Just played as Mace Tyrell. Super happy with twin settlers and really happy playing peace game, until... Old Tully declared surprise war on me and totally crushed me just with a bunch of warriors and archers! Can't imagine it were Brotherhood UU of Riverlands, would be even faster... Lord Puff Fish SUCKS at war!

Had this problem with Mace Tyrell too. I was playing with the Truly Abundant resources mod (Which does strengthen his thing.) However, even Barbarians early game were annoying af to deal with. When I had Montezuma declare war (I wasn't playing authentically) his eagle warriors took 4 of my 9 cities before he hit a wall of encampments. Replaced those 4 cities in 7 turns though.

I think the strategy for Mace Tyrell is to see how much you can get away with before other Civilizations start posing a problem. And then fortify up with encampments, archers and walls. You will never beat Emperor+ Units in a fair 1v1 with the Lord Puff Fish trait, so playing incredibly defensively while expanding in other directions seems to be the flavour of the day. With Mace you can easily have a huge number of well developed cities really quickly, and as such can rocket up the science tree if you focus on it. Remember the -3 doesn't matter very much if your using Musketmen vs their swordsmen.

Originally posted by kniferharm:

Had this problem with Mace Tyrell too. I was playing with the Truly Abundant resources mod (Which does strengthen his thing.) However, even Barbarians early game were annoying af to deal with. When I had Montezuma declare war (I wasn't playing authentically) his eagle warriors took 4 of my 9 cities before he hit a wall of encampments. Replaced those 4 cities in 7 turns though.

I think the strategy for Mace Tyrell is to see how much you can get away with before other Civilizations start posing a problem. And then fortify up with encampments, archers and walls. You will never beat Emperor+ Units in a fair 1v1 with the Lord Puff Fish trait, so playing incredibly defensively while expanding in other directions seems to be the flavour of the day. With Mace you can easily have a huge number of well developed cities really quickly, and as such can rocket up the science tree if you focus on it. Remember the -3 doesn't matter very much if your using Musketmen vs their swordsmen.

Good tips! The other way is to see if you can declare friendship with your neighbors, this can save your life and survive through Classic Era. For Official Civs: Gilgamesh, Teddy/Victoria on same continent, now Canada should be the easy ones. Yet if you have neighbors such as Trajan or Montezuma, yes prepare to defend yourself.