I was super aggressive with my third city placement, hoping it would block a TON of land. It did - will pay off later in this game I think.
First thoughts - wow – what a capital. Settle 1E to claim wine, and get silk too. Monarchy is going to be early priority anyway. Start on worker. Tech path: AH, no horses initially, so Mining next. Find the two horses, so go wheel to hook up horses. Will get to BW later. More flood plains – heavy cottages in at least 3 locations for sure. Everything looks great for 50 turns – tremendous scouting and super land to settle…and then turn 51:
Well, that just made this interesting. Horses don’t mean squat against him. I meet him near a ridiculous gem site, so I have to beat him there for sure. Then turn 52:
Here I was thinking I’d be a peaceful supertecher. Better block them off and make sure I can capably defend. Met Mansa as well. Second city here:
Got my immortals hooked up quick. I then decided to try something after scouting – I settled my third city WAY down here:
If I did this right (and I was not sure at the time I did), I just blocked a ridiculous amount of land with that city. I know it’ll need to be heavily defended, but I think this just blocked my entire peninsula. Costly in maintenance, but could be a ridiculous payoff if I’m right. By the way, I passed two barb cities already along the way in 1750 BC. One is a good location, the other is one away from where I’d settle, so it may get razed.
Pulled this sucker off to get my courthouses up.
Barb city taken which I should have realized earlier could be a great GP farm - was really lazy with that city this round - wasting an opportunity. I also settled another city by the copper to the east of Persepolis as well. Stole a worker from one of the barbs to help development.
Built this wonder in my blocking city to help tech and to help beat back Willem’s culture borders.
After this, rex, rex, rex. Barb city helped rexing…
I got two free settlers and four free workers from barbs, at the cost of 1 immortal and 2 swords (which is all I lost on the two cities). Other than beating up barb cities, I just produced a few libraries, a bunch of units, workers and settlers. My units aren’t super strong ones, but I have a lot of them for hereditary rule. Cut off 1 turn from lib, and now need to decide next steps. I haven’t really generated any great people of note yet – one prophet and one scientist. Pretty much have done all this with cottages and HR, paying no attention to diplomacy either. No wars yet for me, but everyone is either cautious or pleased with me, so I haven’t been cozying up to anyone yet. A lazy game really. I forgot about a GP farm, so I’ve finally started to set it up in 1000 AD - will likely focus on merchants as a result and upgrade my immortals. Empire:
13 cities, 4 of which were settled in the last 10-15 turns, and I'm still in the black at 60% tech. I think I've got 3-4 more pretty good sites to settle as well. How is my bureaucracy capital you ask? Seems like it’s doing ok to me – thoughts?
That farm in the NE corner is needed for chain farming up to my production city NE of there. Tech situation – will improve once I get lib as I can backfill big time.
Thinking about teching toward rifles to try to pull lib-rifling. Unfortunately, would have to manually tech guilds, gunpowder, print press and replaceable parts, since I can't trade education. Leaning a bit more toward nationalism-taj. Thoughts on the better approach? My thought is I'm too late with lib to be too aggressive, so nationalism can help me keep pressing my advantage . I can also trade edu around and backfill all techs plus take everyone's gold for possible upgrades or deficit research while beelining steel/rfiles.
AI has been in a bunch of wars - shaka and mansa musa have constantly been at war, so i could go after mansa first, especially since Willem has a vassal and might be a tougher fight.