I've started a game with a very interesting setup and have been obsessed with beating it.

Ragnar (Aggressive and Financial)

Prince, continents, normal speed, medium size.

Here's what makes it interesting:
Starting city is the best starting tiles I've ever seen.

Coastal city with 3 fish, two clams, corn, 4 rocky hills, no mountains.

MEANWHILE, west is a vast jungle. South is tundra. North is ocean. And East is a small island with sort of junk spots, but two okay spots.

ALSO, I share the continent with Alexander (Aggressive and Creative) and Pacall II (Expansive and Financial).

Both are straight up dead set on taking me out.

On one attempt I got into a war with Alexander shortly after getting civics, and he bombarded me with a stream of units for over 100 turns straight and refused peace every turn.

LASTLY, all the while this is happening Elizabeth is just WRECKING the other continent which is twice as big as my starting continent. At one point she had tanks in the 18th century. TANKS! 18th century!

This is just torture.


I'll be happy to post a save file if anyone wants to take a look.

Without having seen the map (a few screenshots would help), I'd try to gain control of your continent. Settle as many cities as possible before it gets overcrowded. Antagonize one of your neighbors and try to keep good relations with the other. Ragnar is aggressive, so I'd try to take down Pacal as soon as possible. If you can conquer Alexander (you'll need superior numbers or technology) as well before making contact with the other continents it'd give you an advantage, although you might want to keep him as a trading partner to accelerate research (especially if you share a religion).

Ragnar is also Financial. The vast jungle to your west is another name for lots of juicy green tiles, which will yield a lot of commerce once you've cleared the jungle and worked cottages. In order to do that, you'll need Iron Working. So I'd go after the technologies at the bottom of the tree (Mining, Bronze Working, Iron Working). This will also reveal where the metals are, which will help you decide whether, when and who to attack, and where you need to settle. Financial also benefits from working coastal tiles, so even the not so attractive "fishing villages" could yield a good amount of gold.

One you are in a comfortable position in your continent, go full on research. In isolated or semi-isolated starts I'd prioritize Optics so I can meet the other civs before they get to my continent, and I also get a good chance to get the circumnavigation bonus. After that, it's up to you what victory condition to go; if Elizabeth is getting too strong I'd keep a science-heavy approach and go for the spaceship. If you want to go for Diplomacy you'll want to build the United Nations yourself so you are always a candidate, and try to get the other civs to like you enough (or vassalize them if you're playing with vassals). Domination sounds like it would be hard with a runaway monster civ, unless there are more continents with weaker players to conquer. Culture victory would require instead to start preparing as early as possible, fishing for religions, getting your nine cities settled, building wonders and generating as many Great Artists as possible.

Prince difficulty should be doable, but a hard starting situation can virtually rise the difficulty level.

The key to continents is conquering everyone else and unifying your continent, letting you peacefully eco-boom up until astronomy is a thing and hopefully have a huge lead on the rest of the world. Tanks in the 18th century is pretty normal in this sort of situation; Elizabeth is doing the right thing, and you've just got to focus on sweeping your continent before the does.

The big thing I notice about your start location is that you have lots of food and commerce but little productivity in the area surrounding your capital. This means acquiring happiness bonus is critical because you are going to be using slavery for most of your production. And you want to abuse slavery to the fullest to pump out military units quickly to overwhelm your rivals. Tech is important, particularly for catapults to crack fortified cities.

Sorry for the delayed response.

Work's been a bitch.

Anyway, I had a few more tries and it seems that my only chance is to blitz Alexander IMMEDIATELY with calvary.

BUT damn Elizabeth is just a monster no matter how I cut it.

I spent the entire game persuading everyone to just hit her with war after war after war after war.

AND SHE GOT A DAMN CULTURAL VICTORY IN 1920!!!

I think my only hope is to make landfall and gank her gem cities, but I don't know how to make a war effort across the world without getting stomped by my neighbors.

This map is nuts.

It's hard to stop a runaway civ running for culture, especially on another continent.

Why don't you try to win a culture victory yourself? You are only as fast as your three best culture cities (or more precisely, as your third best city), so you can win with smaller empires. Because of the requirements to build cathedrals (the best culture modifier building in the game), you'll want at least nine cities. Can you get them?

You will also want to have religions, the more the merrier. Either by founding them or having them spreas from another thing.

The good thing about going for culture is that you can (almost) stop research when you reach a certain tech level (Music for cathedrals, Astronomy for intercontinental trade routes, Rifling if you feel military threatened), pump up the culture slider and see you cities fly towars Legendary status. Ragnar's Financial trait would help you with this strategy.

Or you can beeline Theology, build the Apostolic Palace and cheese a diplomatic victory. ;)

The trouble with cultural victory on continents is that you need access to those religions to build temples and cathedrals. Until you get astronomy you only have access to the religions founded on your island, and oftentimes (especially with 3+ continents) a given continent will only have one religion. If Elizabeth's continent has three or four religions it might be essentially impossible to catch up due to her head-start on cathedral construction. It's not like the instant the religion touches your shores you can put up those cathedrals; first you need to spread it to all your cities, then build temples, and then you can build the cathedrals. If you're waiting for astronomy to get access to those religions then those cathedrals aren't going up until the late industrial age, whereas Elizabeth probably had the cathedrals up before those religions even touched your shores.

I just tried that strategy, and Pacal and Alexander started a two front war with me the instant they got iron.

To even stand a chance you HAVE to do a horse archer rush.

I think what makes the map so hard is the fact that Pacal, Alexander, and Ragnar are all war heavy making it nearly impossible to get any religions on the continent.

Maybe I need to split the difference and get Hindu and Judaism immediately then gun for horse archers, and just ignore settler building all together.

Hard to get a good impression of the map without looking at images, but going for religions and not expanding when up against war mongers sounds like a horrible idea. With some luck, the war mongers will declare war on each other, or more likely one of them will declare on Pacal.

If feasible, however, try not to expand right up to Ragnar or Alexander' borders. If your empires have many bordering tiles, they are more likely to see you as a war target and declare war on you.

Diplomacy can be important in games like this. Admittedly you have few tools in the early game, but once you ge Writing you can open borders with them (relations willing), and that will gradually make them like you more. At some point you can trade resources with each other, and technologies. All this helps to build relations.

Many leaders can still declare war when they are Pleased with you, and both these probably can (I don't recall), so it's not a sure thing, but it definitely helps to be Pleased. To slowly build relations, it also helps to have the same civic as a leader's favourite civic. I don't recall what these people have now off the top of my head, but if it's something available in the early-ish game, then it can be a good idea to adopt that civic for diplomatic purposes.

Same with religions, but it's generally not a good idea to try to found religions yourself. But if for example Alex is close to your border, he has adopted Hinduism, and Hinduism has spread to your lands, by all means adopt it. Just be aware that if Ragnar then has Buddhism, he's going to dislike both of you. So you have to weigh the positives with the negatives. I often stay atheist for quite a while tbh, just to not anger aggressive neighbours. It's something you have to evaluate on a game-by-game basis.


If they do declare on you, they are most likely going to target whichever city is closest to their empire. If that city happens to be on a hill, with walls and archers. Well.... they're going to have a hard time. Do they attack with horses? Get some spears. Axes? Get some axes (and archers). With some luck you may be able to farm lone axes with chariots (they have +100% on the attack). Swordsmen? Get some axes. Very early you probably don't have the forces to counter attack them, so it can be good to get enough units inside the city they target, and let them attack you. Until they get catapults, they will usually just suicide units. You're going to lose the odd one of course, but probably keep the city. At some point they will be willing to talk, and then you can "peace out".

VICTORY!!!

I finally did it!

It took me about 30 attempts but I finally beat the map!

I made a bee line for archery and horseback riding and didn't stop until I wiped them off the map.

Then I filled out the continent and rushed to factory, lab, then the space race victory and went nuke crazy.

I must have dropped a nuke a turn for the last 40 turns.

WOO-HOO!!!

Congratulations! Launching all those nukes must have felt really satisfying.

Did you manage to outtech Elizabeth? (I guess so, or else she would have nukes as well). Was uranium easy to secure? Were the United Nations built and if so, did someone try to ban nuclear weapons?

Nope, she was ahead of me tech-wise, but simply didn't have uranium.

Also, I kept throwing the other people bones to keep things balanced.