I really enjoyed my first game.
I did random civilization, epic speed, continents, standard size map with default number of city states. I got Siam, which I wasn't initially excited about but I chose random for a reason. It was on settler difficulty because I mainly wanted to get my feet wet and could make a lot of mistakes without getting stomped by the AI.
Babylon found me very quickly, and we decided not to found cities near each other... except the first city he founds is right next to my capital! From then on, we never got along.
I found my first city state, Helsinki not too long after. Sidon and Edinburgh were both on our continent. Due to lack of civilizations on the continent, I decide to build my naval technologies.
My trireme set sail on the ocean blue, and was able to find a narrow, navigable passage to another continent. I find Bucharest right there, and find Egypt shortly thereafter. For some reason, Ramses hated my guts. I couldn't trade with him for anything. He ended up having a smallish continent to himself, and seemed content building it up.
Well I'd found 1 Maritime, 2 Militaristic, and 1 Cultural city state. I was gaming for a cultural victory, so I began buttering up Bucharest. I eventually got access to caravels and went sailing across the world.
meanwhile at home, I had placed my cities in a way to limit Babylon's expansion and isolated his only other city from his capital. He was basically at my mercy the entire time and I allied with Helsinki for more food, and Sidon to help my meager early military out.
money was also rolling in a decent pace and spent most on it befriending city states. I found Seoul, another cultural city state. Quickly allied with them for more culture.
The rest of the game wasn't too interesting. I started focusing on getting my culture up quickly in order to purchase more social policies. My continent was secure.
There was some intrigue on the largest continent. Washington had the nothern section, flanked by Rome to the Southeast, France just south of Rome, and the Aztecs way to the south. For some reason, The western middle of the continent was pretty barren, but could be due to it being a lot of desert.
There were two important city states on that continent that I allied with, Brussels and Vienna. Rome wasn't exactly happy I befriended vienna, but too bad!
Washington attacked poor Vienna, but they valiantly deterred his attack. Monty hated Washington and went to war, dragging me along with him. Why not, he attacked MY city state. I sent some troops over seas and was able to make Boston my puppet state.
Turned out to be a good deal because it contained cotton, which I didn't have access to and was far too expensive to trade for.
Washington was marginalized the rest of the game, while Monty kept ruffling everyone's feathers. Next on his list was Rome and they went to war a few times.
Ramses was content down on his island except for taking Bucharest! Since I didn't focus on military units, I pretty much couldn't do anything about it. Something I'll change next time.
Monty, the bastard that he is attacks Brussels and takes it
another cultural city gone.
From then on, I just turned everything on sleep or alert and just focused on accruing culture. Used workers as needed for improvements, but apart from my puppeting Babylon and Akkad, nothing major happened militarily.
The only other power on the map was Hiawatha, and he was on a continent by himself and just seemed content building away, although he was close enough to the large continent to meddle in those affairs.
Anyway, really enjoyed my first game. I really like the addition of city states. Adds elements of complexity and strategy I really enjoy.
Gonna do random again, this time on the next higher difficulty level.
) and started establishing my overseas empire as soon as i could.
. I watched 2 persia city slowly burn to the ground but couldnt raze there capital so I went on with 4 city.
