WOTM 69 (Saladin) First Spoiler - 1AD

[DynamicSpirit]

WOTM 69 First Spoiler

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD! Did you make good use of your free calendar tech? And did you get on well with your neighbours?

Stop! If you are participating in WOTM 69, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Please do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD. (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
• Please do not reveal names or locations of any civilization not accessible by galleys.
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

 

[High King J.J.]

I was going to comment on my very modest progress on this Wotm but then I updated my Windows 7 and could not play Warlords or Vanilla because the KB3086255 security update disabled the secdrv.sys which caused the keydisc to be considered invalid (although no error message is displayed). I haven't gotten it to work yet.
Edit: By following the instructions on the page that is found through the link from clicking KB3086255 on update history on an updated windows system I got it working. Apparently "elevated command prompt" means you must run the command prompt as system administrator. Even then it's a trial and error process. Also there's a typo on one of the useful commands listed on the Microsoft page (at least on the one I have seen, it may be different for other language users although the instructions are only available in English so I guess it's the same everywhere). There should be a blank space between the "=" and "auto".

What I remember is that I had 6 cities and was still alive. Accursed Shaka colonized a gold hill near the near stone resource before I could claim it. This crippled my chances of any wonder production. I'm at peace with everyone for now. I founded hinduism and it spread to both Shaka and Montezuma. Khan founded judaism but is not an immediate threat thanks to Aztecs acting as a buffer zone.
I don't expect to survive very long. Mongols have spread like locusts and will eventually annihilate or vassalize Aztecs. Shaka will eventually attack unless otherwise occupied. Too hard unless you're an elite early warmonger.
And the absence of Stonehenge delayed my first GProphet to found Kashi Wishywashy.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

High King J.J. - thanks for digging out that information about the Windows update. That's obviously important. After reading your post, I've just verified that it's affected my system too (that security update auto-installed 2 days ago on my machine).

Since this is important, I'll start a new thread with this information.

Good luck in the rest of the game. Hope you survive at least a little longer

 

[DynamicSpirit]

As per High King J.J.'s post above, if you are having trouble starting civ to play this game, please refer to this thread.

 

[Xcalibrator]

At 1AD I have 7 cities and 43 pop, not counting Shaka's capital, which is about to fall. I'll keep Ulundi for my Nat'l Epic and his southernmost city (furs, seafood, and Confucian holy city) but have/will raze his other 3 cities. I have CoL but no MC, Compass, or Machinery. Currently working on Civil Service. No wonders. Around 800 in score which puts me 3rd behind KK and Monte. All but Shaka are Buddhist and have been promiscuously trading techs with each other, hurting me who has no Buddhist cities, nor much of any religion spread. With all these backstabbers around I figure I'll have to go Dom/Con.

 

[Minou]

This game was appealing to me because I have only been playing GOTM/WOTM/BOTM games lately and really miss goody huts! Alas, I opened the first hut and received a map, which showed another goody hut that held.... another map. Two other huts were revealed, but both of them were claimed by fast-moving AI scouts before my Warrior could lumber over to them. So, no goodies for me.

Aside from that, I feel pretty good about turning a semi-rough start around by 1AD. The roughness was my own fault for being too cavalier about protecting my cities. A stack of barb Warriors razed one early city before I had the pop to whip for a second garrison unit. Then, Khan invaded with a stack of Archers. They marched by my border city one step but then turned around and burned it just as I hooked up my first Copper. This let me turn the tables and I was able to resettle both razed cities and also capture a city Khan took from barbarians, then hold out for a cease fire.

Seeing Shaka with no metal but about to get horses, I sent my army east and quickly rolled over two Zulu cities plus a random barbarian city deep in Zulu territory. Next turn the capital should fall and I'll start rebuilding my economy, which is surviving off pillaging at the moment. I finally got a random spread of Hinduism which will be great for diplomacy (all but one AI are Hindu) and popping those new cities borders.

9 cities at 1AD and 20 techs. I've fallen behind the AIs on tech and am research Drama in hopes of selling it for a few hundred GP to run research at 100% for a few turns. Still have not met the final two AIs.

 

[MeowZeDung]

Settled on the grass hill 1SE of settler's starting location. At 1 AD I have 7 cities, one of which was a barb city 2-3 turns ago. I think they are all decent or even good cities. . . if I can stay alive to leverage them Starting without calendar would have me in a much worse spot I think.

I didn't tech AH that early because I had only seen plains cows up to that point and I wanted to go writing->math to chop out madrassas. I wanted metal and was happy to see copper just north of the capitol. However, once I did tech AH and saw the horses nearby, I realized that a horse archer rush was the way to go on this map. Nasty neighbors and gold in the BFC should have been enough of an incentive to at least try for horses. Oh well. Speaking of tech and nasty neighbors, only Kublai has gotten alphabet and he won't trade it I did get IW and some needed backfill from him for Calendar though.

I was concerned that I was going to have to wait until cuirs or cannons to get things going. However, once I saw the elephants I decided to try for the ivory/dye/banana location ne of the capitol and got it. Construction has just been researched, HBR is on the way, and catapults are in most of the cities' queues. Late for a construction and elepult strategy, I know, but I think a late stack against this crowd is better than no stack. (edit: I am used to BtS, so generally I wouldn't take a tech path like I did here, which was ag->mining->BW->writing->math->some backfill->currency, but instead go for aesthetics before math. Goody huts and no aesthetics change things obviously. I wonder, is it wise to go for currency fairly early on like I did to ensure the economy keeps rolling, or is relying on goody hut gold good enough? I think it might have been fine to just rely on the gold from huts in this one. Thoughts?) Not sure if Monty (Hindu along with Kublai) or Shaka (Jewish by himself) will be the target, but I might have to just be content with taking a few cities, getting some tech for peace, and relying on protective archers/longbows/muskets against the inevitable revenge DOW.

I have met Kublai, Monty, Shaka, Bismark, and Alex, leaving one more that I am assuming is also a warmonger or unit spammer (Napoleon, Ragnar, or Stalin, maybe?) If that is indeed the case, I might have a shot at lib, depending on how my elepult war goes.