I know, Sumeria is too easy right now, but can't really think of anything to make it harder. If you had any suggestions, they'd be very welcome.
I played through some games as Sumeria to see if I could help you out.
When the game started, I used the wolrd builder to move the starting city one tile south, to Ur. I did this so that Babylon would have a little bit more breathing room when they spawned.
As far as I can tell, UHV's usually consist of at least one ahistorical goal, if not more. With this in mind, I was playing for 3 objectives:
- Be the first to discover Writing and Alphabet. (Historical)
- Own one city in the Levant, and two in Mesopotamia by 2000 BC. (Historical if we want to include the Akkadians, which I feel is reasonable for the sake of gameplay)
- Never lose a city by 1000 AD. (Ahistorical)
I played on Marathon, Viceroy difficulty, and it took me a few attempts to get it. Even then, it was close. That said, I'm a pretty nubbish player.
The first goal is easy, if you beeline straight to Alphabet through Writing - but this prevents you from getting useful war techs. You should have
plenty of time to get this one.
The second is reasonably difficult. Build a vulture or two, if necessary cut down on your tech for a few turns so you can hire some mercs, then go capture Sur. You cant build too many vultures (I built just 1 on my successful attempt), because you still need to have time to build a settler to fulfill the condition of two cities in mesopotamia. You start with Ur, and I put my other city one tile East of the sheep (in Urbilum).
I found the final goal really difficult, even when I went into the world editor to delete the programmed Independent armies (which is 100% necessary - theres no way you can survive with them bearing down on you). Babylon's spawning wreaks utter havoc with your empire. I managed to hold on to all my cities until Persia spawned, at which point they were all destroyed by various factions.
It was quite a bit of fun, but I had to abuse the world editor to compensate for my changed ruleset. I had to:
- Move the starting city to Ur, and upgrade it to the level the Sumerian UP ordinarily would.
- Delete the Independent armies that spawn to destroy you.
- Force Babylon to found a city in Babilu. If left to their own devices, they would not settle there themselves, presumably due to my proximity.
If you have any interest in using any those goals as components to a new UHV, feel free to do so.
