Charlie was a real doozy
Played it a bunch of times, so full map knowledge. Lots of terrible RNG to contend with including:
- Finishing GLH t60, 50% success just to win the race, and of course it sets you so far behind on hammers.
- That barb city spawn on the island, ~90% odds if you're not going to bust it early, which of course comes with its own tradeoffs in early hammer cost and still not guaranteeing you bust it before it spawns, or a barb galley doesn't kill you, etc.
- Taking the fishing spot is like 95% DoW response from Monty. Can't do it til friendly.
- Rexing all available spots can be done, granted there's the hazard of unguarded settlers. But even not taking the fish and staying out of Monty's way, like 2/3 chance he attacks you early.
- Combining rexing with gift cities to bring Monty to pleased can work, but it's rare as your city grabbing is going to be delayed one early settler (to bring monty to pleased) and then you still have to pray that
- Monty spreads his religion to you ASAP and that you can get to friendly before he attacks / settles the fish spot if you want it. It's a pretty important spot, but you can ignore it to grab a bunch of more distant cities.
If going for GLH, best settle spot imo is 1W (on your only forest). Depressing as that is, it maximizes the tile hammer yield you can receive, which is important because we can't really whip GLH, and there's not a terrible amount of sense in whipping settlers when we have IMP mines and so many settlers to build. This obviously kills 1 of the clams, but who cares, clams suck. I was able to build GLH and some number of cities and not get attacked, but I figured this was like a 1/10 occurrence, and I still didn't get in a strong enough position to win.
Anyways, bear with me on this write-up, I played this game intermittently over like 2 months.
Then everything changed. SARS-CoV-2 hit and we had to work remotely. Naturally, so did the Holy Romans.....
Obviously, since we can't build workers until the virus ends we got settler first. And since we can't build warriors we go ahead and settle on the cow, makes first settler faster. We tech fishing -> Sailing - Archery. Archery doesn't need to be this early, but we are a fearful people. And nothing says IMP, PRO like settler first and rushing archery. We use the scout to fogbust the first city location. The scout was closer to the entrance, but saw a Monty archer in the vicinity, meaning it's relatively safe for our settler to emerge.
Next thing to notice is in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. See anything MISSING? Turns out not only does it take luck to get monty's religion to spread to you quickly, it takes luck to get him to have a religion at all

FINE. I've ran and cowered and sucked up to Monty a dozen times now. It was time to try something new this game. THIS TIME WE WERE GONNA FIGHT


I can't emphasize enough just how slow this start is. Naturally we build another settler in size 1 prague while Aachen works that 1

2

power tile to get a workboat.
Warrior blocks barbs from targeting Aachen, which frees up the scout to advance further out and spawn bust. Hopefully we can avoid complications, but if run into barbs immediately this warrior will have to defend. And yeah we're going for the fish city. Prague's only size 1 but it's got 5

ready for the workboat cause. After the monument of course. Always build monuments out of your 2nd city 50 turns into the game
We're about to have our first archer. Monty is toast! With this newfound safety I've pulled my scout back, built another warrior and a galley. That warrior's going to fogbust my next city while scout makes contact with the remaining AIs. Next tech will be HBR, which should give me solid trading opportunities and allow me to attack Monty. HAs get some synergy with PRO, since archery is a prereq and they can defend while your HAs attack.
We found horses! Ok, ok, I knew they were there. Now we gotta get a settler over here fast before Freddy.
IDK what WFYABTA is but I do know I want those techs. I mean I can't build roads or farms in the coronaconomy but I can build walls!
Ah the rl parallels....
Oh right. I need granaries if I'm going to

and I'm definitely going to
I had started teching Monarchy to enable this final trade. And what an important trade it was. With HR I can spam one-pop whip archers, which of course, is definitely sustainable long-term.
We've dropped off a settler at the horse spot. *Now we'll be settling on the horses since, again, no workers*. Waited there for Freddy to show up to delay as long as possible. Freddy showed up like 2 turns later, which is fine it's about time to build HAs. Also I've relocated the warrior that was busting the horses to bust this island instead. The barb city was inevitable and I can't afford the resources to prevent it. Fortunately it does *not* interfere with trade routes, which is great because I need my horses and overseas trade routes are all my economy is.
Lastly my next tech is Compass, for trade bait with AIs (& monty) and harbors + overseas trade routes are going to kickstart my economy even without GLH. Also a stable was completed in Aachen as it was predominantly build horses, but didn't quite have horses yet. Questionable in hindsight.