played on monarchy but have long since given up. playing regent.
got to 1900 with china but flight was so far off that I got discouraged again. we're talking approximately 200 games years off.
huge map with 15 civs at once, 2 were ahead of me tech wise. only the Russians achieved flight when the Wright bros. did in real life.
which means that marking the game to real historical timelines is possible.
like somebody else mentioned, in every game I’ve started (none finished. 1900 was the furthest), the scientific civs almost always come out on top. cheap libraries and the extra advance when entering the middle and industrial ages are huge.
the only way I was able to keep up as china (military/industrial) was to align with the Russians throughout the entire history. If they extorted, I trimmed their request but still gave them what they wanted. They were always ahead of me tech wise so really the only thing they wanted was money. After about 4 such extortions, they decided to become allies. That’s when my tech took off. I kept on trading troops and fought their wars for free techs. I was their *****. I essentially dropped science to nothing, pumped up entertainment and turned out troops for the russians. Oddly enough, by having super happy folks, my culture went way above the Russians and their border cities defected to me. they were none the wiser. Continuing to trade techs for troops. Problem was, once they hit the important techs (ie flight), they stopped trading them.
It’s a long, concession laden process, you have bend over and get it up the butt over the course of history but you can be tech strong, even if you have to sell yourself.
Now the problem is how do I become the pimp.
NEED ALLIES. MUST HAVE ALLIES. WAR STINKS. Have strong cities. Pay off your enemies. In time they become friends. 3 strong defensive units with walls to hold them off in case of a sneak. Even trade off loser cities that you might have captured or have never taken off. I started beijing in bad place. After some consideration, I moved the palace to canton, which was booming and traded off beijing for 3 tech advances. If your culture is high enough, that city may sucked up again a little further down the road. chances are, if you can't make the city grow, neither can the other civ. since that city you gave them is surrounded by your other great cities...
Culture is everything. build offensive units only to hunt down those stupid barbarians. And wait before you build offensive guys. Keep 1 or so to attack barbarians that come close to your roads/mines. But on a whole wait. I actually don’t exterminate the barbarian camps and let them attack my cities. The defensive guys all become elites after a short round of attacks. Once you have a couple of elites, make more guys and move the elites out to your newer border cities.
Anyways, just my 2 cents with what worked for me.
I stopped here cuz it was around 5am and I had to be up at work by 8
