Wow. I just shake my head at the effortless way you guys pull these things off. I'm not sure I'll ever get there, as I seem to be at an age where I forget more than I remember.But I'm enjoying the effort of tryiing. I continued on with my original start, not expecting to win but curious to see how long I could last. As of 1976 the most advanced AI is going to launch his spaceship and I won't be able to stop it, though the biggest AI could possibly beat him with a Diplo win using the UN I built. I made some noise with nukes but it was yet another misplayed hand and ultimately too little, too late. I'll move on to something else for a while to forget this one a bit, then come back and try it again.
I'm curious if you guys who have played this think that it could be won without the early chariot rush.
I think it became clear about 15-20 turns that Cathy had to go. She had us boxed in, and we have an extremely strong early UU. If we had someone weaker at the early rush (maybe like SB), this would have been tougher, because we would be limited to about 5, maybe 6 cities squeezed in.
Remember a lot of these guys shadowing have played a ton of games, so we've seen almost every opening possible and have a good idea how to start with any CIV. I'd suggest taking 2 minutes once you start the game, review the reference chart for your civ, and think about early opening based on your capital and the civ you have. That'll get you oriented on right tech path, scouting, etc..
Then, about 15-20 turns in, take another minute and think about how you may need to proceed. Do that a few times in the early game, and it'll pay dividends later.
Ram - traits and UU suggest early rush followed by wonderspamming. He can rush with extremely powerful chariots, and then can wonderspam with the best of them. We had a good target for the rush, so hunting (happiness) and AH made sense. Horses made it clear that my only focus was chariots, as soon as possible. Mining/BW would allow me to chop out a settler and second worker to claim horses and chop.
You brought up a great point - I settled city 2 in a suboptimal place, one off the coast, to get horses online quicker (no border pop). That plus my two workers chopping forests got me 11 total chariots by turn 51 when I started the war - more than enough with strength of 5.
I knew Ram could wonderspam, so I was researching the techs to unlock oracle, and finished it as I finished writing, for COL, which I knew would accomplish three things - courthouses, religion (happiness and shrine later!) and with SPI, I could pop between caste and slavery to pop borders (with an artist) and whip as needed. All this came from knowing the civ and his strengths - this is where some practice and thinking through how to maximize your civ will pay off long run.
One other thing, it's always good to practice crashing your economy and recovering. Here I used Oracle-COL because I knew Ram with IND could get Oracle lightning-fast. That allowed me to whip a couple courthouses, to keep me making money at 10-20% research. That plus a couple scientists was enough to get me up to great library, currency, calendar and monarchy, which were all key to the economy.
All that said - I'm still learning. With this game I'm about to try a late military strategy I've never tried thanks to learning from others on this forum. So even after years of playing this game, I'm still learning too. That's what makes it a great game.
