Get the great library in the capitol if possible.
Why in the capital? The Great Library is most useful in the city with the most food that is capable of building it. It may well be your capital, but often times it won't be.
get music FIRST and save the great artist for later in the game when you may get another island through and will need culture fast for the island.
This seems a waste of a Great Artist to me, you will probably only need 1 border pop for the city your building. Its usually better to use this G.Artist for a Golden Age, but on higher difficulties even attempting to go Music first is a bad idea.
Be careful with this one, it is usually better to allow religions to spread from AI civs and convert to them (can't happen if isloated obviously). Founding one of the early ones (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism) can lead to too much AI trading and very poor relations with you.
1) Forges! Build them everywhere! a 1 tile island with just 1
can be made to generate a 'usable' 5
by just building a forge.
2) In BTS the Apsotolic Palace (AP) wonder is fantastic on maps with low production (such as water heavy maps) due to the +2
bonus given to both temples and monasteries of the AP religion. This effect lasts till Mass Media! You don't even need to be the one who built it to gain the beenfits, though doing so can allow you to horde the
bonus and abuse the AP in all kinds of evil ways
The rest is more specifically for archipelago type maps (especially tiny islands).
3) Overseas trade is very, very valuable. Open borders and map out the territoy of overseas rivals early to get trade routes to form. Also remember that trade embargoes hurt much more on archipelago maps than other types as a much higher proportion of
will be coming from
.
4) I often use an early GG on a galley to get Morale, Flanking1, Navigation 1+2. 5 move galleys can be absolutely amazing for ferrying workers, settlers, missionaries and Great People quickly across small islands, just keep it away from battles!
This also seems to have incredible synergy with the GLH. The speed of the galley will allow you to settle cities in far off locations to block AI expansion very quickly, while the GLH greatly softens the blow to your economy.
I've started a few wars purely to get the early GG just for this
(Well and slowing AI expansion)
5) Your ships and trade routes can travel through all water tiles in your cultural influence, and culture can spread into the first ocean tile off the coast. This cannot be used by rivals you have open borders agreements with!
This means that Coast-Ocean-Coast sections of water can be crossed by
whoever is controlling the middle Ocean tile and noone else. This is useful in a number of ways:
-It allows you to reach otherwise unreachable islands before Astronomy
-It allows you to crate trade networks with cities you settle on these otherwise unreachable islands
-It allows you to explore further
-It allows trade routes with otherwise unreachable foreign cities to form, while blocking the same foreign civs cities from trading back. Ths is particularly useful as on archipelago maps a very large amount of
is available from overseas trade
-Allows for some very unfair warfare where you can attack the enemy, but you are immune to them!
Failed at the Pyramids (I had stone) and Stonehenge.
Normally Monty is a technology moron.
