Epic 4: Part 1
The "Start with help" starts me off in 3640BC, with Rome founded & some research done:
It was strongly suggested that more military would be a Good Idea™, so that's my initial plan. As I said, my overall plan is initially to survive and not worry about anything else. I'm not going to get a tech lead whatever I do (I don't exactly manage that against Monarch AIs yet, so Deity is almost certainly beyond me), so I shan't try - instead I will concentrate on the fact that if I'm alive, I can catch up later, but if I'm dead the game's over.
By 3370BC I've explored a tiny bit more (which in retrospect was a very good move), brought my exploring Warrior home and I've got a third Warrior due in a turn's time. Just as well, look at all these barbarians!
Having survived the initial onslaught I start to build Archers galore, I didn't switch earlier as it was going to take much longer to build a fresh Archer than complete the part-done Warrior. I can manage to build the first Archer in 6 turns:
And hopefully the Warriors will do the trick till then, I've only seen Barbarian Warriors so far anyway. Looks like one of my Warriors is doing most of the work:
He's got a couple of promotions already - including a Medic I, which I think might come in rather handy :) My first Archer is built in 3160BC and fends off 2 Barbarians, gaining a promotion before I've even had a chance to fortify him!
Archers are clearly better than Warriors …
… another turn, another promotion! And by 3040BC he's maxed out on XP from the Barbarians, with an impressive collection of wins:
Bronze Working is discovered in 2740BC and I set research to The Wheel and revolt to slavery. I've got in my notes for a few turns earlier that I was crossing my fingers & hoping for Copper in the BFC. Alas, it was not to be :(
Neither of those is as close as I'd like it to be. So I need a second city. My plan is to build Archer/Archer/Settler and go found the city, then Archer/Worker to mine the Copper, and then some Archers to sit on the Copper and stop it being pillaged. I was trying to build a Barracks at this point, but swapped it out of the queue again in favour of these millions of units - I don't want a Barbarian city to spawn the Copper sites before I can get there.
While I was starting to do this I noticed that it was still only one of my Archers in Rome that was doing any work … so I decided he needed a name:
Don't ask me why Eric, though. I've no idea ;)
I don't like the look of the western Copper location - it'd need an awfully long road to get back to Rome, and I don't think I can keep that protected for long enough. I'm glad I did that little bit more scouting as I wouldn't've seen the eastern Copper otherwise & at first glance it looks like much more defendable terrain. So I send the first Archer built for the new city out to scout around the eastern site a bit more:
That looks like my best bet for a city site. I'd normally want to move it one to the east so that it didn't overlap with Rome, and wasn't one tile away from the coast. But in this case I think that being on a hill trumps everything. There's also the nice point that I can hook it up to Rome with 1 road (on the wines, linking to the river), so I only have 2 tiles to protect to keep my Copper supply. My scouting archer therefore gets fortified on the hill … and gets a name:
Coz Donald … gets a headstart on getting XP from the barbarians.
Don't worry, that's the last of the silly names - and anyway, I can't see you, so if you don't think they're funny you don't even need to laugh politely ;)
Ook! Barbarians are getting tougher, Archers on their way:
I found Copper City in 1540BC, and start it on a barracks. Rome is also finishing off a barracks, so the next Archers will have promotions out of the gate.
In 1510BC I discover Iron Working and actually have to think of some new research goals. In retrospect I should've gone for Pottery at this point - the cottages would've come in handy, even if I had to keep rebuilding them. And it wouldn't've been too much of a detour from what I did decide to do - which was to aim for Feudalism and Longbows. So the next tech I researched was Writing.
Once Rome is building the Archer/Worker pair to hook up the Copper I started to look for other potential city sites. The western Copper site still looks hard to defend & keep connected to the other cities, but I can now see that it's got Iron that I can get in range, as well. And three metal resources would make it easier to keep at least one connected:
There's also a rather nice site to the south of that, between it & Rome:
But a bit later I notice that the barbarians liked that one too:
At this point I have hubristic ideas about taking out that city & making it mine. It'll take some work, but I'll have axes soon, and Praetorians once I can hook up the Iron …
Copper is hooked up in 730BC:
The Barbarians appear to have slacked off slightly (I later noticed it came in waves - there were definite lulls, but not worth getting over-excited about as they always came back). In this lull I decided to set Rome to making another Archer/Archer/Settler pair to get the metals hooked up - with the aim of being able to make Praetorians and deal with the Hun.
I started 
Copper City building Axemen to go & sit by Hun to await my takeover. And then divert some of them to protect my road and coppermine, as the first unit to die (in 565BC, not bad, that) was sitting on the road linking Copper City to Rome.
I've finally noticed that I've got no economy to speak of, so I detoured to Pottery, and then started on Mathematics with the aim of getting Currency - this will also give my cities something useful to build (Wealth) if I've not got units I want.
Antium was founded in 35AD, and I immediately started it making an Obelisk for a border pop to get the metals in the BFC.
In retrospect, founding Antium was not really a very good idea :/ It was hard to defend (I lost an Archer soon after it was founded & and had to send re-inforcements from Rome), so I needed more units. It was hard to get the Iron hooked up and keep it hooked up. And generally I think it strained my already pathetic economy.
Of course the stack of Axes sitting outside Hun shivering at the appalling odds for attacking 4 archers in a city weren't helping either. In 575AD I finally got the dreaded message:
So I cut my losses and attacked Hun - lost all the Axes, didn't dent the city at all, but it did give me an income again:
I was, however, reduced to building Settlers and disbanding them, as they were the units that took longest to build. I got my workers building cottages and running around avoiding the Barbarians, with the hope that I'd get some extra income before they got pillaged. And the Barbarians just kept getting tougher:
Shortly after I saw those lovely fellows I decided to stop for the day, and put some more thought in before continuing to play.
Onward to Part 2