Finished my 3nd game, and this time without a single crash.
Here is the writeup:
Settings: Dense Mountains, scattered and large seas.
Gives a 1600er map, so a lot smaller than in my first game where I chose thin mountains to get more good land, 600 more land exactly.
Start had Wet Corn, riverside grassland sheep, tundra hills dear and 1 gold 1 silver, so quite good.
Expanded very late (2nd city 2200 BC) because I wanted to have maximum whipping efficiency with 6 -> 3 whips.
Minimum number of oppoents gave me land for 10 good cities. Tried to start war against my neighbours earlier, but had neither Copper nor Iron, so I needed to go Horse Archers.
Went against Pacal, because he had the Pyramids. He was in middle range of my emipre, just 1 empire in between us, but I should have chosen a dfiferent target and forget about the mids, because Pacal had Holkans and War Elephants.
Still managed to get him down, but only with lots and lots of Catapults and one of the first conquered cities had Iron, which was good.
Pacal didn't only have the Mids, he also had a Shrine, something I wouldn't know how to manage without on this mapscript and with these settings.
As already told, I was basically running a deficit at 0%, sometimes up to 200g deficit / turn.
Conquest gold helped greatly.
Took out Lincoln with Maces, Gallic Warriors, Horse-Archers, Catapults and later Trebs and took his capitulation. This didn't interfere with wanting peace-vassals too, because Lincoln had very good relations to the others.
Double bulbed Education, because otherwise I wouldn't have had any chance at Liberalism.
Won Liberalism but unfortunately, I needed to take Printing Press, because all other techs were available by AI. Crawled towards Cuirrassiers, and then came the whip
.Whipped out 200 Cuirrassiers and later 100 Cavalries and rolled over the map. Coordinating so many units was no fun though.
Vassaled 5 / 8 Civs, with Mansa vassaling feely.
I wondered why Hatty didn't want to peacefully vassal, had 3 times her military, shared borders, but she always denied, first for "we're doing ok without you" , later with "you have grown to powerful for us" .
Had really stupid and severe losses in all wars, I think I lost over 5 98% fights over the whole game.
Had 2 GAs btw., no chance at Taj Mahal because Frederick had Nationalism so much earlier in the game. Actually, the AIs were always the more advanced ones because my economy was so bad, or maintenance is simply crazy on this mapscript.
I'm very happy, that I know got a game you can compete with, and that gives me time to play something different.
I'll probably play even a 4th game, but not before I let Mapfinder run for 1 week. The difference between the tripple wet Corn + 2 gold start was just too great, compared to the start I described above, which also had 3 Food-resources and 2 Luxuries.
Have fun playing, your time to beat is before 1000 AD, but not much.