Self Challenge Scenario

I have been playing Civ1 for a number of years and have used a scenario that offers some interesting gameplay on Emperor with 7 civs, playing Earth.

With the use of CivEd, I have given myself the following:

• Bridge Building
• Railroad
• Automobile
• Embassies with all other civs

I have also used CivEd to join all the continents with a strip of land (because I personally don’t like playing with boats, but leave the poles as they are) .

Self limitations:

• Science and Revenue is locked at 50/50 throughout the game
• Stay in despotism throughout the game
• Can only build the following units:
  • Militia
  • Phalanx
  • Musketeer
  • Rifleman
  • Diplomat
  • Armor
• When taking over a city, it has to already be connected by Railroad with your other cities or starve down to make a Settler (this gives the advantage of having NONE as the owned city if done strategically)
• You can only ‘found’ a new city once ALL the city squares of ALL your conjoined cities (not those you are starving down) have been Railroaded and the new city must also be connected by Railroad

If one of your cities is taken over, that is the end of the game as the enemy will then have Automobile and most likely all the others will too at some stage making the game too difficult (unless that is your thing).

Strategy

I quickly found a city and build militia. Then I build an Armor and maraud the surrounding areas looking for the other civs to either kill units or take over a city.

Once a city has been taken over, sell any buildings and starve to a settler and either escort the settler back to your other city(ies) or send unescorted and continue marauding.

Your funds do grow, but this enables you to rush build units/buildings as needed.

You do tend to always be behind other civs in the technology race, but this doesn’t really matter as you acquire technology when taking cities over.

I regularly meet with other civs to try and get money from them, but mainly to monitor their strength in the world. Armed with this knowledge, I tend to target the strongest civ and take over their capital – sometimes creating an empire split.

When an empire split occurs, the ‘new’ empire has no embassy with you so using Diplomats to establish an embassy can be important.

Barbarians are fairly rampant, which is good, as this can boost your funds, but as your empire grows, the Despotism factor begins to reduce your revenue.

Tactics

I have found that I have had to make more use of the terrain when attacking/defending. Simply because of the Emperor level Armor vs other units issue when you lose a battle you expect to win so attacking on plains / grassland and defending on hills/mountains.

Whether you use the Settler cheat or not is objective.