There are most definitely no AI civilizations, or else everyone would be really angry and surprised. The other teams are the civs listed (Dave posted somewhere on main forum.) We're up against Gandhi, Willem, Pacal, Ragnar, and Cyrus.
I have some ideas on openings I'll post/edit shortly. At any rate agriculture/worker first =>grow cap to size 4 to work both wheat and silver is probably what we do regardless.
Colossus Opening
I am pretty confident that we can beat almost any other team to the colossus, if we went for it straight out. We'd still settle 2 other cities first probably and do ok exploring. Main competition would be somebody trying to Oracle Metal Casting, say India. However due to the sheer fastness of teching with two silver I think we'd be able to self-tech MC before them on this route anyway unless they were really, really dedicated; nobody could really beat us to MC without the oracle and no one is industrious either so we'd be good in that scenario. If they went all out they'd either lose a ton of production on the Oracle (lose their forests via chopping) or would just be slower than us, but it could be a risk.
Tech would be Agriculture, Bronze Working, Wheel, Pottery, Metal Casting. We could throw in Mysticism or something along the way if we wanted/didn't think we'd suffer from slowing down. On this straight path we get:
-worker by 12
-warriors by 17, 22 I think, or we could choose to do an exploring WB first
-Build settler at size four, first settler out at 35
-MC by 55 (or a few turns after if we got other techs besides the hard beeline. Build a forge in 10 or so turns, prechops (hope we have copper...) should get Colossus just a turn or two after (prechopped forests come in). So Colossus in the mid 60s, assuming we snag copper with a second or third city.
Advantages
The Colossus is awesome; also, I'd run an engineer specialist. Our first GP is either an Engineer or Merchant; hopefully engy we could use on any other wonder we wanted. Merchant I'd use to bulb a very early civil service - Bureau will be great this game and Colossus only helps. We also deny Colossus to others
Disadvantages - lack of other techs, like quick horses for our UU, if we straight beeline MC. Also, the trading/diplo situation is unknown - we could be awesome being the only ones with MC to trade, and trade that to someone else who's gone Alphabet/Mathematics/etc... But there's a chance this doesn't do us much good. And if we somehow lose the race, we're stuck on a poor techpath (though we wouldn't have wasted much production, we'd still have large cap/granaries/forge and forests prechopped for something, but anyway)
What India could do - they could have the Oracle by about 40 assuming a start + resources similar to ours, and Oracle MC. Of course, this would mean they wouldn't have even built a second city, if they were to go straight onto a forge from there, and it assumes they Oracle MC. If India gets a second city their oracle would be a little later but they'd still beat us to MC by a few turns so there is a risk - of course having copper to speed up Colossus building is a must for either of us. Anyway, any other team going after the Oracle would likely take even longer due to lack of fast workers and I think we'd be ok. So the Colossus is a riskier gambit out of all the ones here but also quite possibly good rewards.
Straight Rex
This one is simple - what happens depends too much on the rest of our land. But we just get regular techs, don't go down the religious line if we don't want, find horses and copper, and tech to say Math and Currency quickly. Cap still opens by growing to 4 of course and then build settlers/workers/grow and get a strong empire. A safe route, and we could have early alphabet/other trading techs. Definitely would want all the exploring workboats/scouts we could use. So if one were to simulate it can't go much further than the first settler anyway (35 again I'd say) since then it depends what our next city sites are.
sample build timings
-worker 12, scout 19, warrior and workboat by 27, settler 35 with a chop onto whatever is next; city is size 4 with resources farmed/mined, teched whatever we want; won't have all of pottery/animal husbandry/mysticism techs but we'll have what we want, then just keep building/expanding on our merry way. Second settler by 41 or build a granary in the cap or something...after 30 turns in if we're going after general REX/exploring our choices will depend on what happens in the game.
Stonehenge into REX
I like this option a lot, because SH is so useful for our civ. Border pops for free, extra free smiley in our cities. All we have to do is tech Mysticism after Agriculture, and our capital builds SH. Unless some other team has the exact same idea, or India builds SH from very early, we'd get it. I expect India to go for some Oracle gambit but even better would be us surprising them if they hadn't started SH early. Basically we get first worker and then build SH from there, second cities a little slower but hey, earliest wonder.
Equivalent to this I'd say is doing the above but with the Great Wall; we replace SH benefits with GW, get spy points instead of prophet; I'd say that's kinda meh but also an option if we wanted. Anyway other teams may be considering the same with these early wonders, probably everyone has a great capital so for production we'd have to start really early - basically after a first worker + warrior is what I'd say.
Worker at 12, then another warrior 17; Stonehenge 36. After that a settler could be out by 42. We could also tech a religion at any point if we wanted and someone else didn't take it.
For greatwall: research Masonry instead of Mysticism; GW is at 38 with a forest chop; settler 44 or 45. I don't see the Great Wall as being quite as useful to us but hey, the option is there.
Of course, we don't *have to get these wonders right away, we could just go with settling a second city/building more early warriors/scouts and so on, but then there's more risk of losing the wonders if we do want them.
Advantages
Benefits of wonder; early great person, deny wonder to other teams.
Disadvantages
Could still lose the wonder to really bad fortune; also second city expansion is slower. But we'd follow this with a typical opening otherwise, same economic techpath we would expect, and see where the game/diplo takes us.
Great Lighthouse (into REX too)
The other early wonder I'd consider, though I like the Colossus more. However this puts us much less out of the way techwise, and we'd be practically a shoo-in compared to most other civs, we have the starting tech and position for it. Get sailing and Masonry fast and get out a lighthouse probably after our first settler, then chop the GL.
timing:
worker 12 warrior 17 warrior 22 workboat 27 settler 35 (or similar combos of early warriors/scouts/workboats - settler starts when we hit size 4)
lighthouse 45 or so
pick up another worker here would work, then
GL around 60, depending on what we tech (mathematics for faster forest chops by then would probably forgo either hunting or AH earlier)
Advantages/Disadvantages
We'll have the Great lighthouse essentially, doing fine on tech/trading/exploration, though our REX settling is slowed down a little (only one other city founded before GL for optimal GL speed). Once again this wonder could be delayed in favor of more settling/expansion too, but not going the fastest path risks losing it.
My Summary/thoughts
I like the idea of going for an early wonder; why not? Anyway, also attached is a test save I made - unfortunately of course we don't know what surrounding lands our like, but this should match the capital I think. If our starting warrior sees something good in the first 10/15 turns of course we can change plans to be sure we're on a plan where we can settle 2nd/3rd cities nice and fast.
So an overall plan is probably something to discuss/put up to vote and these are just some ideas. I myself am not sure of the viability of early war; we might not even make contact early but that's another path; one I haven't much tested of course.
Other thoughts - no huts and and low difficulty means I'm not worried about barbs or anything like that at all; exploration is useful of course but a couple scenarios here have more than enough of that - just with standard expansion, send warriors/scouts/workboats out.
Edit: Should mention I'd prefer getting either Stonehenge or the Colossus, unless something really good around us revealed itself, in which case just flat out expanding and saving for later wonders like HG and Library would be ok.
It would be a real steal.
