Naturally the first question anyone who opened up their save file in Epic8 wanted to know was what civ were they going to play as. The choices were between Rome, Egypt, Babylon, China, America, Japan, Zululand, and England. I desperately did NOT want to play as Rome (just played them in Epic4 and RBD12) or Bablyon (recently played in LK25) or Japan (going to play as them in Epic9). Any of the others would have been OK, though I rather wanted to get China or Egypt (two civs I have never played as) or a commercial civ to try out 1.29f's effects on that trait. So I opened up my game file and had a looksie at what I would be playing with.
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I was the English! This was great news, as I could try out the new commercial trait and see what it could do when beefed up. And, since common opinion is that the English are "worthless" since they lack a powerful UU or civ traits with obvious benefits, I was glad to give them a chance to shine in this game. ANY civ can be powerful when used to their strengths, and I planned to do that here. Maybe I should also mention that I was listed as player number 7 on the sign-up thread; between that and the fact that I was the English, I was able to come up with a recognizable theme for this report :)
I moved the scout first and didn't see any bonus tiles in the immediate area, so the place to settle was obvious: move onto the forest to get the river benefit and bring several bonus grasslands into play. My worker immediately went one tile NE and began mining the bonus grassland tile. The early build order was scout (for exploring), warrior (maybe should have been another scout, but I did need some MP), then granary. After the granary, I would be able to produce settlers ad nauseum from London, and the lack of any big bonus tiles made it a good choice. I could have cut down the game forest in London's radius and irrigated it to get 3 food, but I was happy enough with it producing 2 food and 2 shields. It worked well enough.
In order to get the full benefit from the expansionist trait, you need to build a lot of scouts and send them out early. I only built one other one, but it turned out that two was enough. I had glanced at the map Sirian provided for the game, and from this knew that the map we were on was a pangea stretched out in a line from west to east. I was near the western edge, so all I had to do was march eastward and I would eventually meet all the other civs. So I had a bit of an unfair advantage in knowing some of the map, but it's not as though I wouldn't have done this anyway. In any case, I sent the first scout east and the second one west. In 3800BC I popped a goody hut and received Bronze Working from it (was hoping for settler; dang!) In 3550BC my westward scout met several Roman warriors rather close to my capital. At this point it was still undefended, which was part of the reason why I built a warrior secondly and not a third scout. They did not kill me though, and instead turned back after making contact. In 3400BC my eastern scout popped a hut and got gold from it... and I never saw another hut. I guess they were snapped up quickly by other civs; oh well. In 3300BC I met Japan (to my northeast) and in 3050BC I met China further to the east. This was great! I was certainly getting the top bang for my buck out of the expansionist trait - it can be very powerful when used correctly.
This was what my progress looked like 20 turns into the game in 2950BC, showing the immediate area around my capital:
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You can see that I was working on my first settler at this point; of course all of the other civs had already produced their second city. The border of the Japanese city of Osaka is just peeking out in the top-right corner of the screen; I hadn't realized that they were quite that close to me. It looked like my start was crammed up against Japan's rather tightly - one of us was going to have to go down. One of the bad things about settling where I did was missing out on those game forests in the corner, but game tiles are not so big of a bonus that losing out on them is crippling. And I didn't know they were there anyway, so it wasn't an issue for me. I made getting to the wheat in the east my first priority, then going for the wines to the west my second one. There was a large patch of 4 dyes further to the east, so I made that another high priority. I would have to race the Japanese and the Chinese both to get it first. All in all, it was pretty good land but nothing exceptionally fertile.
By 2500BC I had contact with every single civ, and had not had to pay for a single one! The value of expansionist civs in the right hands is incredible; I could control brokering contact for the whole continent, and keep the Japanese and Romans isolated and backwards for quite some time. I stopped doing my own research at this time and got all of the "free" starting techs by working trades between civs who didn't have contact with one another. It was a lot of fun, to be honest. I also began accumulating a sizable quantity of money as a result of playing middleman for the world, which figured heavily into my later strategy. I took a little picture of the box in the corner of the screen in 2230BC.
Yep, I had all techs up to Writing, all contacts, and over 330g in the bank by 2230BC. That's purely due to the strength of the expansionist trait. Maybe it's not as convincing as Bamspeedy's accumulation of all ancient age techs by 2710BC with American scouts, but this was a standard map and not a huge one. I still think it speaks very well for how you can get ahead with proper use of scouts. And with the commercial attribute kicking in tons of gold for me (yes, it was noticeable even this early, generating an extra 3/4 gold every turn) it was time to think about putting all that loot to good use.
