Here's a game story from today along the same thread. I was very happy with the way I played until I read the first post here.
Settings are NOMAD, any civ, 3v3 cont. I am Shang(Red at 3) Teammates are mace(blue at 1:30) and mino (yellow at 12) Enemy is orange(phoe) brown(sumie) and green(rome)
I don't see anything near my starting spot so I walk my lonely peon towards the sea and plop down my TC right in between 6 berries and 2 stragglers w/2 more trees close enough so that I will have no trouble getting up a wood pit soon while getting more than sufficient food flow. After some more exploring, I find 1) a great forest sweet spot back towards the center w/deer and 2 phants ! 2) 2nd berries behind about 12 tiles away from that forest. 3) gold on a poor hilly spot well to the left of my TC and my future wood spot. Thus, my plan is a 24 peon semi-boat boom to a 16 minute bronze(blazing fast on Nomad w/any kind of boom),followed by a big CA attack ! My economy starts to hum along beautifully and one dock is producing. Word comes in from blue that orange is at 4:30 and I announce that I will have a fast bronze at CA rush, certain that I can be fast enough that the 75 sec wheel research time won't prevent me from getting CA's on him in time. I go very heavy food and get my 16 flat bronze w/25 peons/1 scout/ and 10 boats, using a stable and archery. I needed a market so I took a couple of my peons to the berries and dropped a granary there and got my market up.Another range went up followed by a third as my economy was producingplenty of food and wood to crank 3 CA's out every 40 sec and get my upgrades.... orange had an archery by his woodies so I did not scout rush him.
My first 3 CA's hit orange at about 18:20 just as he bronzed, then came 3 more and the then 3 more leaving orange w/2 dead camels and a bunch of dead peons. As blue showed up w/my slingers to mop up orange's town he resigned. Now I had many more CA's and it was off to kill someone else w/blue's slingers along for the ride behind me.
My CA horde Hit brown the sumie and found camels and CA's to defend. I took them down while more and more off my reinforcements came and scattered and killed many of his tough peons.I and shifted my new peons I was making athome to gold w/ a view to ironing or tribing an ally. My mino ally had more comps and camels than the poorly defended roman could handle and it was game over fast !I had bronzed faster than 2 of them tooled and w/ a bigger economy to boot and killed two enemies.I was smiling like the Cheshire Cat, basking in the glory of a beautifully managed economy parleyed into devestating attack, until... "DUH, YOU IDIOT, NEILKAZ !!!" you let that stable rot, and didn't make any CHARIOTS !!!Some chariots could have even made myattack stronger. With toolworking they can kill a peon w/3 hits. A few Chariots can deal with enemy camels and CA's while my own CA's, kill every peon in site ! Any that survive will grow up and become scythes later. Don't forget chariots like I did !