(0) 1900BC OK, taking over this game for the first time... We only have two cities at the moment, and this game's on Epic speed, so things should go pretty fast here. First up, no offense to regoarrarr, but there is something more productive we can have Karakorum building than a warrior if it's at the happy limit: how about another worker?
I may swap off the lake tile after we discover Bronze Working, depending on the situation. If there is no copper in sight, I think a beeline for Horseback Riding and our unique unit will probably be the best plan. With no diplomacy to speak of as yet, that's really all I can do on this turn. Let's move forward.
(1) 1870BC Beshbalik to size 2, otherwise not much. I watch Cyrus' worker hook up a stone resource (could be interesting long-term).
(2) 1840BC Toku adopts Slavery, so we know what tech he has.
(4) 1780BC Bronze Working discovered, revolt to Slavery (1 turn of anarchy). There are two coppers in the north!
Unbelievably, we just managed to miss out on a bronze at Beshbalik. Argh! It's only two diagonal tiles from the city, but we won't be hitting 150 culture there anytime soon. As far as the other copper, I think the plan is definitely to put city #3 over there by the sheep. There are actually quite a few decent resources up there, although the land quality is not good. Longterm, we should be able to get value out of the north.
As far as our tech research, I pick Archery next. This is Emperor, and all that fog up in the north means barb units are going to stop popping up sooner rather than later. Not to mention the fact that Archery is a prerequisite for our glorious keshiks! (I'm thinking strongly about just heading to HBR after Archery. We can do nasty, nasty things with keshiks, and there's going to be quite a delay in getting copper hooked up. Not that we don't still need a metal of some kind - we do - but holding off the attack until we have keshiks looks like a better plan to me than trying to rush with axes, now that we know we won't have it for an extended time. Whew!)
(5) 1750BC Come out of anarchy, officially begin research into Archery (6 turns). As we have a worker due in 6 turns as well, we can then go straight onto an archer (and I think we'll need it for that insecure northern site). Worker heads to the grassland hill tile in range of our capital to begin mining it. I also send the second warrior in Karakorum up to Beshbalik, since I think the northern city is more likely to come under barb attack up there.
(6) 1720BC Beshbalik finishes obelisk and begins a (double-speed) granary - only 15 turns until we get the horses, gold, and deer in range. We can get good use out of all three, frankly. Capital expands borders!
At least we'll have easy access to some cities to attack a bit later on!
(7) 1690BC There's a barb archer popping up in the west. Hopefully he'll attack Toku, but I'm keeping an eye on it.
(9) 1630BC Peter completes Stonehenge. Umm, that was fast. Welcome to Emperor!
(10) 1600BC Archery finished. I make the executive decision to research Horseback Riding next. Yes, it's 31 turns, but... 1) this is Epic speed, not Normal, and 2) we don't need any other techs out there right now; the only one that would be potentially useful is Writing, but that would be a 13-turn delay, and 3) I say that we're the Mongols, and we're not going to tiptoe around with some pansy, library-building Writing tech! Let's get to keshiks early and FIGHT out way out of this cramped start!
In other news, we now have a second worker. I send him up north to help develop Beshbalik (the first worker will go up there too once he finishes his current mining/road job). Karakorum will finish production on its current warrior (1 turn to go), then I'll pop out an archer for security, followed by settler. (Unless conditions change before then!)
(15) 1450BC And that's pretty much it. Nothing of interest happened in the last five turns.
Here's our civ. I've set Karakorum to zero growth, because anything further will just leave us in unhappiness. (We can grow to another size as soon as that gold resource gets hooked up at Beshbalik.) The mine will be done next turn at the capital (white circle), so a forest chop will be addded; we might want to swap production to a settler to get the full value out of that (the swap, chop, swap micro tactic). At Beshbalik, I was having the worker road to the gold tile, which I think is the most important one to hook up first there. (This is in yellow above; we can get to keshiks much faster by working the gold tile at Beshbalik; it will cripple growth temporarily, but it will probably by worth it for the +7 commerce/turn.) Finally, the warrior in the east (brown circle) is heading over to the forested hill tile to scout out the area and serve as barb patrol. There's also a barb archer poking around in the west near Beshbalik, so be careful!
Since regoarrarr played 15 turns instead of 20, I thought I would play 15, Zeviz could play 15, and then we'll be back to the usual 10 each after that. In other words, instead of 20/15/10, we'll be going 15/15/15, if that makes sense.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/RB21-BC-1450.Civ4SavedGame
Kylearan <<< on deck (10 turns)
sooooo
regoarrarr
Sullla
Zeviz <<< UP NOW (15 turns)