From 800BC to 800AD is a period I will call the Dark Ages. Not a whole lot was taking place!

The first order of business was to get my two missionaries safely to Rome. I had only Warriors and Archers, and only really had one Archer to spare. The three units took the long narrow pass due south from what would become my second city site. They met and passed an English unit along the way. I put both units in to Rome. Because Christianity was founded one turn sooner, it arrived first and became the one the Romans adopted. From there, I sent the Archer onward, heading south and southwest, to explore. With Open Borders from England, he would eventually go all the way to London in the far SW corner and then back again.

I needed to get some military techs going, as well as be able to chop forests and pick up some Metals. So I researched my way to Pottery, Animal Husbandry (one Sheep at my second city site), Bronze Working and Iron Working. There were no Horses or Copper anywhere in visible range, at the time, but one lone source of Iron turned up--right under my second city! Arrgh. Well, that was good in one sense: no risk of it being pillaged!

By the time I researched these four techs and built three settlers out of my capital, I was already in to the AD times. I switched to Slavery, of course, and used some whipping to speed along production at the second city. I trained one settler out of the second city in hopes of getting to the Wheat nearby, but the Romans got there first, and then I was forced to settle my fifth city in a rather crappy location on a small lake. It was literally the best spot within my power to protect at the time, but it was really sad. (I'll show it to you later.) My third city was astride the three-tile lake between my first two cities, and my fourth city was on the coast, near the fourth Deer and the two Furs.

I spent century upon century building up these five cities. I needed some more workers. I needed a Galley, and that was tough to get from such small, weak cities. I needed more troops. I needed granaries, libraries, lighthouses.

Some time after 400AD, my second Prophet popped, and I used him to build Church of the Nativity. I had switched to Christianity along with the Romans, and as they solidified in to that religion, I geared up to build a couple of Christian Monastaries and get a few Missionaries ready to send to the other AIs.

I figured that one of the two Financial civs would pop the rest of the religions (and that assumption was correct, of course) so it was my plan to line up all the other civs on a single religion, in a big bloc with me having no enemies near me. (Mali and England were as far away as could be, and had formed in to one bloc with China, Rome and Greece in another, and Saladin kind of off on his own.)

When the AIs showed up with Alphabet, I still had a monopoly on Theology and a near-monopoly on Code of Laws. Trading these away got me in to the game, tech-wise, and finally brought an end to the Dark Ages as we start to come in sight of 1000AD.

All that while, I had sat with my five cities, unable to afford any more. Early trades including obtaining Alphabet and Calendar, Metal Casting, Construction and Monarchy. I had to give my techs away to everybody to get all of this, though. In some cases, I had to give away a lot more than I was getting, although this has the up side of giving you the maximum +4 to relations for "fair and forthright" trading.

I even decided to go for the sixth religion, after obtaining Monarchy (and switching to Hereditary Rule civic, of course.) I started on that, intending to use my third Prophet to speed that along. Then I decided to check on when he was due, and to my utter shock and dismay, this is what I found:

WHAT THE HECK DO YOU MEAN, I'M ONLY GETTING THREE GREAT PERSON POINTS PER TURN?!?

WTF is this? Some kind of new bug? ... Oh I see. Somebody (*ahem*) changed the game in the last patch to cause "obsolete" wonders to stop providing any Great Person Points. ... Uh... Well, then. I've not only got to live with it for now, but to realize that my whole strategy is in the tank, because I'm not producing enough Prophet Points quickly enough to burn a Prophet on Divine Right. I'm going to need them all just to get two more shrines built!

The really wacky thing is that the display (see above) still claims the wonder should be giving me 2 GPPs. Heh. Needs more patching, one way or the other.

OK, so... No more Divine Right. I switched off of that and headed for Literature. Three things. 1. Maybe a shot at the Great Library. 2. National Epic (because hey, I need to get these GPP points in the capital CRANKING, OK?) 3. Heroic Epic could be built in Teo (second city, on the iron, out west) and that city could be my military production machine for most of the game.

Also, in the picture above you see a Settler in production. I've got my galley, so I'll be shipping that unit off to sail south and grab a spot where the weather is warmer!

Speaking of which, I've got three exploring units now. There's a Woodsman II Warrior going south in to Chinese lands. There's that Archer in England. And there is an Axeman heading east in to China.

I got a Christian Missionary to China not too long ago, and I will be sending another along toward Arabia shortly here. (They converted to Judaism! Need to get them to the correct religion!)

More tech trading followed. England built the Great Library before I could even start it, so that went out the window. I researched Drama first, but it was not enough of a prize in itself to net me anything directly. I traded Literature plus Drama to somebody for Compass, if I remember correctly. I also got some resource trades going around this time.

With almost a thousand years between founding my fifth city and my sixth, I was ready for a new round of expansion! My sixth city was founded on the Chinese mainland, poaching the Whales and a Sheep from the tip of their land. I beat them there by only a few turns, too, because a settler coming that way diverted westerly and founded in the last remaining space down there.

NONE of my opponents had a city with a port on the sea! All of my fishing nets were safe. No threat of any invasions from the east touching my core. It was kind of cool to have sole control over those waters. This also meant I could delay settling that two-fish niche blocked off from Rome by a nest of Peaks, and grab that site later, while I concentrated on reaching out farther for more lands.

As of 1000AD, the Dark Ages had been over for a while. I went a long way there without taking any screenshots. I'll get you caught up on what the world looks like before too long here, though.

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