I suppose you're playing as Persia. Usually when I play as Persia as soon as I can build Immortals I conquer Arabs and Egyptian and then India, these Civs are annoying if you wait too long because they are faster in research. Then I go for Turks, always back in developement and research. Take some barbarian cities (Assiria, Babylon, Samarkand, etc.) and you will be the leader till the end.
Heh...actually I was the French. I had all of Europe besides England. Had Anatolia, the Mideast, the Nile portions of Egypt, your typical Persian cities, and one city east of Moscow (Tatar I think) in the north. Decided it was time for Mehmed to die and while my forces were raising cities up there, Gandhi began an all out assault on my Persian possessions.
My usual strategy with a European Empire is to conquer the western front on through Spain, than hit the east til I take Moscow, raze any nearby cities east of it, and great artist that for a large buffer on my semi-permanent eastern front. After that Assyria and Babylon are a must since they're the first access to Dye's and Incense that a European power gets. (If I'm playing Greece or Persia, I might even go after them first, though this defense-only barb unit makes that more difficult) The Vikings and the English I usually leave til later unless they attack me. (which is frequent with the Vikings, but pretty rare with the English) Though I do like the main Viking city, little production power-house. Madrid, Paris, and Berlin are pretty good too.
Well, just completed a conquest victory on Monarch. After razing the Turks (mostly) and conquering India, I played pacifist for a while as my automated workers railroaded my sizable chunk of the continent. I decided on peace a bit longer while waiting for tanks. Had two stacks of Chivalry (love that doctrine) promoted cavalry, one of them a generaled/flag-bearered super-unit. (also had one of those who was my first chariot unit promoted up. Lacked the Chivalry promotion, but eventually got most of the benefits from it, in particular the Commando promotion)
Hated the French early tank unit, so I waited again til I got the much improved MBT's than promoted my more experienced Chivalry stack. Before that I switched to Theocracy/Aristocracy and produced a stack of Blitzkrieg promoted tanks from my military production city. (the one doling out the most XP)
Than it was smooth sailing while I cleared out Africa, leaving everything west and south of Egypt to the barbs. Did the same thing to the Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolians since by this point I didn't need their exotic resources. And than I gave the America's a rude welcoming to the modern world, where the sizable barb majority caused more trouble than the 'civilized' inhabitants.
Gonna try again, possibly as Persia.
Question: Anyone know if any other mods use the military doctrine wonders? Wondering if that's a unique feature created by the TR guys or if its borrowed from another mod? In either case, its one of my most immediate sources of instant dissatisfaction whenever I play a non-TR mod. Seriously, its creative, interesting, effective...and lets you play around with your generals a bit more than the vanilla alternative. (where common sense says to get those +2 xp's in a single city everytime you get a general and screw every other possible application)
If there's any thought to expanding a part of TR, I'm all in favor of more doctrines. One that gives infantry/gunpowder units Blitz would be awesome. (than again, that would probably kill the point of the tank. Just make Mech Inf./IFV's)
But when I went to attack the Indians, the Greek and Roman they attacked me, the one that did move totally my strategy.
