Good start or bad?

[Urban Ranger]

I'd say if you could block off Saladin you're in awesome shape. One thing you may want to try is to ambush his worker(s) with a warrior or two. That will simultaneously slow him down and give you a good advantage.

[padillah]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I'd say if you could block off Saladin you're in awesome shape. One thing you may want to try is to ambush his worker(s) with a warrior or two. That will simultaneously slow him down and give you a good advantage.

Um, WE are Saladin. That's our city and our worker (and our warrior just out of sight at the top).

I'm no where near good enough to try this but you are more than welcome to dl the QuickSave and give it a shot. It's about four or five posts up from here.

Tom P.

[Ennet]

Think it might look harder than it really is, this is the time you need one of those wicked early settlers.. you just need to beat cyrus to the cow and choke point up there and he cant expand north.
If you get your second warrior there in time you could even manage to kill his settler + escort and set him back for a long time if he tries to expand west.. but the early settler is the most importaint.

[One_more_turn]

Excellent start! Makes up for a perfect chop-n-pop capital. What you absolutely need is either copper, iron, or horses. Don't bother about Cyrus bottling you up. Let him build the cities for you so you can focus on getting ahead in tech and production.

[mutax2003]

Make mines on the hills, chop out axemen, and take the capital from Cyrus as your second city.

[jscott457]

Originally posted by Blake

One other thing: DO NOT CHOP THOSE FORESTS. Don't even think about it. Just improve the pigs and rice and leave the forests in peace.

This looks interesting. I would have probably tried to steal a worker and chop a settler to get the choke point settled. I guess I would chop the hills. I am curious about the all caps command to not go a chopping.

Looking to get lumbermills and have a very productive city perhaps?!?

Thanks for the help,

GS

[One_more_turn]

Originally posted by Blake
That comes AFTER you've capitalized on the start .

One other thing: DO NOT CHOP THOSE FORESTS. Don't even think about it. Just improve the pigs and rice and leave the forests in peace.

I would chop the 2 forest squares on the hills to rush axemen out.

[Mr Justice]

blake probably ment health if ur trying to maximise population (for a gp factory) (thats what i picked up).

[Blake]

One of the forest hills can be chopped because there are 7 forests, that 7th 0.5 health doesn't do anything.

[Yosho]

You've already got 4 food resources, though. Will you really need the forests for health? I guess it depends on the difficulty, but still...

[Blake]

The forests are also for the hammers. It's a jungle start so the capital is the best bet to pump out wonders.

[One_more_turn]

You can build mines on hills, they produce more hammers.

[trev]

It is possible to spend considerable time using caste system for specialists and great people, great with that food for producing workers/settlers, and mined hills will allow buildings and units to be produced at an ok pace

[Blake]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
You can build mines on hills, they produce more hammers.

Health is food, that you don't have to work.
It's not generally worth trading 1 food that you don't have to work for 1 hammer that you do have to work.

[ben04]

I'd go for a vertical groth strategy.

Try to grab polyteism to found the religion for the extra few happiness points. Then go for fishing (if Saladin doesn't start with it.). Then go for bronz working to get slavery and beg that you get bronz somewhere near you. If not build a settler and get the nearest. Sign open borders with Cyrus if needed. Research pottery.

Now see that you get that temple and granery done and develop all of those sea foods. Wipe them if needed. Don't be afraid your population will grow back fast. Now research code of law and build the oracle. Wipe and chop if needed (although I don't think that it will be needed as COL will probably take too long if you do that.)

While the oracle is being build build cottages and let the people work on them so that they grow.

Build baracks and the other temple and research the other tech needed for macemen. The villages will hopfully provide enough gold to fuel research at a decent pace.

Now build or wipe a few macemen and crush Cyrus whos strongest unit will probably still be axemen. Defending archers can be a pain in cities with 60% defence an no catapults however the city raider promotion you can get from the baracks should do the trick.