1.27
I'm shooting for a high scoring space victory. If time constraints don't allow me to finish with a launch I may fall back on a domination or diplomatic win.
Opening Moves
I settled on the coast SW of the start position. I decided to go for a granary before anything else. Before I finished that the scout found the third cattle. The start position looked awesome at that point - a four turn warrior+settler factory and a two turn worker factory would be just barely possible!
I made some unusual moves to get the two factories running as quickly as possible. My first worker mined one tile and then irrigated five tiles without building any roads. Normally I'd consider that too wasteful. It costs another worker move later on to get back to each tile and also keeps income low for a long time, requiring extreme use of the luxury slider. In this case that seemed a good tradeoff. I also delayed building any warriors beyond what I'm comfortable with for protection from barbarians, pumping out a lot of early workers instead. Each time I completed one worker and started another I reasoned that I'd be at most two turns from having a warrior if the need arose, so I'd just continue with another worker since he'd be useful.
My initial build sequence in London was granary(3100), settler(2850), 5*worker in two turns each (2430), warrior(2350), settler(2190). And London then began its warrior+settler four turn cycle. York was six turns from completing its granary at 2190BC:
Research
I started with 40 turn research of Writing, learning it in 2110.
I then researched at the maximum rate I could afford. Learned Map Making in 1350, Code Of Laws in 1075, Philosophy in 925, and Republic in 570.
By 570 I'd traded for all other ancient techs except Currency, Construction, Literature, and Polytheism - no one knew those techs yet.
I revolted to Republic immediately upon learning it. I used the big picture trick and got a six turn revolution. Silly me, I decided to gamble on getting a better one, revolted again, and ended up with seven turns of anarchy.
After becoming a Republic I researched Currency. I learned it in 350BC and was able to trade at that time for Literature, Polytheism, and Construction, and thus entered the Middle Ages.
Exploration
In 3300 my scout hailed China. MiniMe has already provided us with a nice picture of this event
I decided not to trade with them at that time, hoping to meet another Civ or two to improve trade prices.
In 2800 my scout finished revealing the coastline and determined that we were isolated on an island.
I thought about trying to get Map Making from China, or from another Civ if one sailed by, but ended up deciding to research it. China was very backward and I thought she'd be likely to research other techs before Map Making (The Wheel, Ceremonial Burial, Iron Working, and perhaps even Mysticism could come first for her.) It seemed too risky to trade her Writing and then hope for her to learn Map Making while I went for Republic. In hindsight I'm not sure this was best. A couple of people have reported pre-1000 dates for China getting Map Making. Anyway, I didn't trade with China, decided to keep her backward instead.
Upon learning Map Making in 1350 I rushed some galleys out to explore. They quickly met the three near neighbors of course.
Barbarians
I found the barbarians quite a challenge on the homeland. The Predator setting was probably part of this. I suppose my delay in building early warriors to patrol didn't help, and having only warriors available to deal with them (due to not researching nor trading military techs for a long time) compounded the problem.
For a long time I had a few warriors dancing with barbarians. By the time I secured the homeland with enough patrolling warriors to block the appearance of new camps (1100BC) I'd lost one worker and five warriors to the barbarians. I figured that wasn't bad all things considered.
The Great Lighthouse Decision
In 1650 I saw a scary sight, a barbarian galley. It seemed that somewhere in the world someone had already discovered Map Making.
I didn't yet have a coastal city capable of building the Lighthouse in a reasonable time, unless I sacrificied my settler or worker factory for the purpose. Otherwise it didn't seem I could build the Lighthouse before somewhere around 500BC, and it seemed very likely that an AI would build it before then. And if I started the build but didn't succeed, there wouldn't be any other wonder I'd want to switch to around that time. So I abandoned any thought of trying for the Lighthouse. I'd have to take my Golden Age later in the game.
As things turned out, Spain completed the Great Lighthouse in 925BC in my game. That was even earlier than I expected, and is earlier than other builds reported in this thread. The range of dates reported so far for AI Lighthouse builds is quite large. Perhaps the extra AI worker in Predator class was the main factor in Spain's early Lighthouse date in my game.
QSC Status
By 1000BC I'd expanded to nearly fill the homeland:
Nottingham had just this turn completed Forbidden Palace.
Stats at this date:
12 towns, total population 34
3 settlers
18 workers
13 warriors
6 galleys
2 granaries, 2 barracks, 1 forbidden palace
542g in treasury
Warfare
The homeland wasn't big enough to suit me. I wanted a separate second productive region. To get that it looked like I'd have to take land from someone else.
In 900BC I started to build chariots for subsequent upgrading.
I chose Germany as my target. France had better land but she was more advanced in technology than Germany and China and was stronger. And much of her land was still jungle. China had slightly better land than Germany but was also stronger. Germany was the weakest and also had the most towns larger than size one.
In 610BC I upgraded 20 chariots to horsemen. And in 570BC, the same turn as I began my period of anarchy, I invaded Germany. Just before declaring war I gifted her Republic, so that she'd be unable to whip her towns down to size one - I wanted to take them over, not destroy them.
This war was straightforward. At 430BC I'd reduced Germany to three towns. I gave her peace for two of them - I wanted to keep her in the game a bit longer to get a free Middle Ages tech for me:
Palace Jump
I'd already started shipping workers, warriors, and settlers to Germany. I joined a few native workers to Berlin, moved almost all of my military units there, and started setting up to fill in the surrounding lands with a ring 4 build to match my homeland's ring 4 around the Forbidden Palace.
And in 370BC, one turn before entering the Middle Ages, I jumped the Palace to Berlin. I know that some consider this an exploit but I don't, and I much enjoyed this particular jump, it seemed an especially good one
Of course, now that I actually think about it, this would make no sense whatsoever. Such a corruption situation would require dual (and bizarre) corruption calculations in the coding. Looks like I need to go back and read the articles by Qitai and Alexman yet again. They just do not seem to want to sink into my brain.
I really struggled with RCP: no matter what layout I chose, I seemed to end up with suboptimal placement. Either I couldnt use the third cow without a temple, or my cities would destroy too many BGs, or I didnt have enough coastal cities, etc.
![[ptw]](/images/smilies/ptw.gif "PTW Icon [ptw]")
1.27f 
