I recently played a multiplayer game where I was stuck on a tiny peninsula, with the only path being a mountain.
So I said, ok, screw fighting, and just built up my city. Some work boats, monument (charismatic Hannibal), library, Colossus, Stonehenge (for the heck of it). I went for religions, and managed to found 5 of them (missed Hinduism and Buddhism). With 2 clams and one sheep I decided to make a Great Scientist factory, couple that with 5 monasteries and you get some uber science. I had cavalry and emancipation when everyone had knights. Then of course the guys on the mainland HAD to let the inca player boom uncontrolled with the cities he captured early, so eventually he caught up to me and owned my one city with tanks, fighters and destroyers. I had infantry, while no one except for Inca had cavs. Some just got grenadiers though.
Basically, the point of this is that if you have a lot of food resources, get caste system asap and spam scientists. I was churning out 385 beakers at pop 10 (2 health resources kinda stiffled my growth). If you time it right, you can show up on the mainland with vastly superior troops before they manage to catch up to you, because an empire with 100000 cottages does eventually catch up to one city with none.
Capture a couple cities (a sneack attack from the sea should be easy), and just spam military in them. Your capital city will do the research for a while. Once you establish a foothold on the continent, it's really up to you whether to go kill 'em or use the already grown towns to fly even higher in tech.
I got unlucky in that game, because my newly built force of grenadiers has just captured the first english city defended by longbows, and the city had horses, so I was just about to finish my first cav, but then two players with 100000 trebuchets show up, and decide to kick me off the continent before I could do anything. That was still a fun game.
Not having to worry about maintenance, or researching military technologies really sends you flying up the tech tree.
So I said, ok, screw fighting, and just built up my city. Some work boats, monument (charismatic Hannibal), library, Colossus, Stonehenge (for the heck of it). I went for religions, and managed to found 5 of them (missed Hinduism and Buddhism). With 2 clams and one sheep I decided to make a Great Scientist factory, couple that with 5 monasteries and you get some uber science. I had cavalry and emancipation when everyone had knights. Then of course the guys on the mainland HAD to let the inca player boom uncontrolled with the cities he captured early, so eventually he caught up to me and owned my one city with tanks, fighters and destroyers. I had infantry, while no one except for Inca had cavs. Some just got grenadiers though.
Basically, the point of this is that if you have a lot of food resources, get caste system asap and spam scientists. I was churning out 385 beakers at pop 10 (2 health resources kinda stiffled my growth). If you time it right, you can show up on the mainland with vastly superior troops before they manage to catch up to you, because an empire with 100000 cottages does eventually catch up to one city with none.
Capture a couple cities (a sneack attack from the sea should be easy), and just spam military in them. Your capital city will do the research for a while. Once you establish a foothold on the continent, it's really up to you whether to go kill 'em or use the already grown towns to fly even higher in tech.
I got unlucky in that game, because my newly built force of grenadiers has just captured the first english city defended by longbows, and the city had horses, so I was just about to finish my first cav, but then two players with 100000 trebuchets show up, and decide to kick me off the continent before I could do anything. That was still a fun game.
Not having to worry about maintenance, or researching military technologies really sends you flying up the tech tree.
