GOTM39-500AD Spoiler
OK
that WAS a barb city there! And it was seperated by impassable terrain. And the barb script is apparently settle-settle-settle. Ive never seen barb REX like this before! And they never attack me so letem settle all they want.
In pre-game discussion, I was interested in settling the river-forested plains NW of start position. When a blue circle shows on that very spot, my decision to settle there was made. First tech AH (for pigs), first build worker. After AH (before worker) I went for BW to try to find metals for my first settler to claim. My scout quickly found Rooseveldt and Ghenghis, both very close to our start position, so figure there is going to have to be war just to get some
leibensraum. Popped another scout from a hut and thus was quick to reveal the entire continent map. Pretty cold, but not that cold. Cool. Lots of health resources, plenty of strategic resources, but not so many happy resource (only Ivory, wine, and dye, if I recall correctly).
After the worker (who set out to pasture the pigs, then build mines and chop forests, basicaly), i built a couple or three warriors to grow before building/chopping settler at size 2. I saw the fish/wheat site and was planning to claim that until I saw the horses about 4 west of the capitol. Thats close to USA borders, and I dont want to lose it to him. Also
at this point I figured out that Im playing on Noble level and the AI start with warriors
a few chariots this early should make for quick decisive continental takeover. While hooking up the horse I build a few more warriors while Im growing horse city and another worker. I slave out my first chariot and send it with a 4 warrior escort to Washington, defended by 1 archer and 2 warriors with now 40% culture! But
The stupid archer attacks and loses. Washington is now German (2700BC or so).
On to Ghenghis...Culture in Karakorum and archer spam means I cant take it with chariots. GK's promoted archers are just too toogh behind 60% culture. Then Iron Working reveals that the fish/wheat site would be a much better fish/iron site, and so I make it. I do not recall why I did not get the wheat in the BFC (My 3rd city is 1W of Dynamic Spirit's Hamburger). My 3rd citythus will take ages to flip anybody. Who cares? Why bother? If I can't get them, they can't get me either. I just need some land and I'll be fine, building a Spaceship in peaceful isolation. Errr... back to the game...
My chariots meanwhile watch Ghenghis iron for any workers showing up. Iron seems to be a wonderful worker trap. I stole two, but since my full complement of swords werent ready, I asked Ghenghis what his price for peace was, just for fun.
Im almost sure he said 10 turns for 10 turns, and I decided to accept just hoping hed send another worker to that hill. But when I accepted, suddenly Hamburg (my horse city) is turned over to Ghenghis!!! WTH???? You know, this happened to me once before on a HOF game, so I was preetty sure Im much more careful about looking at what they ask for peace. So either it's a bug in the program/HOF mod, or in my brain
.
Now my swords had to prematurely declare just to get my horse back. I do not want to see Keshiks, no sir! Hamburg was easy enough to get back since GK only had time to whip one archer, but Karakorum was too many promoted archers for my unpromoted swords to take. Lost a few before coming to that conclusion. So what began as a flying start got setback many many turns. AND Ghenghis was rexing, omg. But not to worry...By the time I had enough swords to do the job, I had cats and elephants in the queue too. Had to take 4 Mongol cities in the end to wipe him out, about 10AD or so. Along the way I had to steal another worker trying to hook up copper. I kept all conquered cities, so in a way he did my rexing for me. I set Karkorum up as my GPFarm. Washington was sci/comm city, with first academy and GLib, eventually will put Oxford there. Iron/fish city has Heroic Epic and can turn out 1 cat per turn. (Note, in Vanilla I think cats and siege in general are so overpowered that the game is broken
but thats just my opinion). Cats for taking out Barb cities is overkill anyhow. So as I am the lone civ on my continent, all I need to do is take all the barb spam cities and I don't even need to build another settler if I don't want.
Reflections:
Besides handing my core city to Ghenghis, my other error was thinking I could get a CS sling while doing all this war and military tech pathing (and handing over core cities). Ha ha
missed it by 7 turns - so it was surely do-able, I just didn't do it
. The cash sure helped my war effort though.
Ended up teching for Monarchy and am running in Hereditary rule at 500AD. GLib kind of loses some efficacy not having the Pyramids, so I have mostly cottaged everything green at this point, and specialist economy is not being used. Kind of wastes the Philo trait, but after having forwarded my stack from Mongol war to the barb cities, I now have almost the entire continent in my cultural borders. Those inaccessible barb cities still stand. Too much bother. They cant do much with my cult borders blocking them from working useful tiles anyhow.
I have made contact with Victoria. She built the Oracle, btw. I see some purple borders in the fog. Dont know who it is at this point, but since we have Germany and England, I would guess there are some frogeaters there
but you never know, could be Gilga perhaps. Next task might be to send an expedition west by caravel just to try to meet them, and maybe execute some barbs while Im at it. Or I could just concentrate on founding a couple more good city sites in the interior.
I have 2 GScis saved
first one came while teching Philo half done, and thought it a waste to use it for bulbing Philo at
that point. Now I have to wait a while until I tech CivilServ to use them to bulb Paper/Education. In Demographics screen, I am #1 in everything except life expectancy and GNP, and am #2 in GNP only because havent fully recovered from war and resulting mega-expansion yet. Foreign palace on western Cow/rice(or wheat?) site just kicking in. Hej
this is noble level, after all, so this is where I (a solid Monarch level player) ought to stand at 500AD. I think I lost my chance to get a really fast finish because of my brain-bug-gift of Hamburg to Ghenghis
. But Im going Space because I need the practise, so I still hope to put in a (for me) respectable finish time. Time to see if bigger is better.
), without fulfilling the first one. In this game I tried hard but missed by a couple turns. 
It was fun looking back at the pre-game and noticing how close some guesses were to the actual game. 
Now you know how I felt when the very first post in the BOTM 13 pregame referred to "A hub/snowflake design with Ghandi in the center?". 
