I decided to settle in place. Plenty of options, but it seemed fine in place. 1NW and 1W drops grassland hills and settling in place allows a city on the plains hill picking up flood plains and clams. The capital won't have that much surplus food so a filler city there could spawn a GS. We don't know if we're going to get blocked in very early so keeping the option of a city open adds safety.
I ended up getting a map from a hut which usually provokes moaning, but in this case it probably had a big impact on my strategy.
The thing is that my scout died as early as turn 7 or something (to a bear IIRC) and as a result I didn't map much land. On pangea it can matter a lot in which turn you settle eastwards/westwards/etc as some spots are very urgent and now I'll lack that info. Well, this map showed me that Bismarck settled aggressively towards me in a pretty good spot so an early rush is a good option seeing as the city is not on a hill. Not only does it guarantee me more land, but it weakens one of the teams making them a softer target later on. I <know> that I'll have decent attackers even if I don't find metal as jaguars are resourceless and I have a lot of forests to chop them out with.
His teammate is JC though, which is a little troublesome. However, I have the aggressive trait, so shock axes can hold at least temporarily if he decides to interfere. My gold allows early alphabet which can be used for a peace treaty if necessary.
The other teams are Hannibal/Peter and SB/Ramesses.
Copper pops up close to Tenochtitlan and within the range of that filler city. I decide to put my first city there as it's going to be up to speed very quickly. It won't need a monument and thus can contribute to the rush. It'll allow axes to compliment my jaguars.
I get the herbalist event on turn 48. The timing couldn't have been worse as I've started the rush preparations. I can't afford the loss of population and annoyingly drop the experiments.
I get my first jaguar 2000 BC. I promote it to woodsman and send it out hunting for barbarians. I want it to reach 5XP and use it for healing.
Next time I create a game via "custom games" I'll probably remove random events while I'm at it. There's enough of a random element in civ already (as you'll see later as well) and I get a slave revolt in Tenochtitlan on turn 56.
I check Biz/JC turn 67 and find that they have enough on their hands. Hah! I guess we're both planning to rush each other.
I declare on Bismarck 1200 BC and you'd think this was enough to take Hamburg.
But it's not. At least not right away. I end up with poor combat and one of the archers stand remaining. That really pissed me off. I do take the city the following turn, but I lost a lot of units while doing it. The city also gets a slave revolt at about the time it comes out of revolt (yay random events!).
Here's the power graph a little later -- you can see the "Hamburg effect".
I stopped the build up in favour of 2 settlers as I found some amazing spots to the SW. Again, if my scout hadn't died before I could reveal anything but coast I might've played this game differently, but this is the way it turned out. I think an early rex/Oracle approach is doable as well, but I don't want to vouch for it as this is only my 2nd game with these settings.
Settle Tlatelolco 925 BC and another city 1W of where the settler is standing. I wanted it on the grassland hill picking up the rice (and copper though not present on this map) but a barbarian city got up before I got there.
I continue my war capturing Berlin at about 600 BC and follow up with Munich 400 BC. Berlin holds the Oracle and SH so I will probably chop the GL and the NE there for GPP. Munich holds the ToA, a settled MI and a settled GP -- both great cities!
I'm forced to stop the war here as JC has a stack capable of taking some of my cities. Still, despite the unlucky starting attack I ended up having a successfull war. At least Gibbon supports me:
Now I have some great land and plenty of luxury resources so things are looking quite OK. The plan is to grab the GL/NE in Berlin. I'm going to run 2 scientists in Berlin for my first GP. If I spawn a prophet I will probably use him on theology and if I get a GS philosophy is coming. A GS is obviously going to be much better, but the prophet will have the most GPP.
. It's a lot easier to deal with AI troop spam when they put their troops somewhere else!
