Turn 83, I'm now the proud owner of half the map's capitals. Settled on the wooded gems for maximum early production, as I didn't plan on doing any sim city here.
- How many Pathfinders did you build? How many and which ruin rewards have you picked?
I made ten off the bat, gold purchasing a granary along the way. First pick comp bow upgrade, next pick population, next pick culture, repeat. Once I got to my fifth policy, which was the last I cared about, and got too far away from my capital to get the extra population going there instead of my conquests, I started taking gold and map ruins instead of pop and culture. I purposely left behind some ruins I scouted with comp bows so my new pathfinders could continue taking the upgrade as often as possible. I'm up to ten comp bows by this point, with another five pathfinders still tagging along, and helping as my capture units.
- What did you think about before starting the game, what was your approach to this game?
I did two practice games before attempting this, as I'm unfamiliar with the map type.
First try I went for the typical liberty comp bow rush with an expand, but I quickly discovered how nasty it is to navigate this map. In addition to the abundant rough terrain, there were many choke points created by mountains and water. The map for gotm doesn't seem nearly as bad with the chokepoints. Nevertheless, I decided to forgo expanding at all, or building anything besides pathfinders, since I don't see how it would speed up the victory here; movement speed is the name of the game. I did eventually build a monument, library, four chariot archers, and a stables, and I'm gonna go for Pyramids and then Statue of Zeus next. I don't think regular comp bows will get across the rest of the map fast enough to matter now, so I guess I'll try to get one-turn repairs and the extra combat strength against cities.
My second practice game, which I thought was going well enough to just stop and move on to the actual gotm, apparently had all flatland capitals. I was a bit surprised how much harder it was for me to take the cities on this map compared to the ones I did in practice. Three comp bows + a pathfinder makes easy captures on flatland cities at this difficulty, but I struggled with the hill capitals on this map. Had to do things like wait for barbs to move in and soak shots for me to make captures work with only three comp bows. I now have two groups of five comp bows each, plus some chariots catching up, so I hope the rest of the map goes a little easier.
- What tech path did you follow and why?
I took pottery first so I could gold purchase a granary asap. Mining then calendar next for lux improvements. AH + BW after that to potentially reveal additional production tiles. I beelined those in my practice games, but this spawn location had enough good production tiles (tons of sheep!) that I felt comfortable delaying it here. Writing after so I can get embassies and figure out where everyone is; I learned how hard it is to locate capitals otherwise in the practice games. Beyond that, I don't think it much matters, but I took optics in case I stumble across some water I'd rather go through than around, and then construction in case I'd want to build some non-ruin-upgrade comp bows; turns out I don't, though.
- What Social Policies did you choose?
Liberty opener > free worker, didn't want to wait for Prince-level CS to start spitting out workers to steal. Honor opener > great general > increased xp. After this I don't much care, but I took the golden age from liberty just now since I also popped a natty. May as well double it up while I build some wonders.
- Did you get a religion? What religious beliefs did you pick?
Don't see the point given my strategy. Did use a ruin after turn 20 to snag myself God-King as a pantheon, though.
- Additional thoughts:
By radaring my initial pathfinder, I was able to determine immediately that we were in the top right corner of the map (if you select the unit and cursor far away, even in the fog, it tells you how many moves it takes to get there; but it's impossible to move off the edge of the map, so you can figure out where the edges are through the fog). This helped out a lot with my initial scouting pattern, and will also make the game faster than if I were in the middle and had to send multiple armies in different directions, as I did in my practice games. Here, I have one army going across the north half, and another on the south. Much nicer. I left no fog unexplored, as I'm a very hungry boy for ruins, and Prince AI is leaving them all over the place. I've been taking CS tributes wherever and whenever I can.
