Well... this is the first AU I play, as I have been busy with other things. And, it maybe wasn't the best to start with, as UP is in most of my games the goal, and this one was simply too easy when you know what to do. I played it as Egypt, on Emperor, and won it in 2 ways too (but more on that later, as it certainly was not my intention).
The starting position simply rocked, and was even a bit too much... there are more games in which I outREX the AI, but here it simply was too Rexy for my taste. Seeing the great position, I decided that I wouldn't build 4 cities before the first archer rush as normal, but would go for all available space... this turned out to be 8 cities (next one on my continent had 5).
As I saw some more cows looming, I initially build 1 warrior, and right after that a temple. (no further scouts needed) I too popped barbarians in the hut, but somehow my warrior survived (the hut was popped by a border expansion, and my warrior was just in time back to get fortified in Thebes) Then came a settler, another warrior (for defense this time), and another settler. By this time I researched WC, so started to alternate between barracks, settlers, and archers in all my cities. I was going for the Colossus (the pyramids and oracle weren't possible, I knew that), but lost it with only 2 turns on the counter
So I switched back to a palace prebuild, and prepared for war.
By 730 BC, I had 8 cities running, all had produced archers for a while, and were recently switched to WCs. I started the first attack, against England (5 cities). I just built the GL in Thebes, so there was no reason to be generous to England; I took their 5 cities with my 15 archers at a steady pace of 1 city per turn (autorazing 2 cities).
Meanwhile, the war chariots were massing on the borders of India, so when my archer horde had rested and joined them in 510 BC, I started warring on India. In 490 BC, the first 3 cities fell, quickly joined by Bombay in 470 BC. I realized my archers were holding me back, so they were assigned to the new cities to crunch the resistance (aided with a few pop-rushes of spears, as my defense was mostly destroyed by the Indians who clearly had seen the attack coming). On the English side, my territory was completed with some settlers I built to avoid overgrowth of my cities.
Bombay was overcrowded with Indians, and I had too few population to further grow, so I added my workers (after building roads to the front, of course) to Bombay, and rushed a settler (It has been a while that I pop-rushed settlers, but the game was simply going too fast!). In all, both India and England (and most of the other continental civs) had too many workers and settlers, I simply couldn't use them all. So I added all my workers, and about half of the slaves to cities, to support further production). One of the cities that was beefed like that was Abydos, exactly in the middle of the continent, who got a pop-rushed temple and courthouse, and started on the FP. It was not going to get into WLTKD for another 20 turns because of the rushing, but it wasn't fully corrupt, and once those 20 turns ended it was producing 8 shining shields... not that bad for a hand built FP.
Research was going much too slow for my taste, so instead of being on 20% lux, 80% tax, I switched to full research, and quickly reached monarchy. I started on the hanging gardens, built the HE, the lighthouse (rushed with an extra leader), and every other wonder from now on.
The rest of India quickly fell, with one exception, they managed to build a city in between the Babylonians and Americans, which was surrounded with jungle; so I couldn't reach it with my WCs. I had to wait a little, which also led to a culture flip of Calcutta (undefended). So to not get bored, I attacked the French, from 290 BC to 190 BC.
At this point, I realized that my initial goal of securing my continent in the BCs wasn't going to work, my troops suffered too much from the ongoing wars. I decided to build up again, start on marketplaces and aquaducts everywhere, and in 10 AD the first Bab city fell. They put up quite a fight, and my WCs were getting tired, as they retreated from too many battles (okay, I didn't lose them so quickly, that was a plus). Finally, in 290 AD I conquered them, took the last Indian city, rushed Sun Tsu in Babylon, and moved all my WCs close to the American border, waiting to get upgraded to knights. In the mean time, I had found the northern continent, and was looking how to conquer those civs too...
330 AD - 360 AD: the Americans fell to my knights, but they left the continent in a few galleys. I made peace, and started moving troops to the gem island, and to the Persian territory at the same moment they were being slaughtered by the Roman legions. I moved 3 settlers there, with only a few knights as protection, and was ferrying all I had across, but before I was able to build my first city in the razed Persian territory, the Romans asked for 46 gold... I wasn't fully ready, and made a little mistake: I should have given in to that extortion, waiting until my troops on the continent were a bit better armed, but was too proud for that... so they declared war.
520 AD: the first 2 Roman cities fell (one on the gem island, the other Persepolis). I scrambled to protect Persepolis, but the legionairs in the final days of their golden age were hard on my knights, and most of my continent was in builder mode, not warring mode. Anyway... the war dragged on, provided me with some 5 leaders, and finally ended in 1150 AD. I did manage to move my capital in the middle of the northern continent, and had access to all 8 luxs at this time. Around the same time, the cavalry came to my rescue, and I was ready to take on the Germans.
However, I didn't want a long spun out war again, so I waited a little... plus I spotted a nice little island off the coast of the Iroquois nation which I set my mind on (not because there was anything useful there, but I thought it was a nice island to drop my settlers on). But, by the time my Galleons could land 4 settlers there, the Germans were there too, and of course they build a city just one turn before I could position myself. So off went another shipment of 4 cavs to teach those a lesson.
Meanwhile, I was speeding ahead in research, keeping a 20% lux to get most of my cities in WLTKD, switched to republic, and build all wonders I could think of on my home turf. I feared that Thebes was getting too corrupted to have a lot of use out of the IW that was going to get built there, but it was still okay, only lost about 20% under republic.
1265 AD, I had positioned enough cavs, so I started my German conquest, which was rather uneventful except of one glitch: I left a city undefended within reach of their knights. Ah well, I took it back one turn later
It went on until 1315 AD, at which time I controlled the two main continents, and all smaller islands except those of the coast of Russia and Greece that could be reached by galley.
So, I won. I put a few cavs in 2 galleons, and shipped those over to Greece (who were down to 2 cities), and thought whether to go for a domination victory or not (it was obvious that I was quite close). The Greeks had no pikes yet, and the whole continent was backward (Iroquois were closest, but hadn't got education yet). But, this was a learning game, and so far I hadn't learned much, except that great starts don't always bring great games. Before landing my troops in Greece, I decided that I wanted a space victory, and that the learning for me was going to come from getting a good score, and to avoid a cultural win while going for AC. I retreated my galleons from the Aegian Sea, and started building as a madman, especially going for research buildings.
This was the first time I destroyed cultural buildings that were older then 1000 years, to avoid too much culture, and a quick calculation made sure that I needed to, or I would lose to a cultural victory. My lux rate had been on 20% throughout the game (only dropping to 10% once because I needed a tech in 4 turns), so I knew my citizens were a happy bunch, and I could most likely forget about temples all together. So, I destroyed all of them, making sure that in my queues, cathedrals were present, as I was going to need the 6 happy faces they provided later on. (if you destroy a temple at the time you are building, or have queued a cathedral, the cathedral will build normally). I wasn't very focused on culture in this game so far, which was good, as otherwise I would have to refrain from building universities everywhere, or I would trigger culture anyway.
So... I was happily building my empire, when a border expansion gave the first trouble: I was sure that I had all land squares already, but domination triggered in 1390 AD (score: 8426 points). I cursed, and reloaded. I had missed something... oh well, I gave 2 1-city islands to the Greeks, and played on. They got iron and oil, but who cares, it was not that they were going to use it to conquer me, besides, they still had no knights, and I was in the modern era already.
1535 AD... again I won by domination! This time I was sure, there had been border expansions, but no new land came into my hands.... it took a while until I realized the other part of the domination condition: you need 2/3 of the land, and 2/3 of the coast as well... I had too much land, but the border expansions were giving me more coast too, which triggered victory. So, I went back, gave another 1 city island to the Russians, and went on. All went well until 1555 AD, at which time I won again. Sigh. I gave my last 1 city island away to the Greeks (I was tempted to give it to the Americans, who were still floating around in their lonely galley off my southern coast), and hope that by now I was under 2/3 of the coastal area too. I know there is a tool somewhere that lets you calculate how far off you are from domination, but I was too lazy to find it, and had to pay the prize.
1685 AD: my space ship leaves. Not my best space victory (which will require some AI resistance so that tech is speeded up), but quite a decent score: 9589. And I did learn something too: my culture was only 85267, which is even a little higher as the last few turns I didn't bother with rebuilding everything. Plus, almost all my cities were in WLTKD, so that was fine as well
I could have gotten a better score out of it, as I could have waited roughly another 25 turns before culture would trigger, but I was a bit too lazy. My hat is off to those score hunters, who can wait until 2050 before ending, this really is too much for my tastes. It looks like a score of 20K is quite possible here on Emperor (certainly when you know the land), if you are willing to commit yourself to it. I am tempted to try it again, but then under deity (and not for score), I wonder if I could get UP on deity on this map.
DeepO
Missed the GL with just a few turns in both games.
