Epic 8

Where to begin, where to begin. I am used to playing on Monarch difficulty with my personal games, but I know that the more AIs, the more difficult it is, especially during the early land grab phase when everyone is trying to elbow in on what I've already decided is MY territory! (cue Dangerfield voice) Boy I tell ya, I don't get no respect! The rules are pretty straightforward though... except for that no war before 1000bc thing. To me, that didn't sound so bad... but that rule would make me twitch later :) On with it then. First our opening shot.

"Play the hand you are dealt" doesn't look so bad here. I notice two goody huts around my opening. One north, and one south.... Then I notice something else about my starting position. I have TWO, count 'em, TWO warriors to work with!? How did that happen? Is this supposed to be? Go forth my minions, and enslave the native peoples! We will whip their hides and they shall build us great monuments to the Egyption Deities! Raid their huts, and take what you will! Ooh, I do like to pop huts :) Of course, we also have gold, cows and spices. This city position seems balanced. I start a worker out of the gate, and as you can see, animal husbandry is the tech path.

You know, it's kind of nice that Hatscheput's unique unit can be built with discovery of a resource that appears after gathering a necessary tech for my early growth. :) Let's cross our fingers for horses! In 3970bc, we barbarize our first native hut. And what do we find?

why these primitives show us the the way to feed ourselves for a lifetime! Maybe not the tech I would have chosen on Pangaea, but beggers can't be choosers, right? My warrior that headed north pops his hut to the tune of 62 gold, which is a nice chunk of change! I guess some scruffy native was stealing from his heathen gods! I'll take that money in the name of piety, thank you! :) As my warrior continues on, we spy elephants and silks to the north. Possible city two in my opinion, as I REALLY like having elephants. Meanwhile, my southern scout/warrior finds another hut and gets 48 gold! Cha ching! He also reports finding rice and flood plains, a nice looking location for sure. After his second hut, our southern warrior heads due west amongst a host of resources only to find yet another hut that provides 61 gold. And elizabeth finds us also in 3670bc. She came from the east.

Moving on, my warriors start beating up some of the local wildlife, and animal husbandry comes in at the same time... how ironic! :0-) So in 3460bc, we meet china CROPSHOT O1O; his scouts came somewhere from the south. And with AH we find horses in our borders! Hooray! Now, granted, if we were playing warlords, this would be even better, as chariots have a good upgrade in the expansion, but I still like them enough to use them here also. After AH, I switched to hunting, both leaning towards archery, and with an eye towards being able to build a camp at the elephants, but after only a turn, I switch to pottery. Once my worker finishes, I started a war chariot and finally began to build improvements on some of my resources. A short time later, in 3310bc, we met up with Mansu Musa, hailing from the north. In the next 100 or so years, I popped ANOTHER two huts. One immediately west of my starting location, which netted me another warrior (too bad I didn't pop it earlier for scouting) and one to the far northwest that provided yet some more gold, 41 to be exact. This is really a hut-tastic map. I bet there are a few people out there who are going to pop several techs and have a super fast start and strong game. Pottery came in 3100bc and I switched to mining. Time to get some production going. In 2980bc, I popped my final hut, and the villagers had had enough of me. Hostility ensued. There goes that trator warrior from the western villagers. Oh well, he was useful for a while. We met japan in 2860 also. In 2830bc, we find Caesar! And I start BW to give mine own people a taste of the whip as well. And here is what I've scouted by 2830bc. Check out all the various resources. I can't see metals at all yet, but I have my chariot army building, so it's not all bad.

I eeked out a barraks in between my chariots also, do I possibly over value early barracks? I'm not very surprised to see that I'm the wealthiest civ, as I've popped a total of 212 gold from huts. Wow. At least my research rate should be good for a while :) When Bronze Working comes in, I also finish another chariot, and my score jumps to the forefront. I switch to mysticism, as I'm going to hit Stonehenge and the Oracle both, hopefully. In 2230, Saladin comes knocking from the south. There are a lot of aggressive civs for me to deal with, and I appear to be surrounded. Hmm... I send a chariot out and start to scout as I'm generating a settler, only to find out that Mansu Musa has settled where I intended to send my settler, NE of the elephant. This was a problem, as I had really been counting on this site, and I don't like him having the elephants...My chariot also spied this little worker roading to Musa's invasive city already. I perched my Chariot on the hill, and snapped this shot:

At this time, I stopped game play, as there had been a discussion on RB about worker stealing. I had discovered this little gem of a tactic on my own a long time ago, but it appeared from the discussion that this was frowned upon. However, I was also amassing my new chariot army, and was intending to take this nicely placed city from Musa, so I was reasoning that capturing a worker on the way to stealing an early city would be acceptable. But I wanted to get a feel for how others felt from the discussion first. All I can say is a healthy THANK YOU to whoever started that thread. If it wasn't for having to stop and read online, I would have started agression in 2050bc!! I would have broken the only rule we really had in this variant! Funny thing is, I was about to go do just that, when I read a post towards the end of the discussion that said, "no war before 1000bc?" And I was like, oh crap! So thanks guys! And the issue became moot for this game, but is worker stealing ok if I'm going to go to war anyway?
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