...continued
Ok, a few things are really important to understand about this round. First, I spent most of this round crippled gold-wise. You will see a few examples from screenshots, but I am not going to show 10s of pics of me swapping tiles onto merchants and commerce. It is important to understand that cottages are commerce improvements. Without them, low commerce, which often means scraping gold together during the difficult horizontal expansion period of the middle-ages, early renaissance. If you are able to sack a lot of cities, then you can coast through on that. I wasn't able to do this, and I only had Asoka as a trading partner, so my options for accessing gold were limited. So, I swapped onto merchants and commerce tiles a lot this round to eek by. The key here is simply to survive until you hit a point where you can purely use your muscle (i.e., land advantage) to overrun the remaining opponents. They might outtech you in the long run, but not if you take over their empire first!
Another thing to understand is that I am really playing this particular map suboptimally. I am on a small continent. Usually for me that means I will go for space race, which also usually means that I will cottage up the empire. If I had cottaged up this empire I wouldn't have to scrape together any gold. I'd be rolling in it. However, my production would be much, much lower until I had US and a lot of matured cottages. This particular map calls for the cottage route, it really does. If I had a larger continent with more opponents to steamroll through, then the mass-farm approach would, arguably, be more optimal. However, this is just a walkthrough, and not an attempt at optimal play, so understand that my goal here is simply to finish Asoka, scrape gold to survive, and then mass-produce an army and a navy to squash my overseas opponents during the renaissance era for the domination victory.
Alright, with those caveats in mind, onto the round:
1160AD: Military advisor and power graph:
I don't have hardly any military to speak of, yet I am on par with Asoka power-wise. This is going to be a romp. I draft 3 maces per turn and whip/build more maces and catapults.
1180AD-A friendly Asoka sees me gearing up for war and makes his best offer:
Tempting, especially because he has been nothing but friendly, but I am a blood-thirsty warmongerer this game, so I decline.
1200AD-Reject Asoka's request for Nationalism. Give him the opportunity to draft? I think not.
1220AD-I complete another national wonder:
It won't help so much this war, but it will be great when I gear up for an overseas war. Drafting center.
1230AD-Only a few turns later, my military and power situation is much different:
However, my economy is on the brink and I have to address it or else face a strike. So, first off, I cycle back (no anarchy):
I have a lot of unhappiness in my cities from whipping and drafting:
I need to raise the culture slider a bit, but I need to afford everything as well. So, I run a mass-merchant recovery:
With the economy critical but stable, I declare on Asoka and sack Mycenia--told you it was only a temporarily lost city. I really need the conquest funding to assist my economy. A major military-industrial complex I have going on:
1250AD-Our 11th GPers, a GS is born. I use him on an academy in my capital in preparation for also landing Oxford there:
1260AD-I kind of mess up. I didn't notice a chariot and archer that Asoka had on the SW fringe of my empire. I had one war chariot guarding Phrygian, but it wasn't enough and I lost the city for a second before a second nearby warchariot took it back. Cost me some buildings. Sigh. Optics is in, start constitution. Raze Agra and Bombay. Plan to resettle Bombay 1E in a better location. Agra was a hopeless/needless city. With the spoils of war giving me a float, I remove a bunch of merchants empire-wide and replace with scientists and priests to bump up my tech rate a bit. Some before and after pics:
Thebes:
Before:
After:
Gunning for a GProph, but it doesn't work out for me.
Memphis:
Before:
After:
Constantinople:
Before:
After:
1270AD: Complete another wonder:
This further takes the edge off the critical economic situation.
1280AD: Raze Vijayanagara, poorly placed, plan to resettle
1290AD: Our 12th GPers, another GM, who I settle in Constantinople, our future WS city:
1310AD-Sack Pataliputra; GG #2 is born, settle him in Memphis our HE city
1330AD-Sack Delhi:
Unfortunately, Asoka never built any shrines for us, alas.
1350AD-Finally meet our first overseas neighbour:
Lincoln. I give him CS for mono/arch/HBR/map/50 and also OB with him. The map reveals that he has his own little piece of the world and also that Issy is nearby. She is destined to be an enemy because I am not switching out of Buddhism:
To be continued...
I will let other people nitpick the details in my and their games, if they wish. I just want to provide an overview/gist so that players new to SE can get a sense of how they might go about it. 
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