1, Darius. Caesar. Napoleon: The triumverate.
2. Early game is somewhat like this: ignore faith. Some one else will develop it, and you will have to switch to it to pacify them, as they will spam it all over your continent. Develop masonry. Use masonry to build the great wall. This will give you great spies, which can be used to steal all teh tech (pick the most science oriented computer faction nearby - they will usually turn into a midgame superpower.) Spy on them exclusively (just put the setting to 99).
3. The wall is up. The holy anti barbarian shield is complete - never again will you have to worry about your cities getting raided by barbarian junk. Now get bronzeworking (hopefully you developed it as tech 3 so you could cut down trees to choprush the wall.) Ah. this is a good time to learn about choprushing, young one - when you cut down trees,you get 60 production towards whatever you are building - increase by 100 % for a wonder if you have the right resource. This is generally a good way to build 1-2 wonders fast in your starting city. The downside is this removes all the local trees (start with the ones on green squares, those will later become cottages.) If you have alot of hills nearby that 's ok, but i'd advise being careful removing trees on plains. Those can much later be lumber camps and give you health points for really large cities. However, if I really need something , I remove trees without compunction. Things on the high priority list would be wonders, and settlers, or troops for that first initial push.
4. Settle nearby. Take over barbarian cities. Use slavery to spam graneries. Have 1 city with high population spam settlers. Get ironworking . Get alphabet, so you can trade tech with the computer (consider pushing to alphabet to trade it for ironworking, via pottery, one of the most useful advances in the game.) You need to at least find copper for axemen (start building these in bulk, but you will need other troops. ) For most civilizations, a mix of axe/swordsmen as mainline troops is best - immortals are fun for the persians, but mostly chariots are useless for everyone else. I swear by an early game axemen/swordsmen/immortal build with some catapults and horse archers thrown in as soon as I can steal or trade for the tech. Put cottages as many places as you can (HOPEFULLY you got tons of river valley/floodplains.)
5. Build lots of swordsmen + axemen and take out a neighbour. Catapults are a good idea too to take down fortifications, and horse archers are also on the "useful" list, as well as elephants (rarely). This can go horribly wrong if you overuse slavery, and don't have enough cities. However, it usually works, and you are set up with a semi decent empire. Trade with people. A great spy will materialize from the great wall. Dump it into the highest tech neigbour. Steal everything they have, including tech you will need to survive and develop. You developed alphabet so you could trade, right ? Tech to currency and code of laws. I always play with someone with organized, - it makes costs sane later in the game. Courthouses are very useful , as they make large empires a reality.
6. Some time in the middle ages, things will stagnate. You are hopefully spamming great spies by this point , and have removed one neighbour. Your duty is to get out of the middle ages as soon as possible. Steal or develop important stuff ( civil service, paper, machinery.) Eventually you will find yourself able to research education, and then liberalism , hopefully before anyone else does. This takes you to a free nationalism (you did steal philosophy right?). All this theft requires every great person to be a great spy, which can be done simply with a city, with a courthouse, a wonder or two (great wall + something else), and the national epic.
7. You will get to the renaissance. You hopefully developed liberalism first, catapulting you to nationalism (YAY< DRAFT!!). This is the world's silliest way to raise troops for relatively cheap. By this point, I make obtaining or stealing astronomy a priority. You can usually trade for the precursors - try and get the 'round the world' bonus by sending 2 ships in opposite directions. The real priority though is developing 10-12 cities with as many cottages and research huts as you can, so you can research your way through the renaissance at a half decent rate. Priorities include guilds (knights -yaay), and then banking/economics. I've never failed to use the great person at this point to generate a golden age.. this lets you switch to the exciting new governments without shutting down your economy. You probably got through the middle ages by using monarchy/vasslage/slavery(serfdom)/decentrilaization/organized religion or theocracy. Now it's time for something new and exciting (renaissance
! _ try republic/nationhood/serfdom(slavery for warfare)/freemarket/(organized religion for building/theocracy for warfare/free religion for research.)
8. The game begins to get exciting . Modern napoleonic wars begin to become a reality. Get rifling. begin taking over the world. Try and make way to assembly line. In event of global war, slavery makes deploying new uber units a reality fast. Other than that, get rid of it (use something more infrastructure), and use the draft to stay alive, and conquor. Trade everything with everyone (cash off every computer AI not at war with you, to the max they will give you, for your resources, and ANY resources that give you unhappiness (this helps you absorb the happiness burn from using draft/slavery. I tend to try and have both running in my cities, as they bleed off in separate counters - though slavery trashes population majorly and I'm not fond of using it overly much late game.) I also trade for all health resources. Astronomy lets you set up modern era trade networks, which drastically changes the game - I try and have all mods I can at all times, just in case i get poisoned water or something. AI's will trade goods at 1 to 1 - trade off your 'spare' gold or wine or whatever for stuff halfway around the world you don't have. Build harbours and customs houses in all ports to reap the benefits.
9. I would advise developing communism if you can ( I 'm not really a fan of corporations - one game MAYBE one of these years I'll use sid's sushi...) - This game I'm playing with Darius on Immortal - Freemarket is going to be my government for a while. The "napoleonic" continental wars are heating up, and victory depends on destroying Justinian before he gets modern technology. He's attacked me before ( I had to reload - uck ), and thankfully I managed to fend him off with drafting, gunpowder, and a network of walls ( I LOVE these now - they stop junk units.) Cataphractoi are very nasty in the hands of a computer AI who can mass deploy them - I never use them as Justinian lacks organized, and that makes him very less impressive in player hand (used to playing in high modes with massive computer bonuses.)
10. Thoughs - pentagon? Assembly line is pretty fun. More cottages than god.
11. Somehow, somewhere, I got away with 10 or so workers. They threw out critical stuff, missed roads and moved on. I captured a bunch off the Russians.
12. I hate Pretorians. They die too fast. Immortals are cheaper, and you tend to loose units at 2/1 in early wars. Immortals are so very much more useful. Die archers, die !
Best unit in the game by far.
