Thought Id take this one out for a run on noble / normal to see if I could get a BC conquest victory and, to my surprise, managed to get it done.
Started by SIP and teching AH > TW for the pigs, to check for horses and access immortals. Initial builds went worker > warrior. With the warrior in and horses in the BFC, I did a little queue micro, switching between a barracks and 2nd worker to ensure growth onto improved tiles. 2nd worker then joined 1st worker chopping and mining to max production at happy cap. To enable chopping, tech went mining > BW post TW. Mysticism was next - to allow the building of a monument in the capital and leverage CHAR to work an extra tile. Save for the odd worker to ensure we could always road to the next target, the capitals subsequent builds went *immortal (and later *HA) until we were 0GPT at 0% slider, with 0 gold in the bank.
Initial scouting revealed numerous AI nearby. Decided on Monty as the first target because he was (i) annoyed at us for no reason and (ii) a unit spammer. He also had a capital that could be connected by a river running from Persepolis to the NW. With that in mind, tech went fishing > sailing and then pottery > writing to allow access to granaries and libraries in the new cities.
Whilst about 6 immortals finished Monty, the capital continued to build a second stack destined for Shaka. In the event, the battle hardened immortals that had survived the Monty campaign each with an extra promo thanks to the CHAR trait (since the barracks gave them 3XP to start with) - joined this second stack for a two pronged attack on Shaka.
From there, the capital spammed a few more immortals and the stack of some 16 swept NE to wipe out AC. As was the case with Shaka, a combination of attacking AC in two separate stacks the first designed to take a city holding copper and some luck Im sure, meant that I saw no whipped spears IIRC.
With the next targets Charlie and Mao being PRO, tech then went HBR > archery to open up access to HAs and stables for extra XP. (With the CHAR trait, barracks, stables and a couple of settled GGs allowed for production of 3 promo eligible HAs out of the gate.) Having produced a couple of HAs though, the economy hit the three zero level mentioned above. As a result, even the capital (along with the captured capitals) built infra at this stage purely to prevent strike and ran specialists to keep tech nudging towards alpha (and allow for a small detour to masonry to access stone). I also chose this moment to begin building TGW (which still hadnt gone) and the mids in the capital to keep barbs at bay and raise the happy cap. Eventually alpha arrived and the captured capitals switched to building research to get to currency whilst the capital finished its wonders.
Meanwhile, Charlie and Mao fell in quick succession Mao still only had Beijing when he was invaded but he did at least manage to whip the first and only spear seen in the game. From there, tech went currency > CoL, with captured capitals building wealth where necessary to keep the economy afloat. As you can see from the save, courthouses are now going down / being chopped in to help the economy once and for all.
Lincoln fell not long after, the speed of the attack helped as in all cases by using at least two dedicated workers to road in to the next target from the last captured capital.
My army of three scouts quickly amassed a large amount of gold from the remaining huts, and after discovering some horsies in my BFC, I decided it would be a shame to let this oppourtunity go to waste! My begining tech path looked like this:
as a side note, spot what's ironic on the pic below...blatantly obvious what it is though
I clearly had an overwhelming strength advantage but I struggle to leverage it...
