your prehistory strategies on nightmare?

[tramwajg]

hey, I was wondering about best strategy on nightmare prehistory, would you rather go with cities cannot be razed and capture some neanderthal city early, or rather go with only capital until economy is developed? in my previous game I captured neanderthal city too early and had huge problems with maintenance, had to stay with 0% science for long time. which techs would you choose to reach ancient as fast as possible? I like to capture many animals early (although it needs to prioritise tech that gives chaser), I also like to explore tribal villages trying to find stone axeman or some other powerful early unit, I like spiritual and progressive traits for early golden ages from great prophets and free specialists from national wonders, what would be your approach for prehistory, maybe any useful tips?

 

[margolloxx]

The main thing here is, it all depends on your settings overall. Me for instance i dont play with cities cannot be razed option so your neanderthal strat doesnt work for me until they are at least at 2. but generally speaking: hunt early, explore as much as you can, if possible get a 2nd city from a weak neighbour before tribalism. flatlands are good target cities for macemen rush.

 

[cobbaut]

In prehistory I also focus on getting good hunters and collecting many animals (over 1000 in my current Snail game). A Great Hunter really helps. I also use the (surviving) hunters to protect my borders against invaders/exiles later on, they are usually the strongest units when ending prehistory. I play with 'transport animals', so my hunters go far away for more exotic animals.
My build queue focuses on hammers first so other stuff builds faster. If I get a stone axeman from a tribal village, then I level him up a bit, but not too far from my capital since I once got killed by two consecutive stacks of barbarians. But unless one of the first tribal villages get me an extra scout, I usually don't get to take many of these tribal villages.

 

[Septentrion]

The early Great Hunter is indeed essential.

Early military units that are used for early protection can help push you closer to the first Great Hunter. It's not clear that RNG doesn't chose between Great General and Great Hunter, but whichever one has the most points wins out. Early on, there's not any difference in subdue chance for military units until By The Horn or Hunting 2.
Scouts can also "defensively" take a partial doomstack of Barbarians in many situations, boosting you to the first or second Great Hunter.

Of course, having the Great General second can make a huge difference if there is a Barbarian nearby. This is a good option to be able to switch to.

 

[tramwajg]

thanks everyone didn't go as I would want to, sedentary lifestyle in turn 987 / year 23986 BC (snail speed and upscaled research cost option), I didn't get great hunter and I had very limited space to explore. Any ideas what I could do here for it to go better? possible number of cities was limited by maintenance and I had problems finding way to develop economy. Not sure if bigger continent would change much in this case, maybe more early animals which would be more research? although I had problems getting any reasonable number. How do you deal with maintenance costs? maybe I could have settled more cities very close to capital to reduce maintenance from distance to palace

 

[Septentrion]

Oh, three AI Civilizations on that dinky piece of land? Seems like you're winning. Look how close London is to Beijing. It looks like you have settings which the AI doesn't thrive with. "Start as Minor Civ" is one of those settings which shouldn't need to exist at this point.
You can check how far away you are from the #2 Civilization with the graph button.

 

[Thunderbrd]

thanks everyone didn't go as I would want to, sedentary lifestyle in turn 987 / year 23986 BC (snail speed and upscaled research cost option), I didn't get great hunter and I had very limited space to explore. Any ideas what I could do here for it to go better? possible number of cities was limited by maintenance and I had problems finding way to develop economy. Not sure if bigger continent would change much in this case, maybe more early animals which would be more research? although I had problems getting any reasonable number. How do you deal with maintenance costs? maybe I could have settled more cities very close to capital to reduce maintenance from distance to palace

Very small starting land unless the map is truly small itself. It would be hard to hunt it - and sometimes you really should, if you have continental dominance like this, make sure you don't overgrow and thus clog the land's ability to provide while making it an upkeep struggle. There are times like these when having a little restraint to preserve hunting territory might prove useful for a while. But you won't have access to a wide variation of animals on a smaller landmass either so there comes a point when it's not worth the hunting as much as the added city(s).