I just started this game last weekend, and went to 275 AD all in one play. Wow, I didn't think I was doing all that great, thought I made a lot of dumb decisions/lack of careful playing, but reading the posts here over lunch Monday made me feel a
lot better! Sorry to take such pleasure from your collective pain!
It sounds like the fact I am not in last place is itself an accomplishment, or even that I am just still alive? Monarch has been my upper limit for being able to win, and this was my first game in 2.08 (other than running through the test game posted in the discussion thread a few times to settle my strategy for initial couple dozen turns), so I just figured I was struggling because of that & the crowded board, and everyone else was probably blowing away the AIs in their games. Reinvigorated after reading here, on Monday night I played up to 500 AD & then wrote this up. I am right at 500 AD as I write this, and have no idea what will happen next, not doing great by any means but also not yet resigned to defeat.
I'm not in last place scorewise, but pretty darn close to it, barely ahead of Ragnar & Hannibal. Ramses is leading and has nearly twice my score, and Shaka and Augustus are also way out in front of the pack, lapping at Ramses' heels. But as bad as that sounds, I'm actually ever-so-slowly clawing back, it's actually an
improvement over my situation for the first 3000 years, I was dead last the whole time (like I said I made some mistakes, most notablly not really taking advantage of Brennus' special abilities, e.g. lost the race to stonehenge & never built a single momument even though Brennus gets the bonus +1 happiness) Picture worth a thousand words here:
Score graph 500 AD:
I did not found any religions (or even declared a state religion -- trying to keep AIs from disliking me), and don't have a single wonder (the only one I even took a shot at was Stonehenge, and got beat out when I was about 2/3 done). I went for AH then Ag first, hoped to get one of the other religions later but they were gone before I even started to THINK about taking a shot. At the time I thought not going for a religion was one of my big mistakes, but reading here now maybe it was smart. My military was little more than an archer in each city until around 0 AD. I ended up focusing almost totally on infrastructure: workers, settlers, libraries, granaries, temples, etc., and my tech research was almost totally focused on upper half of chart, other than BW & IW, leaving me in position to get alphabet first & make lots of tech trades, and having techs others would trade for even though my overall tech was WAY behind. I have been trading every new tech immediately, to anyone & everyone who will take it (as long as I can trade with more than one civ -- but I try to pick the techs I research to maximize trading partners so that's worked out so far). This included even alphabet -- something I normally never trade until someone else gets it -- but I was so far behind in almost everything else that it was the only tech that anyone else even wanted at the time; I ended up getting a hanful of techs in trade for it, to anyone who would take it (then a tech or two more from what I got from the first trade). This was around 100BC, if you look at my score graph above you'll see I was in last place continuously up to that point, but a big jump from these trades is what got me back in the trailing pack. Desperate measures for desperate times). To get a multiplier "effect" (research a tech, then trade it immediately a few times over to get a couple more and/or cash), I have been choosing techs not based on whether I need them, but if others still need them. I am ending up making weird choices, e.g. drama when I really needed vassalage, but I'm hoping multiply my efforts 1-3x via trades to close the tech gap little by little will leave me better off for the long run.
I've managed to keep with the main of the pack in raw score the last few hundred years by doing that, even though I'm down in commerce generation & being bled of most of my production capability by an unwanted war with Cyrus which caught me with my pants down, cost me a lot of improvements & 3 workers, and forced a sitch to military from infrastructure. He is pillaging like mad but other than losing a city foolishly for one turn by leaving only one archer in, I'm holding together for now, playing uber-defense: choosing my battles and my battlefields when I can, sacrificing improvements to pillaging if I must; picking off units only as Cyrus moves deep into my southern grasslands and/or taking defensive entrenched positons on border hills (especially the copper square, which he controls) with guerilla-skilled archers, etc. I've slowly built my military this way in the face of his onslaught of Immortals, and may even be able to go on offensive soon -- just got my first cat right before 500ad & started to stock oup un gallic warriors.
Re relations, here is my at-a-glance chart as of 500AD:
I got writing early, in a push to alphabet, and immediately got open borders with almost everyone in order to build good relations (as well as not declaring a state religion). For the longest time in the BC I was +1 or +2 across the board. Hopefully that paid off in keeping me form being taken out early like it sounds like a lot of other people were; no one declared war on me until Cyrus did in the early AD, and I kind of brought that on myself (see below).
My best relations are with Isabel and Hannibal, who are about as strong as me. I'm thinking I'll eventually have to team up with Isabel against Ramses, attacking from both sides, that may be the only way I'll stop him from beating me. That means eventually declaring hinduism as my religion. But for now I am cozying up to Ramses as much as possible (even switched to organized religion when he asked me to, even though I have no state religion -- anything to make him happy); any move against him will have to wait, he could crush me like a peanut shell right now if he wanted. He and Cyrus account for 80% of my total borders, otherwise just small borders with ragnar to west (on island) and zulu to east (along ring of mountains east of ivory cluster).
Until about 200 AD I didn't even have any copper or iron -- I just got iron by going over to the island, Ragnar beat me to it, building a city there two turns before i got my first galley, but it was clear that was my only likely option to get gallic warriors & other military better than chariots that I was forced by desperation to attack Ragnar to get it (which alas brought Cyrus to attack me almost immediately). But, like I said, I was desperate to get SOME kind of metal, otherwise I figured I'd eventuall be crushed like a styrofoam cup, BC was over but I could still build only archers, warriors, and chariots!!!
But I'm still alive, and I think I actually have an outside shot at winning (however remote), so I guess I should not complain. One thing that I have going for me is that have six cities, all in halfway decent locations (probably the reason I am so far behind in tech, maintennace is killing me, but as I described I am using indescriminate trading to try to not fall too far off the pace. Land % is by far my highest demographic, I'm #3 there, and I think I control more than Ramses. Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words here too:
Map of empire 500 AD:
Note my second city was WAY over east just across the river where all the ivory are clustered. I figure if I can hang on & develop these six, plus maybe bite off 1 or more of the three cities cyrus put south of my capital, maybe I can eventually catch up based on having 2x the cities of Ramses.
FYI getting Yaryai (the city NW of capital on coast) may turn out getting this city may be the turning point of my game (if I can pull through!). Notice it is my only coastal city on mainland. I didn't found it but captured it from barbs, and that was due to pure serendipity. It was way more heavily defended than I could hope to take, it had two archers and a warrior in it & my military at the time had exactly one more archer than I had cities, and I couldn't build anything else but warriors. I had that extra archer sitting on top of the cows to defend the resource in case a unit came out on a raid, but no way was I going to take the city. But I had open borders with everyone I could at that time to try to keep them friendly & Cyrus apparenlty decided to attack it, he moved up an immortal & two archers (I think) on my road system, passing through the cow square where my archer was fortified. On a lark I moved my archer up to adjacent to the barb city to see what would happen, maybe the barbs would unload on him (I figure I was unlikely to be attacked by barbs I figured, I had no promotions for my archer & cyrus's did & so were stronger). Well I don't know what happened exactly, but I think the barbs did attack, and my next turn all Cyrus had left stacked with me was one healthy archer and all that was in the city was one barb archer, strength 2.0/3. I checked the odds for attacking with my archer: ~42%. After considering my prospects -- I think I was in last place, no way to get copper or iron anytime soon, and although the spot with the iron was still unclaimed on the island to the west, I had no way to build ships since all coastal locations around me were already grabbed by cyrus, ramses, or the barbs (in this spot) -- I decided it was a make or break moment in the game, and went for it, striking while the barb archer was still wounded. The random number generator gods smiled upon my efforts, and (thank god) cyrus did not attack me (... yet ...) as my victorious archer was almost dead.
If you look at the map, you'll notice that I have not chopped many of the forests around my capital yet -- I'm thinking that's my ace in the whole, I'm researching CS right now & with that will switch to bureaucracy before chopping, so I have a LOT of stored producton potential there just about ready to be tapped. I might even build heroic epic there too, if I decide to use the chops to build military to try to take out Cyrus, to really pump out the production. Not sure yet what my plan will be, but at the moment that is what I am leaning towards, to give me my best shot. Persia has the Pyramids, which might make a tempting remedy to some of my tech problems if I can get the upper hand against him.
Anyway, I'll mostly likely lose yet, but I still have hope -- which is all I can ask for. Actually it's the
most I can ask for, t
his could end up to be a game that is a nail-biter all the way to the finish line, IMO that is the definiton of the perfect game. If so it would be the most exciting one I ever played (usually by about this time it's starting to become a foregone conclusion if I win or lose). I'm not that experienced a player -- especially in a situation like this, I'm a builder & usually setting the pace in tech -- though so maybe I'm naive & it's false hope.
I'm curious, most people posting here sound like they already lost, even though this is the first spoiler & isn't supposed to talk about events after 500 AD. Does that mean you all lost before 500 AD? I'm just wondering how much I can read into where I am right now, compared to what you all had to deal with ...
. Settings: aggressive AI why do they hate me? And why do they declare when they are pleased?
I let the cat out of the bag - can´t improve my time based ranking?
