far as my game, Mao was surprised. I hit him on both coasts. While conquering him I won a domination victory in 1930. Thanks for playing along.