Playing Emperor, a completely straight Earth game - no cheats at all except that I moved my initial settler from Greece to a nice spot in Australia in 3980 BC to add a bit of interest. Three cities up. The two colonies were still undefended but developing nicely, and then my wretched explorer (a cavalry unit) walked over a goodie box and released a mob of barbarians. No cheats, remember? Reloading a saved game is a cheat. I had to play through.
I lost my two colonies and almost lost my capital (lost one defender and a point of population, finished a replacement defender just in time to win the next attack and thus save my last point of population).
It set me back. It was the first time in many games that I was behind in technology come the industrial age. I won the game, but only because the Mongols helped me by cleaning the defenders out of a coastal Chinese city and leaving it defenseless. I had a frigate with phalanxes off the coast at the timne and managed to capitalise on the gap to capture the city myself - which gave me armour. The rest is history ...
I lost my two colonies and almost lost my capital (lost one defender and a point of population, finished a replacement defender just in time to win the next attack and thus save my last point of population).
It set me back. It was the first time in many games that I was behind in technology come the industrial age. I won the game, but only because the Mongols helped me by cleaning the defenders out of a coastal Chinese city and leaving it defenseless. I had a frigate with phalanxes off the coast at the timne and managed to capitalise on the gap to capture the city myself - which gave me armour. The rest is history ...
