Starting off the game with my capital a bit to the northwest of what seems like a nice coastal hill with some wine. Since my plan is to go for a strong early navy with the possibility of earning promotions as early as dromons I want the great lighthouse and therefore all sea resources i can get is really beneficial.
However already from the start none of the AI really seemed to like me. Askia was the only one wanting to be friends even though just for a short time before he declared war instead. I did steal 2 workers from him so maybe his response was kinda delayed.
Managed to grab like 4 workers from poor ormus as well before they served the purpose of being exp farm for my dromons.
Met the 2 religious CS early so get a quite early pantheon. Choose the god of the sea for the production especially i plan all my cities to be coastal. In retrospect I maybe should have went for the culture and faith from wine first and picked up god of the sea with extra belief you get as byzantium.
Managed to find sailing with one of my scouts, which made the decission to beeline optics early easier for a safe Great Lighthouse.
Quite early felt that I did have too much workers, especially since I did a concious decission not to build roads and wait for harbour for city connections and safe some maintenance cost. In retrospect maybe not such a wise decission since it took a while for them to be research and built and probalby more important could have needed them to more easily maneuver in my defensive wars.
I wanted to try a bit unconvential social policy strategy. Opened tradition then liberty and took republic before back to tradition and Aristocracy for bonus production building great lighthouse and later also the colossus and NC. After that switching to liberty again and grabbing collective rule hardbuilding 2 more settlers for a 4 city setup and then going for legalism and monarchy. Had a plan of maybe finishing tradition but culture output was so low that I then decided to open Exploration instead for extra naval movement. (7 movement frigates with range and logistics makes naval warfare kinda easy) Grabbed Naval tradition(happiness really needed) and navigation school (more great admiral was needed with a widespread fleet) before as my last tree honor. Just for the extra great generals to make citadels in the last push.
Actually all 3 of my neighbours decided to have a try a my citys. First england, this was the first point i realised that a kickas navy would'nt be enough so i had to buy some CB:s.
However my focus was still on getting a nice and promoted fleet. Then both Askia and Denmark decided to kill some units against my wall and coastal bombardments.
At reaching machinery and building a few LB:s England decided to have another go against me. Well enough is enough and time for my navy to really come into play. Which now was all upgraded to galleas and some of them with range promotions. However i came to realise later that the critical upgrade for naval units. Especially with Great Lighthouse is logistics since you have extra movement to easily both get in and out of range.
However in retrospect this one of my not so bright strategic plays, as I decided to wipe out England at here peak of power which slowed me substiantially. At this point Longbowmen kinda hurt and I couldnt avoid my galleas to not get it altogether.Made what I consider a nice move with a heal from my admiral to keep my fleet alive and still take nottingham without losses.
A better plan would have been to see that see her reach machinery, bribe her against askia while i took the western route around my continent starting to secure Copenhagen first. After that take out Askia and England before shifting focus to the other continent. However took the eastern route around my continent and took both Gao and Copenhagen before continuing my journey to the other continent.
However the big problem that I encountered was the only one of the capitals on the other continent was coastal and my army at this point was not particularly good at taking high defence cities not reachable from the coast. Since land battle was limited for my guys i did not really have well promoted ranged land units to take cities with. Even if Venice fell very easy at the time for Edinburgh to fall my archers couldnt go into range of the city without being oneshoted. They also has quite alot of units so i make sure to bribe the Incas to fight both Egypts and Celts. Incas that are the strongest Civ right now happily accept.
I had to wait for my beelining for artillery to finish, really late i know. Really should have focused a bit more on science and science techs earlier to get that science production going much earlier and give me the possibility to use artillery much earlier as well as battleships which I never actually had the time to research before i finished, but would have made the end much easier. Edinburgh eventually fall though, no time to waste and already at war with the egypts to wipe out their fleet and grab their coastal cities to reach thebes.
Both Giza and Pi Ramesses is going down, even though I only intend to set up artillery around Pi Ramesses to bombard Thebes, I managed to kill and distract alot of his units around Giza instead of providing defence for the capital. With a citadel from a great general securing the artillery lane I move on to repeat the process with the incas to wipe out their fleet and get a foothold for Cusco.
Really hoped for the Incas to chop the forest just east of Cusco so my range+logistics frigates could bombard the city directly, which never came to happen and had to take some extra turns get artillerys in place as well as great generals for citadels to negate the effect of the great wall that he had built. (Still in place since he seemed to delay his dynamite).
And at turn 214 all capitals is finally secured into the holy Byzantium empire.
However a few questions for people experienced with naval warfare.
What tech paths do you go for a naval domination game? I can see that this is a trade off between beelining for the military techs and getting science rolling. However i felt that my frigates and artillery (kinda needed for inland capitals) and never got to use battleships, which seems really strong with range and logistics on them.
Especially with extra movement from GL it did seem that logistics was the pivotal upgrade. Do you skip range promotion to get the logistics first at 100 XP or is range to essential to keep on getting XP?
The last question i probably have a good idea myself about and it is about the initial expansion, which did occur at approx turn 60-70 where i planted 3 new cities. I did delay it for me to get collective rule first, (even with the unconvential SP strat) and built both GLighthouse and workboats before expanding. Is this even viable for a dom. game?
I proably think that I should have needed to grab either citizenship much earlier or hard build them anyway.