This is the first Epic that I have sponsored. Hopefully, my efforts at sponsoring on the Adventures have paid off and I am able to generate a more compelling game that provides different levels of excitement and challenge. More 'sponsor comments' can be found here. Details of the game can be here at Realms Beyond.
For my shadow game, I founded on the spot, started a worker and Polytheism for a religion. I sent my 2 scouts out looking for AIs quickly meeting the 8 of them, founding my religion (planning on using this to cement relations with the AIs so they wouldn't attack me). After the worker, I started on Stonehenge for the Priest points and free culture. The next tech was Animal Husbandry to work the cows (and to show that I had no horses - no surprise for me) then onto the push to Alphabet.
In 2975BC (turn 41), I had met everyone and they only knew me. This can lead to a love hate relationship (you are our best friend and our worst enemy!).
I'd also uncovered enough of the map to create a dot map - all 8 cities on plains hills ... gee, it is almost as if someone planned this!
My second city grabbed my future military production centre (this is becoming my standard move) and blocked JC of India into his slice.
The AIs were slowly meeting each other, helped by my opening of borders. Strange, but Isabella was acting the isolationist while the others were generally getting to know the other AIs. Louis XIV landed Judaism and one aspect of my future game was watching him send out missionary after missionary - he certainly was spreading that around.
825BC (Turn 127) was certainly very active - I landed Alphabet (I was also within 2 turns of a 98% Great Priest - which I landed and created the Shrine) and pulled off a number of trades this turn and over the next few. One trade was for Iron Working which I almost passed on, knowing that I didn't have any iron nearby. I am glad that I did ...
A number of things to note at this stage ...
- I had quite a number of workers and had run out of things for them to do ... thus they started to road to future city sites and also improve some tiles (note corn farm in South (out of picture) and hill mine in West
- Mansa' Iron is available to me and I have a settler 2 turns away from completing - I ended up settling on the hill SW of the Iron so all of my early cities were on hills
- I've crashed my economy ... +8 gpt at 0% science - the Shrine will help with this
- I have some barbarian troubles, but my military pump saw those off and my road network allowed me to run vulnerable units (workers and settlers) around them