First Contact

[Beta]

Based on my recent play with the Persians, which I have to admit, has been driven by our choice of civ, I have come to a conclusion which I would like to discuss. Eli and Flash clearly had a prefernce for this civ, and may have more experience with them, so I would be keen to hear their views.

My conclusion is simple - you get Immortals, and you get them early. Way before anyone has anything comparable. The best early defensive units are the hoplites - and unless Markos is playing the Greeks as a sleeper civ somewhere (and I'm sure word would have gotten out) we should only be facing units with a max defensive rating of 2 in the early game.

So - we get Immortals, and we get them early. So - the first civ we meet - we take them out. We have an enormous early game military advantage. We are clearly on an island-archipelago type geography - which from my experience has meant two things - two civs which meet vie for possession of land on narrow strips of geography - and secondly - other civs will have a hard time coming to an allies help in the early game.

Yes - it kicks in an early GA, but we will only have this advantage in the early game - we should take - well - advantage of it. I recommend rolling back the first civ we meet - then consolidating and see where we stand.

I would also suggest the previous idea of tech swapping - preferably with someone far away - if we can swing an early contact somehow.

Any thoughts?

PS - of course - all our initial foreign affairs contacts will be positive and sweet.

[Dis]

what if the nearest civ is on another continent? which I think will be the case. I have waged wars with tiremes before, but that was against a crappy ai. dumping lots of horseman and spearman rocked their world. But I agree if we do have someone on our continent and it is limited, we will need the room to expand...

[Jon Miller]

acse by case basis

but be prepared for a blitz

Jon Miller

[Wittlich]

I just hope we have iron on our land...because without it, our Immortals are just a pipe-dream.

[Jon Miller]

if we don't have iron, we may have to blitz a bit earlier

Jon Miller

[Dis]

and if we don't make sure we make it appear that we do . We can't let that little nugget slip out

[Wittlich]

Truely!

[Eli]

If we really dont have iron, an important thing to remember is to not give our world map to anyone.

[Jon Miller]

I am not a big fan of giving our map to anyone anyways

Jon Miller

[Beta]

I'm with Jon regarding the world map. I doubt it will carry the trading wait with humans that it did with the AI.

[Beta]

Thought I would post here to resurrect the discussion about first contact and the early blitz. See the discussion above.

I am fairly certain we are on 'u' shaped continent or curving continent with all or several of the other civs - everyone starting a certain point along the curve. We lucked in and started at one end, which means we only have neighbours to one side.

It also explains why we have probably not met them yet. Any guesses as to how many more turns before we meet another civ? I say 3. Two moves beyond the check-point. Note Spains comment in the FA thread that other civs have already met. May or may not be true. I suspect it is.

So - all I am saying - is give peace a chance - er - wrong disc - all I am saying is that we may need to be open to an early blitz to ensure we don't waste the advantage of immortals and our early iron working tech.

(Beta crosses fingers regarding finding iron...)

[Dis]

This would esp. be necessary if they have more room than us and we don't have enough. Without a decent amount of space, winning will be too difficult.

[Jon Miller]

Beta

Togas said that you did not reply to them. I think that they are the roleplayers. I think we decided something, so if you could reply?

try doing so by PM (do so to their Ambassadour, I beleive in Nuclear Winter or something)

Jon Miller