I always try to win maps via conquest/domination. So having wiped out Ramesses early on, I pursed an aggressive strategy even though it might have been easier to win Culture/Space.
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I was well on my way towards a conquest victory when I accidentally won a Diplomation victory
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This map was extremely challenging for me for the following reasons:
1) Semi-isolated meaning limited trading potential.
2) UI on same land mass settles initially towards you limiting you to about 6 cities initially.
3) Although the capital is nice and maybe 1 or 2 other cities are nice, the remaining initial cities on the starting land mass are very poor.
4) Very delicate balance of power on the 2nd main continent means that you really need to be careful that no one gets a vassal and just takes off in power. I had to play very carefully to avoid this, several times needing to trade techs to broker peace and needing to beg for gold for peace in an attempt to prevent peace vassalation - I've never done this before and I needed to reload at several points to correct obvious errors on my part.
5) Once I took out Ramesses, I thought that I could run a religion with complete impunity given that I was on a completely isolated continent. I found that this wasn't the case at all - running my own religion resulted in my being the most hated enemy/target of multiple AI's - by way of contrast - not running any religion meant that I was never declared on other than a peace vasslation error on my part.
An aside - I think it's best to discover all AI's at a semi-early stage if isolated/semi-isolated and then try to dogpile someone on the other main continent since you won't be in possition to tackle the other contintnent's leader most likely. The trick is to cap a few weaker AI's on the other main continent while preventing the other power houses from capping anyone else - this game was the first time that I tried this.... and I had to reload several times to correct errors.
2 and 3 means that, IMO, you need to take out Ramesses as soon as possible. 6 cities, only 3 of which are nice, handicaps you too much.
So, an early HA rush is in order - scout the enemy territory and build a lot of HA for the rush.
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Once you wipe out Ramesses (be sure to leave one city and trade for a bunch of techs before wiping him out entirely), it's a bit tricky.
I opted to tech to Literature and build the Great Library and Parthenon - both of which work nicely with the Philosophical trait.
From there I grabbed CS (I was careful to cottage my capital using an extra city with shared tiles to maximize cottage development) and then bee-lined optics.
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For me, the hardest part of the game was keeping the other continent in check.
It was very helpful discovering all other AIs early on before anyone vasselled - and from there it was trickier still.
Peace vassilation was a risk; as was vasslation due to warfare - I had to trade techs to broker peace on behalf of weaker AI's on the other continent on several occasions - and I lucked out that peace vassellation did not occur once I joined the fray.
I had to reload at several points in the game to correct vasslation errors.
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Some other key points....
Cottaging everywhere is a viable strategy for conquest at least if you're financial. In fact, this was far better than State Property for me. I teched to Communism and built The Kermlin and then just gold-rushed a ton of buildings/units. This was far better than State Property because I avoided the huge Emancipation penalty incurred from going SP and I was able to build factories and coal mines while going Environmentalism. Kremlin plus factories/coal mines meant that my tech rate was always superior to any opponent and my production rate was also far better than any opponent. In fact, rushing production with gold was far better than State Property.
I think that SP is very nice if you can end the game before Emancipation cripples you - otherwise, if you're financial, I think that cottaging plus Kremlin is a far better strategy.
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Anyhow, this was by far the most challenging civ4 map I've tried - and I learned the most from it.
I hope you too enjoyed this map.
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dead t257, no problem.) Overall, heal less and move more aggressively. And don't leave strong units behind defending conquered cities! Having cuirs and cannons stand around as military police is a massive waste.
from Caste. Caste would be the stronger option here.
