Gentlemen, no good news.
I played 4 turns and had a kill ratio of 25-2 but that was meaningless.
On turn 4, I could not prevent pillaging of our little road-network and I consider
this game a loss. I counted 24 enemy units on my first turn but this number increased
from turn to turn, regardeless how much of them died.
Here is my brief analysis:
1. The starting position was very poor. Therefore, the capital wasn't able to
produce the military and the workers/settlers for the initial phase.
2. The neighbourhood (where you intend to plant your first ring of cities) was also
extremly poor. No food boni or flood plains where to plant a settler farm, no BGs
where to produce the military, just plains, deserts and tundra.
3. The shape of the land wasn't in our favour. We seem to be at the bottom, but
in the middle of a compact landmass, meeting nearly all enemies at once, deadly
in the first stage of an AW game
4. During the first turnsets we faced a number of terrible bad RNG-results.
While this is not a big deal in industrial age combat where you throw 100 tanks at
100 enemies, such things can really hurt the initial phase of a AW-game, delaying
growth and expansion for a few but critical turns.
A single of the above would have been manageble but together it is way too much
for a difficult variant on such a high level.
For me, this is not a big deal, let's try a new start.
There are a number of possibilities. We could go with Therat's suggestion or someone
whow isn't part of the team could play a start 40, 50 turns to find out if it is playable.
If we don't have such a helping hand one of us could test a start and go last in the rotation
to avoid spoiler info.
Open to any suggestions...
And yes, I'm one of those who don't agree to the premise that every start is payable on this level.
.
).
