Well I picked up PTW yesterday. It's been a while since I played any Civ 3, but it all came back quickly. These early strategy posts are almost always proven wrong months later (witness my catapults and Hopalites ancient war essay from early Civ 3).
I knew everyone would be looking at the Celts due to their great UU and the popular Religious/Militaristic combination, but I was drawn to the Vikings. Many moons ago my people were those same bloodthirsty barbarians who terrorized Northwest Europe and were the real discoverers of America. Enough of the background... let's talk about my game.
I selected my standard Continents / regular map / raging game and the initial plan was for a standard archer rush to take out the continent followed by a Berserker invasion of the rest of the world. As so often happens in Civ, that plan went out the window within 10 turns
. The starting position I recieved was at the very low end of my "restart range". I'm not a compulsive 2-cow restarter, but I was greeted by 5 tundra tiles in my initial radius, no bonus tiles, no luxuries, and no river. I covered up a tundra tile with my first city and made the best of it.
A few turns of exploration and it was plainly obvious that I was situated on a small island all by myself. Early archer went out the window. I REXed the small rock and raced the AI for the lighthouse.... which of course I lost. On the bright side, my initial exploration with galleys found India sitting like a ripe apple to my north
. My aborted lighthouse attempt did net me the Great Library as my first wonder. Always a good turn of events for the warmonger. A bot so quick switch to Monarchy around 0bc (oh why have you forsaken me Religious), and agressive terraforming placed me in good stead as far as productivity goes, and I decided to build a little infrastructure rather than worry about pruning worthless little India. A few temples to Thor and the odd Aqueduct can't hurt the war effort, and a swordsman invasion of their island was probably more trouble than it would be worth.
The middle ages came quickly once my ships found Europe. Germany, England, France and the Celts were busy fighting small wars, and China and Japan were off on their own Supercontinent. Clearly the power AI would be one of these two, their territory was the same size as Europe, and Japan was losing a war badly. I set my science slider to max and worked on getting my UU. I alread had a dozen or so swordsmen and 6 ships... all I needed were those Berserkers.
After my first four Berserkers were done, it was time to hand India a beating. Let me tell you... Amphibious Assaults in the middle ages are not something the AI is prepared to defend against. India had only spearmen, and even walled cities fell rapidly. The first two cities were taken without a hit point of damage taken by my now elite attackers. Med. Infantry held the cities after the attack. It was all over in less than 15 turns. 8 cities fell in no time... the Berserk was everything I had hoped for.
France was losing the European war badly, and Bismark seemed to have made England and the Celts angry as well. I parlayed a military alliance against France into 3 workers and some gpt and dove in just in time to take Paris and Lyons, with 3 wonders between them. Quite the golden age, conquering a smaller island and knocking out France. My attack had gotten Elizabeth's attention, and she and her Celtic allies managed to take Lyons with a combination of Med. Infantry and Knights. By now my navy was huge, and my caravels shipped infantry to Europe as quickly as I could make them. The time of the Berserker had apparently passed, however. Larger cities with two fortified pikemen seemed capable of defending against 2 Berserkers (and a pikeman) quite well. No longer could I count on a one-ship takeout of a town, and shifted tactics to a combined-arms approach. Berserkers from the ship acted as bombardment almost... and the Infantry finished the job. Knights seemed more effective in taking out fortified pikemen than berserkers... although there was of course the element of surprise and protection from proactive strikes.
The rest of the game went pretty well according to hoyle. I took out Germany with Cavalry, and achieved domination with an airlifted tank-rush of Asia.
Continued...
