The war with Pedro and Harald went pretty bad overall but I've been extremely lucky in the end. First of, Harald made peace with Nappy pretty early and started to attack Truro opening a second front which I could barely defend. It appears that Pictish Warrior do extremely poorly against Berserkers, especially in friendly territory... Meanwhile, Pedro continued to push, easily killed most of my army and started to do damage to Dublin. The situation became extremely critical but I was able to make peace one turn before he would have taken it ! With this problem out of the way, I started to move my weakened troops to the southern front to help the two poor guys holding it. When I rush bought a wall in Truro the vikings changed their target and sent their troups to the poor citiy of Nantes. Again, things got pretty close and, again, I made peace on the turn before they would have taken the city... Fortunately, a few turns after this, all my neighbours became friendly again because the agressive settler modifier had disappeared and Pedro even asked for a DoF which I accepted. Meanwhile, Gus had become fed up with Hiawatha settling a bunch of cities towards him and he naturally declared war on him. He took 3 or 4 cities before making peace and is now ruling the biggest empire and has the strongest army...
On the religious side of things, the french Catholicism spread like wildfire through my tiny cities and I now have only two of my cities following my own religion... I enhanced around turn 125 waiting ages for that prophet to appear and I took Religious Texts and Pagodas (still available, lol). This was probably a stupid move because my FPT is ridiculously low and I'm already in the Renaissance so I will probably never get mosques AND pagodas up... At least not if I want to buy GMus and GPs to convert my cities back... So at this point my religion is basically useless and France's is extremely powerful... I think I'll just let it be on that front and concentrate on my growth and economy more, I don't think I can afford to build 9 shrines and temples without going broke.
Tech-wise, I was surprised that at some point I was actually catching up on the AI thanks to only growth and a lone trade route. I was also very surprised when Sweden happily entered the Renaissance on turn 86... But this allowed me to steal Theology from Hiawatha and to get Education on turn 118. At that point most of my Workshops were up and my cities had enough production to finish the unis within 10 to 15 turns. The problem is : I am working none of those specialist slots, even in Edimburgh where I decided that the Writer's Guild was more important. I was able to close the gap up to a 6% litteracy difference before Education but now America is starting to run away and this is definitely worrying me... He went Liberty and straight into Rationalism and doesn't accept any bribes to war even the weakest of his neighbours... At some point I decided to send the swedish troops against him but they don't seem to be making any progress... I hope I won't fall too far behind until I can work the slots because otherwise this game might very well end in an early fiasco...
On the cultural side of things, I'm still around 40 CPT and I was able to get 2 SPs before the Renaissance (I missed the Oracle by 6 turns out of 9 by the way...). Seeing the disastrous religious situation I went the safe side and opened Tradition and got Aristocracy. My borders are growing fast and I didn't have to buy any more tiles since then. Fun fact, the Hanging Gardens went on turn 104, if I had noticed that I may have gone for it myself... The Ottomans, while being extremely discrete the entire game, already peak at 12 tourism and are already Exotic over half of the map. I don't think they're a real threat for now but I still asked Sweden to check out how they're doing as the bribe was dirt cheap. I only hope I'm not creating a monster that way...
So now it's turn 130, I just entered the Renaissance through Acoustics and I am building Sistine Chapel in Edimburgh as apparently no one has started to work on that one and the only civs not at war at this moment are the Iroquois and me (bribes ftw !). I should get that just before the WC vote with WF kicks in. The sad thing is, the 500 Golden Age points won't be enough to trigger a GA once I win that (should be easy).
Once again, I'm a few turns from picking a policy and I'm facing tough choices... I think I'll go Aesthetics down to Cultural Centers because I need to grow now and the faster I get those Ceilidh Halls, the better. I could go Rationalism but as my happiness is low and I am constantly trying to stay at -1 to have the highest possible pop, the bonus won't apply 24/7 and Secularism is useless if I don't work any specialists. And I don't want to go Rationalism anyway ^^
I'm really enjoying that game for now, thanks for that amazing map