Ancient Age

4000BC Fairly decent start for an Epic game. Even a bonus food. Of course I also have to think a while before founding, as I will lose a cattle if I found where I am. On the other hand, I will lose the river to get the cattle. I will found where I stand, and let next city get cattle. We know pottery so I start a min science on Alphabet. ( No barbs means no huts. Less randomness. )

3700 Seem to be stuck in a hilly region far to the southern part of our continent. Will build only two scouts before Granary.

3050 A thousand years, and we have met no one on this continent. Fertile rivervalleys interspersed with hills and mountains seems to be prevalent landscape. Luxes might be a problem, I will make it a priority to get those.

2900 Granary completes and I start first settler. Will build two settlers before starting Pyramids. Also spot London. An unimpressive size 1 city. Lizzy wants most of my gold along with Masonry for Alphabet. I will do no such deal until I have more contacts. Had to think a while, since I could have started on Mathematics early.

2800 Meet Iros. Trade them Masonry for Ceremonial and 10 gold.
Masonry and Ceremonial gets me alphabet from Lizzy, and I do another min run on Math, trusting Lizzy to come up with Writing soonish.

2590 Get Bronzeworking and Warrior Code from Zulus for Masonry + Alphabet and 80 gold. That was expensive.
Starting to regret I didn't build three scouts, as I missed an excellent spot for next city. Next settler will have to go there.
Have Iros and English as next door neighbours. Wonder which of them I would want as friend, and which as enemy in an ancient war.

2390 Finished my second settler, and it is time for my Pyramids gambit. I expect to have pyramids within 40 turns. I hope AIs will be busy building settlers.

2150 Zulus are up Wheel, but no twofers exist, so I bide my time.

1750 Iros get Alphabet for Wheel, and I can plan where to put my next few cities. Horses are a priority.

1625 We get contact with Aztecs. A late contact, but I wont say no. Will have to settle quite aggressively if I want to get horses. They are far away.

1500 Mysticism and Iron working is out there in a possible 2fer, but I have 4 turns left on Math, so I will wait.

1400 Draw in Math at monopoly. Time to trade.
English pays Iron, Mysticism and 50 gold. Hmm, nothing more to trade for. Go min science on Currency.
Think it is a fairly safe bet some AI will have writing real soon now. Iros are religious, so I suspect them to try and grab the Poly gambit.
5 turns left to go on Pyramids, or a really really expensive barracks.

1300 Time to see if it is profitable to do wonders. Pyramids is one turn from completion. Need to build lots of military and settlers now, so I do not lose too much of the available room.

1250 We have Pyramids selfbuilt :) Hope it was worth 13 settlers......Hiawatha demands Mysticism. :( With three warriors to my name, it is not the time to complain.

1225 London Completes Oracle. Cascade is dead. Wonder if I can get another wonder then. Will start a prebuild after settler in one of my coastal villages.

1200 Hmm, techs are expensive. Math to Aztecs for Horseback.
Horseback + 140 gold to Iros for Writing.
Build embassies. I will send my settlers far abroad now, to stake out luxes and resources.
After that, it is fill out the blanks, and after that, time for military buildup.

1050 Colossus is completed in Germany, and hopefully cascade is fully dead. Continent with player is usually the continent that is ahead due to all the 2fers and stuff. Besides, there are five nations on this continent. On the other continents, there might be two or three. ( yea right.... )

975BC Hmm, we are not even on the chart when the most powerful nations are compiled.

825BC Washington is size 10, and at that size it demands 30% luxes. Since I do not want it bigger, when food box is full, it is a worker. I will need lots and lots and lots of workers. New York and Boston needs to be MMed every single turn, as they share a cow.

650BC One more city, and I have staked my claim, and it is filler time.
Get MapMaking from Aztecs for 10 gpt and my world map.
Exchange world maps with Shaka, and gets out of that 50 gold richer.
Exchange world maps with Iros, and I am 80 gold richer.
Get two workers and 30 gold from Lizzie for my world map. :) Sucker,.....

610BC Hook up another lux, and we can let Washington grow to size 11.

490BC Currency comes in. Set my single scientist on Construction, since that is an expensive tech. Do not particularly believe I will get it, but worth a shot, since tech progress is so slow now. Hmm, there are no new techs out there. Too bad.

430BC Iros are proliferous. They now have 20 cities to our 10.

370BC My monopoly on Currency is still going strong. No new techs have appeared, and I do not want to sell it for money alone.
300gold and 8 gpt is tempting though. Will wait a while, as long as price do not go down.
I am building military now in Washington, waiting for a wonder tech. Fairly certain I would nab any wonder that the tech comes up for.

330BC England decide they do not want to wait any longer, they want Currency now. I tell them to go look elsewhere, as I will not give it to them for free. Grumbling they leave our premises.

310BC Expensive. Zulus want 333+8gpt+Currency for Construction. I think this is a tad bit to expensive.
I will need to grab Aztecs gold though, otherwise Zulus will get it for sure.
So, two choices, and my inexperience with trading makes the decision a hard one.
1) Wait until Construction goes down in price and trade it with the others. This risks money disappearing. Also risk is that someone gets currency on their own.
2) Buy Construction, and buy back some cash from Aztecs. This may not be the optimal deal, and money now is very very valuable. ( Because Republic is soon to come)
I decide to wait. Live and learn.....

230 Finally a second tech is around. I have a hard time learning the worth of a monopoly on this huge map.
I can get both Code of Laws, and Construction for Currency. Make that deal from Lizzy.
G get 410 gold from Zulus for Currency. Time to start thinking about blood enemy.
Two choices here too. England who looks like the easiest target, and Iros who have the most land.
Iros would have been the clear choice, except for the fact that the Rider is one of the most fearsome Ancient age UUs.
They do not have horses, nor iron in their current lands.
Will collect most of my troops on their border.

110BC Fairly certain we would need at least lighthouse to get contact with other continents. Have almost circumnavigated our own continent, and no promising leads. Thought a while about starting Wall as prebuild for Great Library, but I will continue to produce warriors for a swordrush. ( Just like I planned.... Right! ( For those who didn't read my planning, I planned to use only horses, since the map was so large.))

70BC Unload a spearman on a one sector island. Would have been rough if I needed to clear out that island from an enemy.

30BC Buy Philosophy from Iros, and start full research on Republic. Get Forbidden Palace blurb.

30AD Lose a suicide galley. Buy Literature from Zulus, and start Great Library in Washinton. Hope to get it, only thing that would prevent it would be a cascade. When we are measured for size, we are at place 8. Hope to rectify that shortly.

90AD I get beaten by two turns by Seville for Great Lighthouse. Will have to be a prebuild for SunTzu or Leos then.
Nope, I grab Great wall, losing 80 shields.
Will need an Aqueduct before starting another prebuild.

110AD Get Great Wall in Boston.

210AD Hmm, Leipzig completes Great Library. I get a rather expensive ordinary library.

230AD Seems like my guess that our continent is advanced was wrong. Babylon completes Hanging gardens before we even get Poly.

290AD Second suicide galley sinks.

320AD Get Republic and immediately revolt. I will have monopoly, so I hope I can use Republic to get the Medieval tech my continents scientific AI drew.
Aergg, did not get Monopoly, as Iros and Aztecs also got Republic.

Later half of Ancient age was not nearly as good as first part. :(
Put up a min science on Engineering. Assume AIs go for Units and buildings. Notice Aztecs have sold horses to Iros. Blah.