Hatshepsut!

[scy12]

In my 25 cities by 1500 monarch game with Augustus (large pangea map) i have only build 2 additional cities, i then captured the rest . the first one was a great military city while the other a commerse one. I rushed to the praetorians techs and my first city had iron. Simply i crushed wie asoka extremely close cities and inherited a small empire and dominated the game from there. 3-4 praetorians = 1 or two cities. The earlier you have pratorians the better it is. The same can be said for war chariots.

The creative trait is the bomb . It provides barbarian protection ,allows you to take advandage of the newly captured cities and allows fewer cities by your enemy so they are more badly placed . It is very advantageous with early warmongering . Spiritual also helps when you need to change civics for war or peace .

 

[lukep]

really?
I built praetorians from 1000 BC up to 1400 AD (end game).
Of course, the last one get build for CR promotions, then get upgraded to grenadiers.

As i said for *my* gameplay (monarch).

I like a very early grab with axes, then peacefully up to maces (or samuraïs) or even rifles. from that i do it rollersteam style, trying to never stop as long as i dont have a very big chunk of land. And the first strikes of sams means they have more health if they survive, so advance faster on next city. sams still can service as mop-up crew against at least riflemen which avoid the upgrade costs (i'm almost always short on money).

I understand the power of praets, just that the few times i played them, i was not in position to use them so efficiently.

so far i played only vanilla, not warlord if it changes anything.

 

[Lord Parkin]

What Map were you playing? Terra? Pangea?

A more important question, I would have thought, would be what size was the map, and how many players were there? A small map with 4 AI is far easier to win quickly than a huge map with 10 (or more) AI.