Players were offered the choice between starting this event on turn one, or starting from my turn twelve, borrowing my opening. This is similar to how the original Civ3 Epic Four was presented, although there it was ten turns instead of twelve. So what did I do with these twelve turns? I moved the settler on to the Gold resource, on the adjacent hill, for a three-way advantage: resource connected under the city, happiness available immediately and always; production bonus from being on a Plains Hill; and most urgently, the defense bonus. Even losing one extra unit in the early going would set the whole civ back by many turns. I'll be interested to see if anybody who started from 4000BC chose not to move to the hill, and if so, to see how they fared. I also set the city to produce a Warrior (which would be completed, and another queued to start) and set research to Hunting and then on to Archery, so that an Archer could be produced immediately after the second Warrior. Anybody on a hill who makes it to their first produced Archer unit should survive the early going.

In my case, I used the exploring warrior to pop a hut in the east, which gave me Sailing. However, this meant the unit could not return home in time to meet the First Wave of enemy warriors.

Fortunately, it did not matter. My two units there, with the help of the Hills, fended off the enemy. I had my first Archer in place by the time the Second Wave arrived:

After training two Warriors, I trained three Archers in a row. The first Archer got promoted to 10XP very rapidly and then became the only defender that would answer the call, so I had to start moving units out to a forested hill SW of the city to get my green units some promotions, too. (Most importantly, to get some Medic units going!)

From that position, with a City Garrison III Archer and a Medic Warrior, I felt safe enough to build my first settler, sending him south to the coast and the Fish/Sheep site, also on a Plains Hill.

You can see, above, the first enemy Archer unit approaching. I'm working on Barracks in Rome. Still have only six military units at that point, but I wasn't too worried. You can also see some Copper on the screen, out to the left in the flat. No way I'll be able to reach and secure that, but another source is on the coast to the east, also on flat ground. I'll need more than "a couple of Archers" to secure that site, but it's the next priority.

I got my Fish connected shortly after 1000BC:

Still no Worker units, of course. No use bothering until I have enough of a frontier and enough of a military to protect the improvements (or at least some of them).

The early wonders were falling fast, of course. Parthenon finished in 895BC? You won't see that on Prince level!

I founded directly ON the Copper. That's not a normal tactic, of course, because it wastes the potential of the tile's improvement (a Mine, in this case) and in effect wastes a good tile, but it also ensures that the resource cannot be pillaged, and for a coastal city like this (and Sailing already learned) it means the resource is connected to my other coastal city, Antium.

Now all I have to do to get Copper to Rome is connect a road from Antium to the river -- and protect the road.

Well that didn't take too long:

You can see that I've got two Workers now and training a third. Almost have a road from Rome to Cumae, but that road is much more exposed to threats. Got Pigs connected at Rome and Sheep at Antium. The Great Library falling in 400BC is indicative of where the leading AIs are already at, while I'm still limping along in the Ancient Era.

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