GOTM 34 - First Spoiler

[haphazard1]

I normally play peaceful builder games, so this Prince-level GotM looked like a good opportunity to try a military game. I intended to pursue a domination victory, using samurai and cats for the main push and then whatever was effective after Astro as necessary.

Settled in place, and scouting quickly revealed we were on an island. But there was land visible to the north, and I stationed a scout on the hill to see if any AI units would wander by. Met G Khan and the French fairly quickly this way; Germans and Chinese were met later when I got a galley out to tour the coasts.

Gold for second city, marble for third, sheep/fishies fourth, wheat/fish fifth. By 500 AD I had filled the island with 8 cities, and had founded a ninth on the mainland by the horses and sugar a little to the east. This would be my foothold for later conquest...if I could hold it. Napoleon had declared on me and sent a few horse archers, but my spear/axe defenders held him off easily. Pretty phoney war otherwise; I was still preparing before going on the offensive.

Built Stonehenge, Oracle (CoL), GrLib, and Colossus in the capital, getting lots of commerce from coastal tiles from my fishing villages. Stonehenge had produced a prophet for the Confucian shrine in Tokyo by the marble -- the holy city meant I had no problems with Mongol culture across the channel.

I had a substantial tech lead on the mainland AIs, and was planning to unleash samurai on them shortly. But that's for another post.

 

[K.K.]

I must say this is the worst map I've played, but then again I haven't played that many Civ games (around 20) and it's my first arid map. It's also my first game at Prince level with standard size maps, which makes it a nice challenge (won a game on a small map).

I am aiming for a domination victory, but didn't declare war until I had a decent stack of samurais and cats, i.e. after 500AD. We will see how it goes, takes some time getting used to the slow build-up (it's also my first game at epic speed).

 

[Bugg123]

Contender

Settled in place only after wasting a few turns looking around. So that was obviously not optimal. 2nd city by gold and copper 2200BC, 3rd by fish+sheep 1600BC. Also got 3 more cities in by 500AD. Built Pyramids late (580BC), but somehow delayed and missed out on the oracle in gold city by a few turns. Gold city thus got me more gold... anyways.

Had a galley meet the closest neighbours fairly early and was miles ahead on tech. Early expansion left me without much of an army, so no warring early.

Plan was to go for domination/conquest, since I suck at warring, so it'll probably be fairly late, if at all

My best buddy and religious friend Kublai will probably be last to go, but we'll see... need to find the rest of the AIs before I can settle on how to actually finish this off.

Reasearching Education atm, trying for a Lib->Astro deal. We'll see...

 

[orb]

After my early scouting (and the discovery that I was on an island by myself) - I came to my first decision point.

Do I bother to explore the rest of the world or stay at home and build culture....Then my warrior saw a Mongol warrior across the sea.....and the builder in me won the day. The plan was to stay at home for this game. (With a non ideal cultural leader).....So SH/Oracle/Parthanon in Kyoto, Christianity/Confusianism in Osaka.

By 500AD it looks like I'm heading down that familiar cultural road again.

 

[Harbourboy]

I settled on the 2 fish peninsula. I managed the CS slingshot (so much easier on Vanilla!) and am now working my way through the Mongolian cities.

 

[Warden USA]

Well, this was my first try on this difficulty and it started off alright. I found the mongol's to the north. I started an early war with them, but then got distracted because of a couple of poorly guarded french citys. so i started attacking both citys which was really dumb. Now i have two civs mad at me and i'm behind in tech...we will see how i finish up