World 1000 a.d.

[svv]

Just played through most of this twice. (Finally have a computer that can play huge maps! ). I was amazed how things developed so closely to actual history. Some spoilers in the rest of this so I'll put it under cover.

Playing as England...

Spoiler :

Nobody had gotten to the new world yet, so it was just the Aztecs and a few barbarians. The Aztecs were incredibly backward in tech - it was my redcoats against their archers. I ended up seing some Japanese settlement around Alaska when I stopped playing.

Playing as Russia...

Spoiler :

You start pretty far behind in tech and score as Russia, which is probably pretty accurate. I caught up much the way the real Peter did, by establishing contact with both East and West and trading techs and resources.

In both games there was a constant fight over Jerusalem, being the holy city of both Christianity and Judaism. The most amazing thing is that in this game, the JAPANESE ended up with it - at least that's who had it by the time my cossacks got to it (I don't think they had had it very long). I had never even seen the Japanese, despite traveling East to look for people and meeting up with the Indians and Chinese - but there they were holding Jerusalem with a few samurais and a longbow.

Tokugawa must be one single minded guy - he sees a city with two religions on the other side of the world, and he must have it.

 

[Dnomal]

In my own game of 100 a.d i managed to capture Jeruslalem and most of Africa, while playing as the Byzantines (ty amra!), signed a pa with russia, which is funny since both nations were orthodox and natural allies, and won after a successful invasion of China.

Meanwhile in American Montezuam was trajecially backward, and England managed to settle around SA, and started an invasion of the Aztec empire.

While in the east China managed to conquer Korea and vassalise Japan, then conquered Mongolia amazingly fast.

I think that world was pretty close to reality, (given the billionsof options), and the most hilatioru thing was France being vassalised by the Holy Roman Empire (german empire), after which the Holy Roman Empire virtually conquered all of Europe, vikings, spain, etc. Hilarious.

 

[svv]

Some interesting resource issues in this scenario:

Spoiler :

Oil is very scarce for the European powers (England, Germany, France, Spain). I am well past the WWII era, and Frederick never got to build his panzers.

There is oil in Russia/Mongol area. There is also oil in North America, which highlights the importance of European powers grabbing some of that early.

There is of course oil in the middle east, though of course Saladin would have something to say about that. I found that, in addition to the money/religious importance of Jerusalem, Baghad and Cairo can make VERY productive cities. More good reasons for trying to conquer in the middle east.

The resource issue caused me to wonder about a strategy: Can you trade/give a key resource to an opposing AI, and then yank it away from them before they've had the chance to build what they need it for? Seems like it might be a good way to mess with them.