Trying emperor again. My last few games have gone well. I've gotten them to the point where the win is clinched, but maybe this time I can actually get to the victory screen.
Settled 1N. I actually popped a map that showed me the land to the SE like someone mentioned before, but it was nothing special. My warrior went off to the left and popped AH from a hut. This was a huge break. With no animals around and copper close, I probably would have put this off for a while. This would have changed things a lot.
I met the neighbors, Hammy and SB. All I have to say to the people that axe rush every game is have fun with those neighbors, at least there's no Gilgamesh. I settled my second city to the SE claiming horses and wheat in the first ring while teching off HBR. You can see where this is going.
I got a barracks and stable up in my two cities and started cranking out HAs. I pretty much completely deforested the capital, but that's a small price to pay. I was ready to go at 1000BC.
SB may have scary archers, but unfortunately for him, horse archers don't fear anything before longbows. 200 years later, the Native Americans are a thing of the past.
I should have waited for that city to grow to 2 pop, but he had a lot of defenders and settlers walking around, so I just wanted to get rid of him. My flanking HA actually won on a very low % when I was just trying to retreat.
-13 gold at 50% slider wasn't a big enough crash of the economy for me though. I mean, if you have a stack of veteran HAs, are you just going to use them for HR garrisons? Hammy was teching along pretty well, although he wasted the Oracle, taking CoL when he was 2 turns from teching it manually. I spent a few turns reinforcing my SoD and getting SB's land productive, and eventually I was ready to declare on Hammy ~400BC.
I blitzed in and easily took Akkad first turn. It's a great city with a lot of flood plains, not to mention a courthouse already there. From there I moved on his capital. This was actually a huge mistake, it was guarded by 2 spears, a sword and a bowman on a walled hill. I got my first GG for a super medic after Akkad, so I could have waited for him and rehealed the rest of my stack, but I decided to move quickly. I was ready to throw a brick threw my screen after 3 straight HA's didn't land a hit, but I got bailed out by winning a 3% and a 20% battle.
I saw a nice gold mine to the SW in Dur-K~, so I healed my stack and moved down there. Hammy's pretty much crippled at this point, and the city was only guarded by an axe and a bow. My 20exp+ HAs just ran over them.
My economy was very stretched at that point, so I looked at what I would get for peace. Not surprisingly really, he still wouldn't give me CoL for peace. I decided to teach him a lesson. He had two more cities on the peninsula, one guarded by a HA, another guarded by a bow. I quickly raze them both and bring him back to the negotiation table:
Note, this is actually from the first time I tried for peace, so I actually got CoL a few turns later.
Hammy had bribed Musa into the fight somewhere. He never sent a stack, but he did have an annoying exploring skirmisher that parked himself on a hill until I gave him 5 gold for peace.
I teched off currency a few turns after taking peace with Hammy, and along with quick 2 pop whip courthouses everywhere, my economy went from losing gold at 100% gold to being fine at 50%. Here is my empire at 10AD:
SB's cities are all pretty nice. His old capital looks to be the best candidate for a GP farm with all that food. Taoism also got founded there, so maybe that will even lead to a nat epic/Wall Street combo if I don't capture a better shrine. The 5cpt from being a holy city also means that the marble will be mine when I start building the GLib. Our initial land:
Not much there really. I need to get some cities down there to claim those happy resources, although I have HR now. Istanbul is a nice hybrid capital though. And Hammy's land:
I took a barb city a few turns ago, could have put it off a little, but why not. I may need to redeclare on Hammy to get rid of the culture pressure on Babylon. Hammy is down to 2 cities (3 if you count that crappy city he just settled that's guarded by a bow,) and I doubt he has any production. Still a lot of land to settle to the west there.
And techs:
Somehow I'm the tech leader, Keshik economy to the fullest I guess. I traded HBR around for alpha (researched 3 or 4 turns into it,) math, meditation and sailing. And once someone builds MoM I'll be able to get calendar off of Cyrus for alpha and something else. I didn't want to trade currency to Musa, but I needed monarchy pretty badly. I should have a clear shot at the GLib, no one else has aesthetics, and I have marble.
Musa is teching the best, and has the Hindu, Jewish and Christian (next turn) holy cities. On the other hand, Cyrus has a ton of land, but is backwards. I'm not sure which one I should wipe with cuirassiers and which one I should wait for cavalry.
Anyway, the game has started pretty well, hopefully I can finish this one up with an early domination win.
when it matters the most:
. You'll soon notice we are in a pretty harsh position.
bowmen) and Sitting Bull to the right (PRO) .... wow .... 
