Here's a short report of my game.
http://skc.zapto.org/civ4/epic.php?epicId=4&pageNo=1
I retired in 1886, as I would have either been conquered by Saladin or beaten by him into space. One thing's for sure, having never played above monarch before (except Epic 7), I probably didn't need a bunch of variant rules to make this scenario more challenging for me.
I had a good opening and a fine core, and managed to stay ahead of most everyone in the tech race and at least on a par with the leader (Saladin) due to good relations and smart tech trading with fellow Hindus Caesar and Cyrus. I went for Polytheism first and converted to Hinduism, then focused on worker techs. I also went with a wonderless opening, concentrating instead on heavy settling. I managed to claim two nice cities to the north - gems to the west and ivory and dyes to the east. I also managed to build the Great Library and the Colossus in the middle ages and even snagged a source of iron across the eastern waters to the south of Mongolia.
I was first to Liberalism and chose military tradition as my free tech. As the first civ with cavalry, my plan was to go after Napoleon and relieve him of his empire, as I needed some more cities to devote to production. Then I would hold tight and go for a space race victory. But Napoleon attacked me first before my invasion was ready. I had to draft lots of muskets to fend off his huge stacks before going on the offensive and taking a city. This brought me right to the French end of that southern ice corrider. I then made peace for a spell so I could build up more cavalry for a more decisive invasion of his core. Plaguing me throughout my military buildup was the dearth of heavy production cities in my core. Basically, it took a while getting the cavalry together. But at least I was secure on my northern front, where my fellow Hindus resided. Yeah, right.
In the midst of my renewed cavalry buildup, I was attacked by Caesar. He had been Pleased with me all game thanks to shared Hinduism, but relations turned cautious after he revolted to free religion (a few of his lesser cities were non-Hindu). So I had to draft again (rifles this time) to protect my northern front and had to divert my France-intended cavalry force that way. Before I went on the offensive, he managed to do some nasty cottage pillaging at my commerce heavy border towns. Events now dictated a change of strategy, and I decided to relieve Caesar (rather than Napoleon) of his territory and use those cities for production. Things were going very well. I took two Roman cities in short order and was all set to take the rest. At that point, Napoleon attacked again, preventing me from concentrating all my force on one front. Draft unhappiness, mounting war weariness, numerous turns spent maximizing gold for troop upgrades, not to mention the cottage pillaging, and the loss of my meager navy to Napoleonic ships and the resultant inability to work coastal tiles - these all conspired to keep my economy stagnant for centuries, and Saladin was running away with the tech race. So rather than conquer all the Roman lands, I made peace with Caesar after taking just two cities and held off Napoleon until he was ready to cry uncle.
After these wars, Saladin (who had a huge empire and had never once been at war) had pulled ahead considerably in tech, so I judged my earlier hopes of conquering more territory imprudent for the moment. My only hope for winning the space race was to hope Saladin didnât attack me (he had tanks and artillery by now and I had only infantry, cannons and cavalry), and focus on increasing my cities population and my GNP, regrowing my pillaged cottages, getting factories in all my cities, and getting some more modern military techs to compete with a potential Arab invasion. I felt sure I could conquer Rome or France once I had factories, and then beat Saladin into space through smarter teching/building, despite being behind in the tech race. Unfortunately Saladin attacked me just as I was halfway through finishing my factories. I had given in to his every demand and had a defensive pact with Cyrus, but he didn't care. He attacked on the Napoleonic front, wiping out all my infantry there with a couple large stacks of artillery/tanks/cavalry and a sprinkling of SAM infantry and marines. I opted to quit the game at that point. Even if I had been able to defend my core through a third round of drafting, I would have been too weakened to compete with him in the space race.
Despite the loss, it was a fun game until the Arab invasion and I'm actually pretty happy with the way I played. In retrospect, I probably should have mounted an invasion of a neighbor earlier on in order to get a larger empire and more cities to devote to military production. (I just didn't have enough cities to keep pace in tech AND produce enough military to go on the offensive on two fronts, which was what I found myself needing to do in the industrial age.) I did manage to fight and win a two front war against aggressive Emperor AI. But this left me weakened technologically and I could not win the ensuing war against a fresh AI opponent whose tanks, artillery and marines were twice the number of my available infantry, cannons and cavalry.
Sigh.
Postscript: I replayed the map after a couple weeks to see if a more aggressive early strategy against Napoleon would have paid off by giving me a larger empire with more cities to devote to production. Instead, I did worse in the land grab phase and then Caesar attacked me with numerous praetorians when all I had were archers and chariots. Just to rub it in, in the middle of that war (which I was losing), Napoleon went and pulled off a CS slingshot. I realized at that point, that I had actually been pretty lucky in my original game.
http://skc.zapto.org/civ4/epic.php?epicId=4&pageNo=1
I retired in 1886, as I would have either been conquered by Saladin or beaten by him into space. One thing's for sure, having never played above monarch before (except Epic 7), I probably didn't need a bunch of variant rules to make this scenario more challenging for me.
I had a good opening and a fine core, and managed to stay ahead of most everyone in the tech race and at least on a par with the leader (Saladin) due to good relations and smart tech trading with fellow Hindus Caesar and Cyrus. I went for Polytheism first and converted to Hinduism, then focused on worker techs. I also went with a wonderless opening, concentrating instead on heavy settling. I managed to claim two nice cities to the north - gems to the west and ivory and dyes to the east. I also managed to build the Great Library and the Colossus in the middle ages and even snagged a source of iron across the eastern waters to the south of Mongolia.
I was first to Liberalism and chose military tradition as my free tech. As the first civ with cavalry, my plan was to go after Napoleon and relieve him of his empire, as I needed some more cities to devote to production. Then I would hold tight and go for a space race victory. But Napoleon attacked me first before my invasion was ready. I had to draft lots of muskets to fend off his huge stacks before going on the offensive and taking a city. This brought me right to the French end of that southern ice corrider. I then made peace for a spell so I could build up more cavalry for a more decisive invasion of his core. Plaguing me throughout my military buildup was the dearth of heavy production cities in my core. Basically, it took a while getting the cavalry together. But at least I was secure on my northern front, where my fellow Hindus resided. Yeah, right.
In the midst of my renewed cavalry buildup, I was attacked by Caesar. He had been Pleased with me all game thanks to shared Hinduism, but relations turned cautious after he revolted to free religion (a few of his lesser cities were non-Hindu). So I had to draft again (rifles this time) to protect my northern front and had to divert my France-intended cavalry force that way. Before I went on the offensive, he managed to do some nasty cottage pillaging at my commerce heavy border towns. Events now dictated a change of strategy, and I decided to relieve Caesar (rather than Napoleon) of his territory and use those cities for production. Things were going very well. I took two Roman cities in short order and was all set to take the rest. At that point, Napoleon attacked again, preventing me from concentrating all my force on one front. Draft unhappiness, mounting war weariness, numerous turns spent maximizing gold for troop upgrades, not to mention the cottage pillaging, and the loss of my meager navy to Napoleonic ships and the resultant inability to work coastal tiles - these all conspired to keep my economy stagnant for centuries, and Saladin was running away with the tech race. So rather than conquer all the Roman lands, I made peace with Caesar after taking just two cities and held off Napoleon until he was ready to cry uncle.
After these wars, Saladin (who had a huge empire and had never once been at war) had pulled ahead considerably in tech, so I judged my earlier hopes of conquering more territory imprudent for the moment. My only hope for winning the space race was to hope Saladin didnât attack me (he had tanks and artillery by now and I had only infantry, cannons and cavalry), and focus on increasing my cities population and my GNP, regrowing my pillaged cottages, getting factories in all my cities, and getting some more modern military techs to compete with a potential Arab invasion. I felt sure I could conquer Rome or France once I had factories, and then beat Saladin into space through smarter teching/building, despite being behind in the tech race. Unfortunately Saladin attacked me just as I was halfway through finishing my factories. I had given in to his every demand and had a defensive pact with Cyrus, but he didn't care. He attacked on the Napoleonic front, wiping out all my infantry there with a couple large stacks of artillery/tanks/cavalry and a sprinkling of SAM infantry and marines. I opted to quit the game at that point. Even if I had been able to defend my core through a third round of drafting, I would have been too weakened to compete with him in the space race.
Despite the loss, it was a fun game until the Arab invasion and I'm actually pretty happy with the way I played. In retrospect, I probably should have mounted an invasion of a neighbor earlier on in order to get a larger empire and more cities to devote to military production. (I just didn't have enough cities to keep pace in tech AND produce enough military to go on the offensive on two fronts, which was what I found myself needing to do in the industrial age.) I did manage to fight and win a two front war against aggressive Emperor AI. But this left me weakened technologically and I could not win the ensuing war against a fresh AI opponent whose tanks, artillery and marines were twice the number of my available infantry, cannons and cavalry.
Sigh.
Postscript: I replayed the map after a couple weeks to see if a more aggressive early strategy against Napoleon would have paid off by giving me a larger empire with more cities to devote to production. Instead, I did worse in the land grab phase and then Caesar attacked me with numerous praetorians when all I had were archers and chariots. Just to rub it in, in the middle of that war (which I was losing), Napoleon went and pulled off a CS slingshot. I realized at that point, that I had actually been pretty lucky in my original game.