G-Major CIII

[zenmaster]

The Huns are quite strong here. I've played two partial starts with the following approach:

- Look for a production heavy start with a few pastures and at least one Granary resource
- Liberty worker first to speed up Great Library. In my games I got it on turn 37 and 38 which I believe is pretty safe on Emperor. Chose Optics both times. Pottery - Writing - Sailing - Bronze Working
- Monument - start Warrior - Granary - finish Warrior - start Shrine - GL - finish Shrine - Triremes and Battering Rams, Settler(s). You can probably finish the shrine before GL but it's a bit risky
- Embark your warriors ASAP and try to get an upgrade ruin
- Killing a CS early should be trivial with 2 BRs. You can also demand gold or a worker from them first
- Get at least 3 triremes and try to meet AIs as early as possible, DoW them. With Battering Rams you easily have the top army score and AIs will give you gold and luxuries in peace deals
- CSs are often seeking investors, so it might be a good idea to save up 1000 gold from those peace deals and get a nice CS ally
- Embark rams and send them towards AIs and CSs. 3 rams and a trireme or two should be enough to take most capitals and demand gold/workers.

I quit my first game because two AI capitals survived on single digits of HP. I only brought 2 BRs per army in that game and that wasn't enough. In the second game I was very isolated, so I couldn't get to AI capitals quickly enough. In both games I was swimming in peace deal gold and luxuries, 20+ happiness for a natural golden age before the Liberty one.

Brilliant! I saw you must have gotten a good ending in as you finished up a subT220 victory in the HoF!

The Huns have given my best initial tries too. I only tried the Great Library once with them but the map was very bad other than the capital and everything was too slow. Taking Optics with it is genius to jumpstart the conquering and tributes. I have been going Pottery Sailing Optics/Writing Bronze working, and it is too slow to get ahead of the curve on your opponents. Did you go straight Liberty - Commerce - Rationalism, or did you dip into other SPs?

Well done! I will give the GL to Optics a go at least once as it dovetails perfectly into Atilla's modus operandi here.

 

[vadalaz]

@zenmaster Thank you! I did go for the SP path you mention and I actually had Mercantilism before Renaissance. I don't think you can risk delaying Oracle here unless you manage to kill the Maya quickly. After the World's Fair I had enough culture for a couple of excess policies. I wonder if it'd have been wiser to use at least one of the GWs earlier for a quicker Free Thought or Universal Suffrage. Or perhaps if you have enough culture CS allies, you can skip the World's Fair entirely and not invest 3000 hammers into it.

I only planted 2 explos, took a CS and two capitals with BRs and a Pikeman (hit an upgrade ruin with a spearman gift from the very same CS that I killed ) and 4 more capitals with Frigates. Early conquest and earlier NC gave me a 10-12 turn lead on my Indonesia game by Education.

 

[zenmaster]

Just finished a game as the English before wanting to give the Huns a full go. I had planned for some conquest/tributes via Longbowmen and Ships of the Line, but things change in the heat of civilization-building. My island had salt and space for 4 solid expansion cities. Also, no iron , not only on my island but on almost every city-state territory as well. Babylon actually was on my island via a long narrow isthmus but had ZERO unique luxuries that I didn't have! and no iron, and they built no wonders... not even worth conquering, though my early war on Babylon netted 2 stolen settlers to become workers. The alpha-civ that would be the best conquest target was the Maya, who were isolated from the whole world until Astronomy despite low sea level! This all added up to no effort at conquest. Early lux trades helped my happiness and I rode those all game.

Finding out there was no iron as I built the Great Library, I decided to go peaceful. England's naval movement let me find many other civs quickly after Optics, so i got 3 early luxury trades. That helped cement the pacifist approach. These opponents are pretty peaceful in general so it is not hard to stay safe with a minimal army and navy. Timing was great for social policies throughout. Time was also very good to education, OK for Scientific Theory and Radio, and I got some key wonders outside the Great Library, but the endgame was a bit slow. I had tons of cash and bought my Research labs, but even with that, it took awhile to finish. One reason was not a single mountain on my island. Another was that overall growth was OK, but capital growth was not great. My religion chose Pagodas and the Religious production bonus belief. This helped get my mercantile buildings and factories up fast and insured good cash flow, but at the expense of growth. In hindsight, I should either have bought more than 1 Public School after getting Scientific Theory as money was no issue in the late game or else I should have gone with a growth pantheon instead of production.

Despite the slow endgame, I was very happy with the peaceful win in the T250s on these settings. I look forward to massing the Huns for conquest!

 

[zxcvbob]

Despite the slow endgame, I was very happy with the peaceful win in the T250s on these settings. I look forward to massing the Huns for conquest!

I just finished a game as the Huns yesterday. I had lots of pastures (so huge production) and nobody nearby worth conquering, so I played peaceful mostly. There was a decent CS on my island, but they were a friendly cultural CS and were more valuable as an ally. I had no coal until very late when I conquered Madrid, and I needed to settle an arctic city to get some oil.

I spammed wonders and took a quick tech lead, and was friends with everybody. In the modern era they started backstabbing me, and when they'd declare war I would murder them. Good times. It still took almost 400 turns for a science victory though. I wonder if I should have focused on Temple of Artemis rather than GL? Now I am "just one more turn"ing and killing everybody with missile cruisers and a couple of extremely-promoted battleships.