Wow, wotta lotta horra stories on here. Will I get lynched if I post to say that I was rather happy with my situation in 500AD (despite having a
very scary moment)?
As per pre-game discussion I moved the settler SE so got the gold
Built workboat-workboat-worker while exploring a little bit with warrior before returning home. Planned to swap to military building for a worker steal if I found any nearby AIs, but my warrior managed to miss everyone, so I was all alone until one of Caesar's scouts found me. Then I started spamming archers because a warrior-defended (!) barb city popped up to the South, where Pisae is on my screenshot. I thought it'd make an easy 2nd city, but Caesar got to it and razed it about 2 turns before I could take it.
From then, I planned to settle 1 more city to get the iron/horses then go for a land-grab war with Caesar. At this point I had virtually no knowledge of the world outside the area immediately S and W of Mecca, but I had been noting where AI scouts were when they found me. That lead me to believe that the land choke-point W of Mecca was completely separating me + Julius from everyone else to the north, and therefore that if I could knock out Caesar, I'd have a nice, easily-defendible and largish empire.
Then just as my settler was nearly finished, ready to settle 2E of the western horses, a 2nd barb city popped up right in the far SW corner (3W of Medina on the map below
Of course that stopped me settling in my chosen spot coz of city overlap, so I plopped Medina 1E of the iron instead (which actually turned out to be a better spot - thanks, barbs!) Since this new barb city was also warrior-defended, it didn't strike me as a threat, and I was now gearing up for war with Julius, and so didn't want to waste my precious archers on barbs. They could wait till I hooked up the iron and had swordsmen.
D-day came. In between turns, the screen flicked to an axeman somewhere, but it didn't seem to be Caesar so I didn't investigate further. And I spied my chance to capture a Roman worker. I wasn't
really ready for war yet as still only have archers, but with a worker begging to be taken, what can you do? My archers should be able to hold any Roman advance parties off for a few turns and I'm not going to get anywhere on immortal level without some risks.
WAR!!!!
And - ummm - those axemen. Oooops. That barb city has just upgraded all its warriors. And one of them promptly kills one of my only two archers near Medina.
This is the moment in which nightmares of a rapid game-over flash through my mind. I have just declared war on the civ that has praetorians. I have ONLY archers, and my only potential source of metal, not quite hooked up yet, is basically defenceless against a bunch of barb axes. You can see what's coming up....
Can anything save me?
Yes, it can... For some reason, the barb axes just aren't interested in Medina. They wander out from their city, look at my forests, wander back, and repeat the journey every so often. So I hook up the iron under the watchful eye of every archer I can spare. There's then quite a fun game of cat-and-mouse as a Roman pillaging unit destroys my Mecca-Medina road while a couple of tiles further south, my workers build another one. And finally I have axes and swords. Bye-bye, Roman pillaging party. Bye-bye, annoying barb city. Hello Roman cities! I take Neapolis and Pisae (somewhat surprised at the lack of Roman military, given the immortal level - they never mounted any kind of counter attack) before agreeing to peace in exchange for a few techs.
Neapolis meant I had ivory, so I waited, built up my science, and declared war again around 500AD, now with catapults, massive stacks, and - so far as I could see - no reason why I shouldn't walk right through Rome. Hopefully that'll give me a solid enough empire from which to attack someone else, and then I should be big enough to win a spacerace... Hopefully....