019. Met a group of Greek archers, probably promoted from Scouts through ruins. I think Alex is one of the most, if not the most formidable AI leaders. (1) Alex spreads cities like flu virus. He is guaranteed to be powerful in mid-late game if given enough space to develop. (2) Alex produces a lot of soldiers early game, so he is usually able to rush down a neighbor to make him an instant condender of victory. (3) Alex puts a very high focus on City States and is never willing to be bribed to attack them. This makes Alex a lot less exploitable than other warmongers such as Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Montazuma, and Oda.
However, those conditions are only fulfilled on a resource rich, crowded map such as Pangaea or Earth. On Mesopotamia and Level 9, I am eager to see how well Alex does here. I guess Alex is too far away from his closest neighbor to do any damage early on. I also suspect Alex will spawn too many soldiers to slow down his economy and his City State purchases.
020. It turned out that it was Suleiman that was fortunate enough to be born along the Nile river, arguably the best spot on the map - populus, rich, resourceful, and relatively isolated. He paid a fair price for Persian Cotton.
021. This is what my exploration turns up, with known locations of antient ruins (knowledge through two runs) marked with its icon. Of course, it will be hard to visit them all before the AIs' explorers. I am sure there are a lot more Ruins out there.
Persia is located in the middle of the map, with Arabia to the north, Egypt to the west, Spain to the East, and more distantly, Ottoman to the southwest and England to the northwest. Greece is likely northeast. I have not met Russia or China. They are likely blocked off by England to the west.
Being born in the center could be blessings or curses. Blessings: I can quickly meet with all other civilizations, sell my resources early, and pick the easiest and most profitable targets to start my expansion. Curses: everyone will likewise consider me as a target. It will be very troublesome on a small, crowded map. But on Mesopotamia and standard speed, invaders need to mass a huge number of more advanced units to really threaten my existence. And I doubt the AI will ever be that good. Even if it does, it will probably accept peace deals just before dealing any serious damage.
022. I mentioned a few times that this is not my first run. In my first run, I visited 3 +Culture ruins, and was able to pop Stonehenge with the free Great Enginner from Meritocracy at Turn 30 (that's really early). However, I found that both I and the AIs are too poor to sign enough RAs to keep my technology on par with the AIs. This means that I will have great difficulty grabbing the key wonders (Sistine Chapels, Christo Redentor) later on. Moreover, the starting place is not particularly rich in resources. I won't be able to afford a good army. And if the AIs ever declare war on me, I will have a hard time to sign an equal peace treaty.
So I decided to take a completely different approach - no RAs. No culture. I am going to direct all of the limited resources to one single goal - to become powerful.
023. In my second run, I only received 2 +Culture bonuses, and as a result I had a little delayed Meritocracy (still very early compared to regular games). But I got one extra population +1.
024. As planned, I converted the Great Scientist into an Academy. +6 Science becomes +9 by the National College. I was slightly worried that it will delay my Steel too much, but it turned out that the bottleneck is not technology, but cash.
The next decision will be game changing - where to attack first? It also took me 2 runs to figure out what to do, and it wasn't very intuitive. In order to show you my learning process, here comes the first run:
025. The first plan that came to my mind was that I am going to make a good Immortal army, promoted them to Pikeman as soon as possible, and along with two Scout-promoted Archers, I can do some serious damage on a very close neighbor - Spain. Then, I don't have to worry about my back.
So here I started purchasing Immortals.
026. Arabia asked for a declaration of friendship. I am not really afraid of Arabia attacking me, since Arabia's army is always on the small side. The only occassion that I would consider a declaration of friendship is that the AI can do serious damage on me if they declare war on the next few turns. Otherwise there is no point of making any AI friend, who loves to follow the declaration of friendship with shameless beggings.
027. As planned I popped my second city Pasargadae (I looked up its meaning, it is "Persia-Garden") . Surrounded by water on almost all sides, the city does look like a Garden and has the potential to reach a huge population later.
028. From both purchasing and building, I can prepare 5 groups of Immortals when Civil Service is done. (And Civil Service makes Immortals obsolete. So this is my last chance.) And my Archers return from their exploration trips right on time.
I was surprised that Arab declared war on Egypt. Normally a peace lover does not attack another peace lover. Maybe Harun has his mind on conquest this game.
029. The rich and distant English Queen wants to declare friends, too. Since I can still sell resources at full price without the friendship, there is really no point for it.
030. Civil Servce on Turn 50. England is so happy, while Alexander probably over-spawned his cities before properly developing his happiness resources at home.
The 5 Pikeman + 2 Archers army is ready to rock!
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