Earth 1000 AD Strategy - Who can Win

[enderw]

Lately I've been playing the Earth 1000 AD Scenario at Prince. Here's my list about which civ's you can win the game with:

Relatively easy
China
Mongolia (Conquer China)
Arabs
France, Holy Roman Empire, England

Slightly Tougher
Japan
Russia

Possible but seems difficult:
India

Very tough, but probably possible
Aztec
Mali

Impossible?
Inca

Any thoughts? Am I missing any obvious strategy with the Inca. With the others it seems at least possible to get one tech that the AI hasn't discovered yet then trade away to catch up. I actually did manage to catch up tech-wise with the Inca once, but I was in such a bad geographic position I could not keep up production either in il or in a space race.

[raguas]

(off-topic response, but I couldn't help myself)

I think Ender W. would be able to win any situation, even with the Incas -- especially if Bean and Petra help.



ray

[samspock]

Only if he remembers that the gate is DOWN.

[raguas]

Even if he forgot, Bean would remind him.

[joncnunn]

Ender would be the favorite to win the MP version of Earth 1000 AD.

But, in a SP competion to see who can win the quickest, Bean would be the favorite.

(Bean has more intelegence, but Ender can better understand his enemy.)

[mutax2003]

I played as both Aztec and Inca before in the 1000 AD scenario, very tough to catch up tech-wise. Your best hope might be in a diplomatic victory.

[Badtz Maru]

I played as the Incans, and was dismayed to learn that I had to invent Triremes to expand into the interior of South America. This was before the 1.52 patch and maybe they've fixed that, but it really turned me off to the 1000 AD scenario.

I did find a use for the scenario, though. I was inspired by a series of alternate history novels by Harry Turtledove where Earth is invaded during WWII by aliens with technology only slightly more advanced than that of the modern USA. In the books they are caught off guard because they did not expect human technology to have advanced in the 600 or so years since they last sent a probe our way, and I thought it interesting to imagine what might have happened if something similar did happen during medieval times.

I started over and moved the Incas to Australia. In the World builder I gave them most modern technologies, leaving off most of the religious/philosophical technologies and some of the social ones that were not fitting with the character of these aliens. To keep it simpler and make it a bit more challenging, in my version their colony ship only had room to bring a small army of elite stormtroopers (Navy SEALs) and a unit of Modern Armor. The plan was to set up base in a remote area and build up an industrial base to dominate the rest of the planet.

It made for a fun game. The European and Asian powers caught up quickly and my advanced technology did not quite make up for the poor quality of the continent I was limiting my colonization to, but there are lots of other ways you can play the scenario.