Following the discussion of the British on Med map setting, I've spent the past couple days playing Med map on rated. With mixed results. With British, I was able to defeat just about all comers. Except Spanish. Spanish get the early trireme, which hampers fishing, the revealed map, which gives them strategic advantage, and the scout bonus, which means they clear up the resources. With those bonus resources, they can drop city #2 and still beat (or at least tie) you to the island with city #3. Also, they can keep an age ahead of British in COM, so the British econ advantage never really materializes. That's if Spanish boom.

Alternatively, the Spanish can do a very early Classical and hit you with raiders. This is clearly an area of my game which I need to improve. As I said in my new mantra: Raid! and Scout! Both of those things require micro. Neither of those things I do well. However, it is harder to raid on Med maps, the extra distance does play a factor. I found that when I raided my opponents had good defenses, but I was always vulnerable. Maybe I should try making defenses?

Of course, some of my losses are due to just being stupid. One game I forgot to make scholars. Another game, I forgot to make and research the granary and lumber mill upgrades. A third game, I left triremes infinite queued at my dock and they sucked up all my wood and metal. D'oh!

I guess I am getting old. (36 is pretty old for a gamer.) Your reaction time and micro skills definitely get weaker as you get older. But, I was hoping it didn't happen until like 50 or so...

So some takeaways from this series of games:

• Raid! And Scout!
• Practice and improve my micro for raiding and defending raids
• Have a checklist of things I need to do at certain milestones -- e.g., make stable, make universities, make granary and lumber mill, etc.


• Improve my big battle micro, don't just win by having the bigger army
• Determine optimum economy levels for various civs -- how many choppers should I have, how many farmers and miners, and scholars? I tend to make too many, and then when I get the upgrades, they exceed my econ cap by too much. Wasting resources.

posted by Tim at 9:28 AM