LegionSteve
Motörhead
I normally play monarch level, no tech brokering, epic or marathon, large fractal or hemisphere maps, sometimes aggressive AI and sometimes not. BTS 3.19 and BUG 3.6. I can probably win most, but not all of those games, though I tend to quit when I'm cruising to a culture win if I can't be bothered pressing enter another 300 times.
So I decided to try a different setting - no tech trading. I had the idea that this would make the AI suck more, so to make it harder I put the difficulty up to emperor, which I never tried before. Always marathon and aggressive AI for extra warmongering. And just to make things even more different, huge tectonic maps. Tectonics maps look interesting but I find them more difficult because you seem to get either loads of grassland with no production or loads of plains with not much food.
Anyway the first game was brilliant. I was Augustus, on the top half of a big continent connected by 1 tile to the southern half. I wiped out the other 3 civs on the top half. Hattie owned most of the bottom half and we became best friends with a shared religion. I was teching well and everything was nice
Then I went exploring the seas, and found the other civs, which included Cathy. She was a MASSIVE superpower 
I thought I had a decent military until I saw Cathy's power graph - from that moment I was preparing for war. When the attack came it was against Hattie. I had to join in and help Hattie - if she capitulated it would put Cathy within a few % of domination. I have never, ever seen an AI get as close to domination as Cathy did in that game. Twice we fought off Cathy and made peace. The 3rd time, I had nukes. I was nuking her cities, and nuking and wiping out stacks of 30-40 units, my power rating went from 0.3 of hers to 0.4 then back to 0.3 again - she was churning out units that fast. I had to give up and leave Hattie to her fate. I went for a space win, which was still a possibility because I had somehow kept teching very well through all of this. Every city that wasn't building SS parts was either building wealth to keep the slider maxed for those last few techs, or building units for our last stand. Anyway the game bugged out so I will never know if I could have got the space win before Cathy got domination 
I wish I had some screens but I don't.
After that came many games where I quit early because I got a horrible start, or I tried a weird new strategy that didn't work out, or I just sucked
No tech trading at all may be bad for the AI in the long run, but at the start it's really hard for the player because you can't use tech trades to keep up or to help diplomacy. If you can survive the start without being way behind they turn into some really exciting games though.
My current game is one of those fun ones. Started as Cyrus on a continent with Vicky, Ragnar and Joao. Strangely I became best friends with Ragnar, and we divided the continent between us. I killed Vicky, gaining a holy city, a decent GP farm site and a fantastic commerce city, while Ragnar killed Joao. When I went exploring I again found a runaway AI, only this time it was Justin and his willing vassal Fred. They owned a whole continent and some islands, and between them had 5 religions and most of the wonders. Justin was miles ahead in tech, and well on his way to a culture victory.
I was already trying to plan some way to stop Justin when he attacked me. His attack was pathetic and achieved nothing, but that insult sealed his fate
I made peace when I could, meanwhile building an army. Not to conquer - no way I could withstand the massive counterattack of catapults and cataphracts that would surely come against any invasion force - but his cities would burn 
I think Justin doesn't like me very much, wonder why - oh, yes, that
This continent and the islands to the south were all Justin and Fred's, filled with cities sized from about 10 up to 18, packed with religions and wonders. To add insult to injury, their 'ally' Hannibal has jumped in to some of the gaps:
Justin's culture victory seems to have come off the rails a bit:
What had happened was, I realised that with charismatic, barracks, stable, vassalage and a settled GG in my 2 best production cities, I could build a force of amphibious knights. So I filled 7 galleons with mostly knights, and assorted other bits and pieces, escorted by about 10 frigates. The frigates would bombard the defences of coastal cities, and the knights would do most of the killing. It would be a suicide mission for the last unit to take and raise the city - they would be killed in the counterattack - but I brought some obsolete axemen for that. It worked very well
Meanwhile nasty Brennus has beaten up my vassal Saladin, and I couldn't help because stopping Justin getting further ahead was much more important. His turn will come. Suryavayavraryarman started on a big continent along with Babylon, who he killed, then rexed like mad, fell some way behind in tech, but is now catching up and will become a major threat. This game is FAR from over...
By the way, big thanks to TheMeInTeam for recent posts about gifting tactical nukes to AIs, which I have had some fun with, and when building wealth is better than building research and why, which has helped a lot in these games
So I decided to try a different setting - no tech trading. I had the idea that this would make the AI suck more, so to make it harder I put the difficulty up to emperor, which I never tried before. Always marathon and aggressive AI for extra warmongering. And just to make things even more different, huge tectonic maps. Tectonics maps look interesting but I find them more difficult because you seem to get either loads of grassland with no production or loads of plains with not much food.
Anyway the first game was brilliant. I was Augustus, on the top half of a big continent connected by 1 tile to the southern half. I wiped out the other 3 civs on the top half. Hattie owned most of the bottom half and we became best friends with a shared religion. I was teching well and everything was nice
Then I went exploring the seas, and found the other civs, which included Cathy. She was a MASSIVE superpower I thought I had a decent military until I saw Cathy's power graph - from that moment I was preparing for war. When the attack came it was against Hattie. I had to join in and help Hattie - if she capitulated it would put Cathy within a few % of domination. I have never, ever seen an AI get as close to domination as Cathy did in that game. Twice we fought off Cathy and made peace. The 3rd time, I had nukes. I was nuking her cities, and nuking and wiping out stacks of 30-40 units, my power rating went from 0.3 of hers to 0.4 then back to 0.3 again - she was churning out units that fast. I had to give up and leave Hattie to her fate. I went for a space win, which was still a possibility because I had somehow kept teching very well through all of this. Every city that wasn't building SS parts was either building wealth to keep the slider maxed for those last few techs, or building units for our last stand. Anyway the game bugged out so I will never know if I could have got the space win before Cathy got domination I wish I had some screens but I don't.After that came many games where I quit early because I got a horrible start, or I tried a weird new strategy that didn't work out, or I just sucked
No tech trading at all may be bad for the AI in the long run, but at the start it's really hard for the player because you can't use tech trades to keep up or to help diplomacy. If you can survive the start without being way behind they turn into some really exciting games though.My current game is one of those fun ones. Started as Cyrus on a continent with Vicky, Ragnar and Joao. Strangely I became best friends with Ragnar, and we divided the continent between us. I killed Vicky, gaining a holy city, a decent GP farm site and a fantastic commerce city, while Ragnar killed Joao. When I went exploring I again found a runaway AI, only this time it was Justin and his willing vassal Fred. They owned a whole continent and some islands, and between them had 5 religions and most of the wonders. Justin was miles ahead in tech, and well on his way to a culture victory.
I was already trying to plan some way to stop Justin when he attacked me. His attack was pathetic and achieved nothing, but that insult sealed his fate
I made peace when I could, meanwhile building an army. Not to conquer - no way I could withstand the massive counterattack of catapults and cataphracts that would surely come against any invasion force - but his cities would burn I think Justin doesn't like me very much, wonder why - oh, yes, that
This continent and the islands to the south were all Justin and Fred's, filled with cities sized from about 10 up to 18, packed with religions and wonders. To add insult to injury, their 'ally' Hannibal has jumped in to some of the gaps:
Justin's culture victory seems to have come off the rails a bit:
What had happened was, I realised that with charismatic, barracks, stable, vassalage and a settled GG in my 2 best production cities, I could build a force of amphibious knights. So I filled 7 galleons with mostly knights, and assorted other bits and pieces, escorted by about 10 frigates. The frigates would bombard the defences of coastal cities, and the knights would do most of the killing. It would be a suicide mission for the last unit to take and raise the city - they would be killed in the counterattack - but I brought some obsolete axemen for that. It worked very well
Meanwhile nasty Brennus has beaten up my vassal Saladin, and I couldn't help because stopping Justin getting further ahead was much more important. His turn will come. Suryavayavraryarman started on a big continent along with Babylon, who he killed, then rexed like mad, fell some way behind in tech, but is now catching up and will become a major threat. This game is FAR from over...
By the way, big thanks to TheMeInTeam for recent posts about gifting tactical nukes to AIs, which I have had some fun with, and when building wealth is better than building research and why, which has helped a lot in these games
