Challenger Save
I was happy to find Cow and Silver but I missed the Rice, grrrr. Now the Rice is marginalized in such a location that I'll probably never bother to settle a City next to it.
With only 1 Food Resource to grow off of, the start felt very slow. So, I decided that I would Warrior rush by spamming Warriors while the capital slowly grew. No, not Warrior rush an enemy City... just some Warriors to pick off a Worker then have sufficient Warriors to defend from attacking Archers to be able to have a chance for requesting Peace. Cyrus gave me one better than a Worker and I captured a Settler of his.
Only after I'd spammed out 5 or 6 Warriors did I bother to build a Settler... it took 4 Warriors to take down Cyrus' second Archer, so my "rush" was pretty much dying down, anyway, thus the Settler.
Qin decided to stick it to Asoka and they fought a war around 1000 BC, while I squeezed out The Oracle for a Civil Service slingshot (a small number of Cities = low Maintenance = low production but a reasonably high Science rate = worth trying for The Oracle as an Industrious Civ = Civil Service slingshot).
I fed Qin my Stone in the hopes that he'd build me The Pyramids, but he only built Stonehenge with it and The Pyramids were built in a Distant Land. Luck is with whomever hasn't seen The Pyramids built by now, as Industrious would likely still give you a chance of building them. That and the fact that you're probably playing at Monarch instead of Emperor difficulty level.
The Barbs were quite vicious. Pre-1000-BC, a stack of THREE Barb units came at me! The Barbs gave me more of a headache than any of the AIs have done to date.
Once I felt that the Barbs were safely under control (meaning that all I'd been able to build were Military Units and the odd Granary--not even Barracks--in my 3 Cities), I decided to go after Cyrus again.
This time, Qin and Asoka had made up with each other (although they were far from being on good terms with each other), so I was able to bribe Qin into the war against Cyrus. Qin didn't do a whole lot other than pillaging, but he probably distracted Cyrus sufficiently for Cyrus not to make much of a counter-attack on my Cities.
As of 1 AD, the Persians have been elimiated and I own 6 Cities.
I still have yet to be able to sneak in a Barracks, but I did whip a couple of Temples since Happiness has been a major issue. Unfortunately, the Ivory that I "earned" from Cyrus will likely belong to Qin next turn when Qin's borders expand over Cyrus' old land, but my army doesn't have the stamina to go after Qin anytime soon.
The plan from here is to build some infrastructure then hope that Asoka and Qin get into another war that I'll be able to leverage.
Sending out a Galley? Hmm, that would have been a good idea. It didn't happen, though, as I've been too busy with the Barbs and Cyrus on land.
The game is far from mine, as I'll likely soon be facing War Elephants and Longbowmen on this harder difficulty level, unless I end up turtling-up and just building so many buildings that war becomes a mindset of the past.
.) My sole Wonder attempt so far was the Oracle and I missed by a few turns. Henge, Pyramids, and Parthenon are the only other wonders as of 1 AD. For a Monarch game I feel that I'm progressing rather slowly--I hope that's because our starting lands aren't so great?
Sorry about all the bad luck, WG. After reading suggestions from better players (such as our beloved map maker), I've lately been putting more effort into posting cheap units to suppress the barbs and I'd say it's usually a good investment. Here's a very helpful post about barb spawning, by the way. This post has a nice screenie. The main points are that new barbarian units can not spawn within a 2 tile radius (5x5 tiles) of ANY existing unit (including other barbs), even if tiles are fogged. Barb cites can appear in fogged tiles, though. Good luck on the rest of the game!
