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Please note that this is the first time I have played any of the civilisation series, so I wanted to check out what all the hype was.. Especially as I have just now managed to get over my WOW addiction…well maybe just one more MC run later tonight…
So I played my first couple of games on noble and got my ass kicked big time !! The first few games were all with the settings on default....And after the third time watching my once mighty capital razed to the ground by that warmonger Mongol… yet again....
In taking my medicine I humbly decided to read the manual and also to scan through some of the more interesting threads on this site. Especially after having my civs flag well and truly inserted from that treacherous Catherine.
All the reading proved very helpful I thought and so with an enlightened appreciation of the diplomacy aspect of the game and emboldened with some new strategies I decided to play a more difficult level and see if I could cause some mischief...
The map was continental, large, on the monarch setting with random civs.
I started as Gandhi...
My first move, (some may say a little unorthodox) was to move both my settler and war left along what I thought was a peninsula, past an obvious choke point in the shape of a narrow land corridor filled with forests. I moved my rag tag bunch ever so slowly through said peninsula and onto another semi-sized continent. Carefully scanning the available locations just outside this noticeable choke point I decided to pitch my settlement and low and behold I had pitched my new city right on top of that little Hale Berry wannabe, who was just to my south over a small hill covered in trees.
I saw my chance and took it, forgoing the obvious religion path I just went for the cheapest and quickest military units, as I created a new unit I would place them in the defence mode atop the hill covered in trees that was overlooking the paltry Egyptian village….I had her covered with no escape route and with closed borders had her locked into a very small section of an island. It only took 4 warriors to take her out of the game so early I even surprised my self!. I declared war on her and simply waited on the hill for her to come out and attack, I easily won the initial skirmishes and once I had a couple of first upgrades to my initial units I simply walked into her small town and took it over.
My first mistake…I created a settler and sent the poor little bugger back from where I had come across the chock point. I thought to myself that I had the rest of the continent all to my self…. So without an escort my intrepid settler went back over the peninsula and via what I had thought was already charted and safe territory, as i had not sighted a single barb on my initial perilous journey.
He founded my third village on a tile that took in marble and horses next to the ocean with a seafood resource. (Note that I also hade THREE seafood resources from my first two villages so food was not an initial problem to me).
To my horror and just after founding the town a barb archer came into view. Quickly going to my warriors I tried to send them to cover my new city from this barbarian intruder. Yet to my dismay it would take over four turns just to get there and that barb I estimated would be there in no more then three…Unfortunately I was right…the city was destroyed in an instant.
I decided to set my three warriors and the new archer up on defence stance, on the hill at the end of the forest found in the narrow peninsular leading onto the now "Barb" owned territory.
Forgoing my thoughts of moving safely into this area I decided to concentrate on a settler push north! And as far as I could go up the map I went with my little band. Finding my next village location was simply a matter of moving up the map till I hit a culture boarder… and this time my settler had an escort!
*Please note: all this time I had not procured a single worker, as seeing all the seafood had me thinking that I should go straight to the fishing Tech's. I also had some good fortune in having one of my warriors still out exploring that came across a village that spawned me a brand new villager…so I sent him straight back to my two villages and set him up on improving the tiles around me.
I founded my third village far to the north and then set about sending another combo of war settler west.. Well at least as far as the first culture border I found. Founding my fourth village on a tile that was surrounded by water on three sided and a mountain on one had me thinking that I had successfully secured a large patch of land to build up my civilisation.
With my fishing boats in the water, I went about creating villagers from each of my towns. At the same time my tech tree was fully focusing on the acquisition of religions, Of course I missed the Buddhism religion by a mile, but after that I started to gain on tech in this field and soon had a number of the religions under my belt.
Every time the AI asked for open borders I refused but if they asked for gifts or a tech I gave in immediately, all the while forgoing military for villages to fill my vast land mass with upgraded tiles. With my religion humming along I found that my culture borders soon started to fill the spaces between the towns so all my villages had Plenty of work to do !
After I had completed filling in about 2/3 of the area between my four cities I decided to go back and revisit the barbarian area.
I had held of during this time of expansion about a dozen raids over the narrow peninsula form the barbs but with my upgraded defensive stance on a wooded hill and a mixture of woodman bonus and hill bonuses I managed to only require about 3 archers and 3 warriors to hold the choke point.. All from one tile I held the barbarian horde from entering my unprotected cities (save for single archers in each of them).
I then created one settler and an escort of three archers and 2 warriors. And, so I ventured back again to the previous location of my initial humiliation…. Not a Barb in sight! So I quickly founded the village just one tile next to the ruins of my previous attempt and picked up horses and another Marble Square. From this point I simply expanded directly east and found another two towns on a north south flowing river.
I had been placating the AI the whole time with gifts and agreeing to any trade deals they offered except for open borders and not once did they attack (thank god I was Gandhi )
Taking the rest of the continent once owned by the barbs was almost to easy and trading a world map with an AI it indicated to me I had the biggest land mass under occupation of my culture was by far the biggest so with a huge advantage in points and techs and gold coming in from founding the majority of religions I know realised that all I needed to do was to decide on the type of victory condition I wanted to win by
As I have not yet finished the game so I was wondering which would be the most satisfying ?
So I played my first couple of games on noble and got my ass kicked big time !! The first few games were all with the settings on default....And after the third time watching my once mighty capital razed to the ground by that warmonger Mongol… yet again....
In taking my medicine I humbly decided to read the manual and also to scan through some of the more interesting threads on this site. Especially after having my civs flag well and truly inserted from that treacherous Catherine.
All the reading proved very helpful I thought and so with an enlightened appreciation of the diplomacy aspect of the game and emboldened with some new strategies I decided to play a more difficult level and see if I could cause some mischief...
The map was continental, large, on the monarch setting with random civs.
I started as Gandhi...
My first move, (some may say a little unorthodox) was to move both my settler and war left along what I thought was a peninsula, past an obvious choke point in the shape of a narrow land corridor filled with forests. I moved my rag tag bunch ever so slowly through said peninsula and onto another semi-sized continent. Carefully scanning the available locations just outside this noticeable choke point I decided to pitch my settlement and low and behold I had pitched my new city right on top of that little Hale Berry wannabe, who was just to my south over a small hill covered in trees.
I saw my chance and took it, forgoing the obvious religion path I just went for the cheapest and quickest military units, as I created a new unit I would place them in the defence mode atop the hill covered in trees that was overlooking the paltry Egyptian village….I had her covered with no escape route and with closed borders had her locked into a very small section of an island. It only took 4 warriors to take her out of the game so early I even surprised my self!. I declared war on her and simply waited on the hill for her to come out and attack, I easily won the initial skirmishes and once I had a couple of first upgrades to my initial units I simply walked into her small town and took it over.
My first mistake…I created a settler and sent the poor little bugger back from where I had come across the chock point. I thought to myself that I had the rest of the continent all to my self…. So without an escort my intrepid settler went back over the peninsula and via what I had thought was already charted and safe territory, as i had not sighted a single barb on my initial perilous journey.
He founded my third village on a tile that took in marble and horses next to the ocean with a seafood resource. (Note that I also hade THREE seafood resources from my first two villages so food was not an initial problem to me).
To my horror and just after founding the town a barb archer came into view. Quickly going to my warriors I tried to send them to cover my new city from this barbarian intruder. Yet to my dismay it would take over four turns just to get there and that barb I estimated would be there in no more then three…Unfortunately I was right…the city was destroyed in an instant.
I decided to set my three warriors and the new archer up on defence stance, on the hill at the end of the forest found in the narrow peninsular leading onto the now "Barb" owned territory.
Forgoing my thoughts of moving safely into this area I decided to concentrate on a settler push north! And as far as I could go up the map I went with my little band. Finding my next village location was simply a matter of moving up the map till I hit a culture boarder… and this time my settler had an escort!
*Please note: all this time I had not procured a single worker, as seeing all the seafood had me thinking that I should go straight to the fishing Tech's. I also had some good fortune in having one of my warriors still out exploring that came across a village that spawned me a brand new villager…so I sent him straight back to my two villages and set him up on improving the tiles around me.
I founded my third village far to the north and then set about sending another combo of war settler west.. Well at least as far as the first culture border I found. Founding my fourth village on a tile that was surrounded by water on three sided and a mountain on one had me thinking that I had successfully secured a large patch of land to build up my civilisation.
With my fishing boats in the water, I went about creating villagers from each of my towns. At the same time my tech tree was fully focusing on the acquisition of religions, Of course I missed the Buddhism religion by a mile, but after that I started to gain on tech in this field and soon had a number of the religions under my belt.
Every time the AI asked for open borders I refused but if they asked for gifts or a tech I gave in immediately, all the while forgoing military for villages to fill my vast land mass with upgraded tiles. With my religion humming along I found that my culture borders soon started to fill the spaces between the towns so all my villages had Plenty of work to do !
After I had completed filling in about 2/3 of the area between my four cities I decided to go back and revisit the barbarian area.
I had held of during this time of expansion about a dozen raids over the narrow peninsula form the barbs but with my upgraded defensive stance on a wooded hill and a mixture of woodman bonus and hill bonuses I managed to only require about 3 archers and 3 warriors to hold the choke point.. All from one tile I held the barbarian horde from entering my unprotected cities (save for single archers in each of them).
I then created one settler and an escort of three archers and 2 warriors. And, so I ventured back again to the previous location of my initial humiliation…. Not a Barb in sight! So I quickly founded the village just one tile next to the ruins of my previous attempt and picked up horses and another Marble Square. From this point I simply expanded directly east and found another two towns on a north south flowing river.
I had been placating the AI the whole time with gifts and agreeing to any trade deals they offered except for open borders and not once did they attack (thank god I was Gandhi )
Taking the rest of the continent once owned by the barbs was almost to easy and trading a world map with an AI it indicated to me I had the biggest land mass under occupation of my culture was by far the biggest so with a huge advantage in points and techs and gold coming in from founding the majority of religions I know realised that all I needed to do was to decide on the type of victory condition I wanted to win by
As I have not yet finished the game so I was wondering which would be the most satisfying ?